From Cultural Awareness to Confident Inclusive Leadership with Yvonne Jackson

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for joining us today. With over 10 million downloads and listeners from more than 180 different countries, it's dedicated listeners just like you who have made Negotiate Anything the number one negotiation podcast in the world. I'm your host, Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, author, and the proud CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Now, before we get into today's insightful conversation, I have a golden opportunity for those of you who recognize the power of negotiation in your professional lives. Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could navigate those high stakes conversations with more confidence? Or perhaps you're looking to empower your team with the art of persuasion and conflict resolution? At the American Negotiation Institute, we've crafted specialized keynotes and workshops tailored for those very needs. We've transformed the negotiation skills of professionals worldwide, and we're eager to do the same for you. We believe the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And our goal is to help you improve your lives and the lives of those around you, one difficult conversation at a time. Don't let another challenging conversation leave you second guessing. Click the link in the description to discover how we can help you find confidence in conflict, negotiate better deals, and have stronger relationships. Because in the world of business, every conversation counts. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Yvonne, thanks for joining us today.

Hi. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you, my friend. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. I'm Yvonne Jackson. I am the CEO of Social Edge, and that's Social edg. It stands for equity, diversity and growth. And for me, it's really growth mindset. And when I do is I'm an inclusive leadership coach. I'm a workplace equity advisor. Basically, I'm the person you call when the good intentions that you may have put in place in 2020 didn't quite come to be right. So I basically, I allow people to learn how to take their intentions and turn it into concrete actions and results. And so that's what I do.

I love it. Turning intentions into actions. I think that is a great tagline.

Great tagline.

And I think a lot of people struggle with that too, where we have these lofty ideals, these goals, but we're not quite sure how to put this into place.

Right.

And one of the things that I got so excited about for was before the interview started, I asked you that question about energy so as it relates to human interaction in general, what is it that is giving you the most energy right now?

Transformation. That was the word I said to you. Right now with my clients, I'm seeing firsthand in real time transformation from not just being an ally or someone who's made a, you know, public statement of how they feel about equity, diversity and inclusion. But I see transformation, how way they think, their awareness, their competency, their humility. Right. The confidence they gain to be able to go in rooms and, and manage and lead diverse teams that they didn't have before. And that transformation is what makes me want to keep doing this. Right. A lot of people say, some of my clients thank me and they're like, I can't believe you do this work. Why do you do this work? And it's them. That's why I do it. I want to see that happen.

I love it. Yeah, it's such a powerful word too, because when we think about the word transformation, we're talking about like a full whole change versus what these discussions can sometimes turn into bullying, shame based tactics in order to make people feel bad and do what we want them to do. And one of the things that really attracted me to your approach is the fact that it's rooted in positivity, rooted in joy. Can you tell us more about that?

Yes. So there's four pillars to what I do. And I call it Joyful Equity is actually the name. I call it Joyful Equity. And joyful equity has to do with leadership forward. Without the leadership, you can't do it. But then it's a no shame, no guilt policy. There's an equity forward policy, and then there's also a culture of joy policy. I'll start with the culture of joy. What I found is that in the work that I do, especially around equity, diversity and inclusion, so many leaders are so afraid to say that they don't know what they're doing or that they're scared or they fearful because they're like, well, other people have. I have more privilege than bad things or worse things are happening to other people, so why should I look for help or. Or the world's never going to get better. And what happens is just diversity fatigue sits in all these things and they just give up. But what I try and do is show them that if they focus on joy and be able to move back to the center, they will be able to sustain the initiatives, the programs and the mindset that they put in place. And when I say joy, I'm not saying it's rainbows and sunshine and unicorns. I'm saying that the transformation, they see them in themselves and business brings them joy. They see it happening to themselves, not just me. And next thing you know, they're coming to me like, maybe we should implement this. Maybe we should do this. Right? So it's about bringing people back from exhaustion, bringing them back from not having hope to, okay, let me tap into a little bit of joy and see what that can do. And then the other piece is no shame, no guilt. I grew up in a culture surrounded by shame and guilt. That was what it used against us, is what I say, to kind of make sure we followed the status quo. So now that I'm older, I have my business, I'm doing this. It's my goal to not use shame and guilt as the motivating driver. For me, I find the two most largest motivators of people to transform into inclusive leaders. Is one, a catalytic event. Something big happened to them or someone they knew, something happened to their family member. Whatever just changed or shift on how they view the world and society. Or it has to do with basically personal growth. Individual growth is going to get them to another level. It's going to make them to another person. It helps their career. So instead of keeping my clients in a space of shame and guilt, I try and bring it out of them because they're no help to nobody, right? If they're sad, right. And they stop making action. So I push them through. I help them get that catalytic event, help them get through it. And I also help them, you know, be confident in themselves again.

I love this. And it's.

