Unlocking Diversity and Empowering Your Workplace

We have talked time and again about how hard it is to attract capable people to fulfill crucial roles within our businesses. We whine about the fact that people aren't applying. And we whine when they quit, wishing that we had a workforce that was more stable, more consistent, and my goodness, that they were more loyal. But What if I told you I believe you are unknowingly leaving a vast reservoir of untapped potential and creativity on the table? And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs develop new skills to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. I am so glad that you are here today for a wonderful conversation. My guest for this episode is one of Canada's top leading experts in disability inclusion, Denise Boudreau.

Hi Marc!

And today, we are going to be exploring A transformative approach that enriches your workforce and revolutionizes how you solve problems and connect with your community. We are going to discuss often overlooked dimensions of things like diversity that can propel your business to new heights. And we're going to uncover the 15 keys to inclusive leadership. So, stay with us. You know, I was one of the lucky ones. Early in my career, I had the pleasure of working with a gent who had Down syndrome. I was newly promoted to the rank of supervisor and I was always blown away by how consistent Eric was in showing up for work and performing his duties. He was so diligent. I know that as I evolved in leadership within the different capacities of casinos and hotels and restaurants. I know that each of the communities I've ever served, we have specialized agencies within those communities dedicated to supporting individuals with physical and neurodiverse needs, ensuring that they find suitable and fulfilling opportunities. At the same token, they give us a heck of a lot of opportunities. to be able to support our businesses. So, that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, have you explored and utilized the specialized agencies in your communities? You know, the ones that are dedicated to supporting these individuals with physical and diverse Needs? If you have, I'd love to hear your stories. I don't think we hear them enough because I just know that from my experiences, I know that time after time after time, it has been met with success after success after success. But we need to hear more of these stories. So, I'd love for you to share your experience. If you want, you can share this episode on your favorite platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. Today, we are honored to have with us a remarkable individual whose work is not just a profession but a powerful mission. Denis Boudreau is a visionary consultant, trainer, coach, and speaker. Denis has dedicated his career to creating truly inclusive digital experiences. He stands at the forefront of empowering organizations to connect deeply and meaningfully with individuals, especially those who are often marginalized due to disabilities, aging, or other circumstances in our tech-driven world. For over 23 years, he has been working with DEI, disability inclusion, and digital accessibility. He is a W3C invited expert involved in the development and evolution of international accessibility guidelines. He is the co-author of the Quebec government's mandatory digital accessibility standards. And he is the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lead for our industry, our industry association, the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. His second book, A Roadmap to Inclusive Leadership: 15 Keys to Unlocking a Diverse and Empowered Workplace, is being penned right now. In my experience, he and I are friends. And what makes Denis's approach really unique is his focus on inclusivity, not just as a concept but as a practical, actionable reality. Denis's passion and commitment to his mission are evident in every aspect of his work, whether it's through coaching, speaking, or consulting. He is driven by the belief that everyone deserves to connect with their organizations, their brands, and the message that they can convey without any hindrances. Denis, welcome to the show! I am so happy you're here. It's taken us— it's taken a while to get you here.

It sure has. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yep.

Before we dive really deep into today's topic, could you just tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?

Certainly. So, I help organizations, leaders and organizations figure out how they can best serve their workforce by being more aware of the diverse needs of that workforce and meeting them in a way that people feel comfortable, confident that they can disclose particular needs in terms of accommodations so that they can fulfill their roles within the team as efficiently as they possibly can. So it's really about helping the organization in a way, empower their workforce to really completely show up for work and be able to do their work the way that they could because the environment allows for it. And at the same time, a lot of my work involves communication, inclusive communications in general. And I help these organizations speak to their audiences in a way that does not make anyone feel excluded or feel a little uneasy with the language being used. or the way that communication is being addressed through technology so that a person with a disability, for instance, can still get that content, use those applications, use those websites without feeling left out due to that disability that they might have. So anything related to that is what I typically work on.

So it's basically empowering everybody to come to the table no matter what their circumstance.

That very well defines it. Thank you.

Hey, before we— Before we jump headfirst into this, could you— I think it's really important maybe that we start off first of all talking about what diversity, equity, inclusion is. And then, talk a little bit about how we define disability inclusion within our workplaces. Okay.

Well, the whole idea of DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion is a concept that has been around for a while now. A lot of organizations are aware of it. And the idea behind this basically is to break down barriers. for underrepresented groups typically. And when we think about DEI, we typically think about race. We think about gender expression. We think about sexuality, religion, things like that. Sometimes we think about aging. And the whole point really is to make those folks feel like they're part of the team, part of our environment, our workforce, our platforms just as much as anybody else. And Breaking down stigma, breaking down barriers, breaking down any reason through which they might feel like they're not fully part of this thing that we have in the organization or in society in general. Where I come in is I bring disability into this equation because interestingly enough, most organizations— and by most, I mean only 4% of organizations who actually have a DEI framework, a policy, an initiative internally, only 4% of those organizations actually consider disability to be one of those protected characteristics. Meaning that while the percentage of people with disabilities in society— we can talk about that a little later if you want to— but I mean, the prevalence of disability in society, but also in the workplace, is extremely high. People are not aware of it. are not talking about that. And as a result, people with different types of disabilities, different types of needs, when they can hide those, will typically do so because they fear repercussions if they out themselves. And so what I do is I help normalize that conversation so that people are more comfortable coming out with these needs, these different realities, and empowering their managers, their leaders to create an environment in which we can really talk about inclusion.

Yeah, as you were talking about that, I flashed back to a story my mother had told me. My mother, back when we were little children, so back in the late '60s, when she got pregnant, she was actually fired from her job because she was pregnant. Because they found out that she was pregnant. It's like, oh well, you have to take care of yourself so you can't work here anymore. And I think of Think from that perspective and then where we are today. And it's like we've just evolved in so many different realms.

Oh yeah.

And yet, as much as we've evolved, we still have a lot of work to do.

Clearly. I mean, first off, I'd say that what a great way to take care of yourself being without a job and a kid on the way. That's a fantastic way to take care of yourself. Clearly, the world has changed since then. The work that people like me do was not really possible 30 years ago. And it became something that is more and more recognized as part of what we do, what we care about as a society. And in large part, this is due to younger generations that grew up with this feeling of inclusion that is not something that I recognize all that much in Gen Xers, for instance, which is where I sit. Very proudly, but still. So yeah, it has changed quite a bit since then. But there's still a lot of work to do, clearly. I mean, we're at least talking about it now, but what is currently being done in organizations to make sure that someone with a disability can fully participate is still only— has only gotten so far up to this point.

Yeah. And I was always blown away coming into the business, especially once I moved to Alberta. I was just in awe of how many programs there were out there supporting people with disabilities, with whatever kind of disability it was. And kind of even the government programs to help offset some of the costs of making changes and all that. When it comes down to hiring people with disabilities, are there any myths you think that we need to blow out in order for people to understand that actually what we're looking at is really an opportunity to make our culture, our workplaces better?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, there are so many myths there to debunk that you end up losing count. I mean, some of the most obvious ones are people with disabilities can't work. They can't be relied upon. They don't really want to work anyway. They don't have the skills that we need. We'll have to hold their hand the entire time. They won't be autonomous. Like, all these different things are some of what we hear. A lot of people associate a disability with the inability to work, while in reality, what people should be thinking about is that everyone has a certain number of skills and competencies, and what really allows people to shine or thrive is the environment in which they operate. I meet with people with disabilities every single day, and they thrive. And the reason why they struggle is because the environment in which they're trying to achieve what they're trying to achieve does not allow for that. And it's amazing to see when you have someone who has a skill set and talent being, you know, put into an environment where all those barriers are coming down and they can just be who they're meant to be, really.

Mm-hmm.

And we see that on the web a lot. I mean, I work with a bunch of folks who are blind, for instance, And, you know, most people would say blind people can't use computers. Of course they can. I mean, they use different types of technologies, and most websites out there are not built in a way that allows for those technologies to actually work. So yeah, blind people can't use those websites. But when you have someone using assistive technologies like screen readers who will read the website out to them, and they control that screen reader, and they fly through a website without seeing a single piece of it, but just listening to the entire thing, and see what they can achieve, which is exactly what I can achieve otherwise. I mean, when you realize that the environment is really what determines if someone's ability to succeed is there or not, it changes your perspective on disability. And yeah, I mean, there's so much that we as a society can do to break those barriers down so that people can just thrive. But that's where it typically stops. That's where it just doesn't work.