I think this is so important for people who are in health helping professions in general, because there's a lot of burnout. And so it would be great if we could approach the rest of this interview from the perspective of internal negotiation. The internal conversations that we have to have with ourselves, persuading ourselves to have that transformation, and then external negotiations. How can we persuade others to have that transformation? But it has to start with ourselves. Something I didn't mention at the beginning, I wanted to drop this on you in the interview, and now you're going to be all flabbergasted.

All right, all right, I'm ready, I'm ready. Bring it.

Yeah, you're going to be underwhelmed, but here it is. So when I was doing some civil rights work focusing on health equity, I got burnt out because I was saying, man, I'm not beating racism. This is just really, really rough. Exposing myself to all of this negativity all the time. And so when I stopped doing that work, I mean, I stopped. I would go. I went to the point where I wouldn't watch the news anymore. I went a full year without watching the news. It felt amazing. Ignorance is bliss.

But I would not suggest just choosing.

To be misinformed or uninformed. I would block anybody who mentioned anything related to race, equity, or anything, and that includes Whitney Christian, my wife.

We were good. Everything was fine. But I was like, whit, you're a little bit too woke for me.

I cannot handle it at this point. Can't handle it.

Yeah.

I realized that if I was at that time, if I was able to move forward with a little bit more joy and recognize that it was okay to be joyful and be fueled by positivity, who knows what my career could have turned into? And so I'm curious to see from your perspective, when you went through this transformation, what was that internal negotiation like, where you were able to come to the point where joy is actually something that is worthy of attention as we're still trying to make the world a better place?

My transformation happened June of 2022, so just a little over a year ago. And my transformation was painful. And I'll explain. Painful. I was working at Apple at the time. I was a inclusion and diversity program manager for one of the large organizations inside the company. And I was just hitting some walls. And I remember having a conversation with someone who just made me feel like all the work I was doing just wasn't having any impact. And he looked at me and he said, I get it, but no one cares. And for someone who has, like, an activist soul who loves helping people, who put her whole heart into her career, I was part of the ERG Employee resource group. All these things to hear, that broke me. It broke me so much that my manager at the time, bless her heart, looked at me and said, go and leave. And let me tell you, I didn't even know I should go and leave. I didn't know I had broken down. I was. I broke down, didn't know it. She saw it. And I went on leave. And I spent a month reading. I read. Oh, and I have the books over here. I read everything by Audrey Lord. I read the Bridge Called My Back. All these different things, bell hooks, all these different things from women and people of color and people across the LGBTQ spectrum about what they did in the 70s and 80s, right? And when I realized I wasn't the first one who's ever burned out and that these individuals, it had happened to them, and they had somehow, in their writings, had left me a map for moving forward and. But to go through that, I was so angry. There was times I just laid in bed, I dropped my daughter off at daycare, come home, lay in bed, not move. And then I remember my therapist, I said, you know, I'm good. You know, my daughter's fine. I'm the best mother. And she said, what if you could provide your daughter with even more joy, with even more happiness? Instantly, I was like, it's on. Okay, let me do this. And I knew that I had to come out of that. But my first option was to go back to marketing. That's my background. Go back to digital marketing, be a marketing strategist, consultant, that thing. And then I said, no, this is my love. But the only way for me to do this work that I love was to be able to sustain it and come from a place of love, kindness, compassion. I want to give people what I didn't receive in these roles. Right? I want to show people that they can come out from burnout and that from there, I was on company. I incorporated my company. I worked three more. I came back to work three months and launched my company in January. And it's been sailing since. Right? So all of that, really, I went through similar things, and it made me who I am today. It made me the coach I am today.

It's a powerful story, and I'm glad that you were able to have that transformation. And again, the transformation is rooted in something incredibly positive and joy. And when you think about other folks who are in helping professions, what would you say is it that holds them back from allowing themselves to be fueled more by joy than by the negativity of the problems of the world?

Shame, Guilt. That if the rest of the world's having problems, if my community's having problems, how dare I live in joy, Right? I actually wrote a whole article on this on LinkedIn about how when we transform, it actually feels as if we're denying our roots, especially people of color and of other backgrounds, indigenous and so forth. That transformation so different from others in our community who may have not transformed yet, that we want to put it down, not let anyone see it. We're shameful of our joy. So that's what I think gets in a lot of our ways, is we so want to care for our communities, our backgrounds. We want to be all the things, and we think we don't deserve it, and I feel we do. And the more we Tap into it the more we help others. More than we could ever do if we denied those feelings.

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Elevate, negotiate and succeed.

Powerful.

Yeah. I hope more people can fully absorb that and experience that too, because I've seen it for years. For years. Just a reluctance to lean into the positivity. But that positivity is powerful. And for the purposes of this interview, the positivity is also persuasive because essentially.

What you're, what we're doing here is like we're saying, hey, look, I'm miserable. Hey, let me give you this information. You will then be miserable. But you should be miserable. All of us should be miserable.

That's not enticing. Who wants that? A big slice of misery pie.