Yeah, I do know that the biggest myth whenever I've talked to business operators is the cost of support. So, the cost of transitioning technologies, the cost of creating accessible corridors and being able to cater to whatever the need is. It means it's disruptive.

Yes.

And what I find that is they're so short-sighted.

Hmm. Well—

You were about to say something.

Yes. Well, yeah, I wanted to jump on that for a couple of reasons. First of all, I mean, if someone realizes that their workplace is not accessible because areas are too narrow, there is probably a fire hazard there to begin with that, you know, the firefighters would not agree with. I mean, your place of business should be wide enough for people to just circulate normally. A wheelchair is only like 36 inches wide, right? So I mean, it's not that big. If you can't do that because the spaces are cluttered with a bunch of different things, you know, people would object for other reasons, not just because someone might be in a wheelchair. The myth around hiring someone with a disability costs too much is another thing that we can blow out of the water completely. I mean, research shows that most accommodations actually don't cost anything. It might be something like someone has a hard time working in an open space because it's just too distracting. So maybe we put them in a different area of the working space, in a corner maybe, or a place where maybe there's something around them so that they're a little shielded from that. Other people might just need headphones so that they don't hear the noise. It might be just the way that The organization of the time is set, full hours, working from home, like things like that don't cost anything. And in a post-COVID world, I mean, we're pretty much all used to the idea that people could actually work from home and still be productive. So most people, you know, believe that today, unless of course they own leases and they have to put people in those buildings to justify having them. That's a different story. But yeah, most, most of these accommodations don't cost anything. And when they actually do cost something, The average cost is around $300, and then that person can work. So, you know, it's negligible, really. But the perception that it's going to cost a lot is definitely something that will prevent a lot of people from actually moving forward and trying to hire a couple of people that would have disabilities and bring all that, you know, that creativity and innovation and differences in terms of perspectives to come and add to their workforce.

It's so funny that you said that because I was meeting with some human resource managers in one particular organization. And I said, every person on the team, everybody on the team has superpowers. And it's unfortunate that we kind of pocket them into their job descriptions because we hire people for a job and we think, okay, that's all they're going to do. But if we take the time to actually get to know our people and what their capacity is, we'll find out that they have a lot of hidden talents that they're not even using in the job site.

Oh yeah. And a lot of ability to develop coping mechanisms too. Yeah, I can give you so many examples. I'll give you one from my own experience. For instance, I'm colorblind. So, color perception is not something that I can easily do. And by easily, I mean I just can't. I really can't tell colors apart all that much. And that never prevented me from working for 4 years, 4 years in a company that was designing suits for men. And of all jobs out there, I was the person matching colors for that company. And I did that very successfully for 4 years. I never knew what the colors were, but I found out really quickly that every color had a number assigned to it. And I could look into the patterns and the history and the trends in fashion. And I knew, for instance, that— bear with me, that was the '90s, but taupe pants and the navy blazers worked well together. So I didn't know what those colors were, but I knew the numbers so I could match those. You can understand, and I could work around these things. And like I said, did that very successfully for 4 years. And then I went on to become a web designer, among other things, again, designing websites and stuff. And I don't really can tell color apart. I mean, your skin might be green and I think it's beige for all I know. But so I was a little particular in how I designed, but what I worked on was working really nicely. It's just different. And when you tap into this and you allow people to tap into their creativity, their ability, and their innovation in a way, what you get is different than what you otherwise would get. If everyone is exactly the same in your organization, You can't expect any of them to think differently or outside of the box. I mean, everyone's going to think the same way. And you're going to have a very predictable workforce. If you bring in a lot of diversity, you'll have this outlier all the time coming in with a different perspective. And that might be what you need to innovate in that particular case. And again, people don't think about that from that standpoint. But they should.

And again, and to your point, as long as we allow those voices at the table, then it's something that we could take advantage of and actually help grow our business. What do you think leaders need to understand about disability inclusion and DEI that they don't know now? What are some of the things that you think are kind of just not within the radar of leadership?

I think the most important thing leaders need to understand is that Roughly 20% of the workforce pretty much everywhere is neurodivergent to begin with in society. So according to Statistics Canada, and the data is from a couple of weeks ago, in this case, 27% of Canadians self-identify as having at least one disability. So that's more than a quarter of the population. If you have a workforce of, I don't know, 1,000 people, that's 250 people.