Yes. It's not what makes us human. So a lot of the research, the way a lot of the programs I have, are built on academic research, not just my gut instinct or all just my lived experience, even though it has fantastic, you know, on it. But there's a lot of research out there on how people work when they're in diverse environments, how they, how they move, what they're motivated in. And no matter who you are, everyone kind of reacts the same way. It's just that there's nuances based on our lived experiences. So what I try and teach people is, okay, we're all the same, but there's nuances over here that you need to take in consideration when deciding how to persuade. Right. How to manage people, how to lead, that sort of thing.

Absolutely. And this is, I think, one of the things that's missing so often in these discussions. Just recognizing that transformation is never easy. We never want to convince people that it's easy because that would be a lie. But it's worth it and it can feel good joy, like tapping into that. That's powerful. And especially when you think about leadership in general, no matter what kind of organization you're in, there will be some level of diversity, there will be people who are not exactly like you. And if you can lead with positivity and try to create a connection, then leading in that way is one of the best inclusion efforts that you have.

And that's why I focus so much. My language is so focused on inclusive leadership because I think leaders need to be able to have those skills and to lead diverse teams because it's not going anywhere and diversity is here. It's been coming, it's going to stay, it's going to grow. This is the world we're living in. So if you want to stay in business, if you want to have an impact, you need to learn the skills. I think it's not about just saying, hey, I'm an equitable leader, I've taken this course, I've done this. No, it needs to be built into the DNA of how you lead. And I think all leaders need that skill set just like they need anything else. Right. To be able to manage a lead.

Absolutely. And when you think about the skill set associated with inclusive leadership, what are some of those core skills that inclusive leaders need to have if they're going to create connections with the members of their team?

There's long lists. If you go online, everybody has a different list of these are the competencies of an inclusive leader, an equitable company. I've actually brought it down to just four things. I call it the four C's of inclusive leadership. Cultural awareness, cultural competency, cultural humility, and cultural confidence. Most people who come to me already have a level of cultural awareness or they weren't even looking for someone. Right. So if someone wants to learn about negotiation, there's, there's an awareness of how it's going to positively impact them. It's the competency where things start to get a little rough. And it's not that they've never read a book or they haven't workshopped, they just aren't able to take those things. And again, like I said, take intent, turn it into actionable, applied work. But there's this also, and I wouldn't say it's new research, but there's a concept about cultural humility that actually has taken root in the health care field. That's where it's really broadly used in cultural humility. They say without cultural humility, cultural competency cannot continue or be sustainable. And what cultural humility is, is not about making yourself lower, small, but it's about being able to value self reflection for yourself, not someone telling you to be self reflective. You know how beneficial it is it's about acknowledging your own personal bias and it's also about long term lifetime learning. Cultural humility is about lifetime learning. It's about knowing. You may never know everyone's lived experience. You may never read every single book. What I found is that when people have that cultural humility connected to competency, it's sustainable. And it's sustainable because it means that they're curious because they want to, not because there's a team telling them they need to be curious about outside events, not because their friends or family are. It's because they have taken the time to reflect on themselves, society. They already recognize their bias and they know again that their lived experience isn't the only one. And if you put that on top of cultural competency, that takes you to cultural confidence, right? And cultural confidence isn't about being a champion and being the best inclusive leaders. You're never going to be this work. You're always learning, right? But it'll allow you to go into a room and say, I can hold a conversation about intense conversations. When I mess up and say the wrong thing, I know when to apologize. Right? That's what cultural confidence for an inclusive leadership leader should look like. So when I talk to people, that's what I do. Those four things, awareness, competency, plus humility. And it leads to that confidence, right? That's they're gonna have to continue growing and working on again for a lifetime.

This is brilliant. I really like this and it's so interesting too because we have here a blend of mindset and skill set because we have the mindset that goes along with it. We have humility and confidence, but then we also have skill set which is awareness and the competence. And so you blend those together to be that inclusive leader. And it makes so much sense. And I think for a lot of people, when you, they initially hear it, cultural humility and cultural confidence, it almost seems like a dichotomy or paradoxical. But then when you explain it, recognize the humility gives you the curiosity that allows you to learn, increase your competence, which makes you confident, but not arrogant too. Right? And I think this is so vitally important. But again, we recognize that this is a lifetime process. You're never going to know everything and it's just going to be a constant process of continuing to develop. Man, this is good, this is good. So when people are saying to themselves, as they're driving, man, this is good.

How can I get in touch with Yvonne?

What would you say is the best way for people to get in touch with you and connect.

Well, my website, Social Edg. Com, my email is yvonneocial edge.com LinkedIn and just reach out, say, you know, I'm interested in learning more and we can just set up some time to chat. For me, it's really about learning what people need, right? And I meet you where you are and trust me, where you want to go, I can get you there. That's what I tell everyone. Trust me, I can get you there because I was able to get there, right? So check me out. My website, email, LinkedIn. I'm always available and open to conversations with people who are curious.

Love it. Yvonne, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

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Will see you in the next episode.

I'll catch you later.