Yeah.

that are probably somewhere on that spectrum, whether it's a visual disability, a hearing disability, cognitive, motor, neurological, whatever that is. There's going to be something about them that makes them fit into that category. The reason why people don't think about it, the reason why it's so staggering for most people to think that 27% of the population might have a disability is that Over 80% of those disabilities are in fact invisible. If I don't tell you that I'm colorblind and my clothes match, you would never know. I mean, there's no way for you to tell. I fix that problem by wearing black all the time. So I mean, that fixes it for me. But, you know, someone with dyslexia, someone with ADHD, someone who's on the autism spectrum, but, you know, someone who we'd consider to be high functioning, You wouldn't know. I mean, you might feel that someone is a little lazy or that someone is a little particular or socially awkward. Like, you might know or notice things about those folks, but people rarely go to the extent of labeling that as a disability. And people don't disclose that for themselves either out of fear, like I said, of repercussion and stigma and prejudice and all these different things. So it maintains this myth again that there are very few people with disabilities. I mean, the ones that we notice, of course, someone in a wheelchair, a blind person with a service dog. I mean, of course, those are obvious. But this is just the tip of a very large iceberg of people who work in our workplaces, who are part of our workforce, who are our clients. And when we don't recognize that, we can't serve them the way that we could or should to be able to for one thing, have a better performance in our own business. But also, from a society standpoint, be able to welcome everyone into what it is that we're collectively building.

Yes, interesting that you said that because way back in the middle '80s, I was working with a group of people and we were actually working on a senior sensitivity workshop. where we could work with frontline workers to get them to understand that when they are dealing with senior clients, senior clients in their own right have specific, some specific needs. And how often do we see a clerk at a checkout counter who's doing the things and they're with a senior, somebody who's elderly. And they're like, oh, and they're so impatient.

Yeah.

And so, we wanted to fight some of that in the service industry by creating some, by trying to understand the perspective of what it was like to be that old. And we actually had gloves that caused fingers to hurt. And we gave them glasses that warped their vision so that they can understand maybe what it looks like to have cataracts and not being able to see. And do all these kinds of sensitivity training. But now, it seems like we're going further beyond that because now, what you're saying is we have people right now in our workforce who are keeping their mouth shut. They're not talking about what their needs are. And they're just trying to sweat their way through being normal.

Right, yeah. Big word there, normal.

Yeah, well, I think normal is just a setting on a dryer. But that's just me.

Well, you and I agree. You and I both. But yeah, so many things to say about this. First of all, the idea that that we have to challenge the idea of normalcy, right? I mean, that is one thing that we have to rethink so that we're normalizing being normal or being different, for instance. You were talking about how we're— forgetting my train of thought there.

Sensitivity training or the—

Yeah. So everything about that. Thank you. Exactly where I was wanting to go. So I'm a bit on the fence when it comes to the idea of having people go through different types of exercises to raise their awareness around disability because at the end of the day, if you spend an hour in a wheelchair trying to move around and you're realizing that the building is not really accessible to you, in 55 minutes, you'll get up and you'll walk those stairs yourself, right? So it only gives you a sense of the frustration, but it doesn't give you the lived experience really. And what I think people like you and others have discovered over the years is that if we actually ask the right people who have the lived experience to tell us what it's like and what they need, and we're really there to listen and learn from them, the only thing that can happen is a betterment of the workplace. For instance, if you— like, I'll give you an example that we see all the time. People organize conferences. I mean, we're in that Association of Professional Speakers, you and I. So, you know, we organize a conference every year. We just came back from that last week. And when the venue is not accessible, you can have the most accessible setup in the room for the conferences. But if I can't get to that room because there are just 2 little steps and that's more than sufficient to prevent me from going, everything else that you did no longer works. If you have that conference in an area of the city with a lot of hills and slopes and everything, and it's the winter, I don't care if your conference is accessible. I can't walk to get there. It's too risky for me. So that's one thing that you can learn when you actually ask the people who are directly impacted by these considerations. You learn a ton from them. And then you were talking about the aging population. It's fascinating to me that people don't realize that— well, first of all, I was talking about 27% of the people with disabilities. You know, that's the working age population.

Mm-hmm.

At this point, data from like a year ago, 18.5% of people are over the age of 65. So, you know, for a lot of us, we're thinking, oh yeah, seniors. I mean, they're retired. They no longer work. Why bother? We all know that people extend their professional lives longer because they either want to or have to. So they work well past the end of their 60s, sometimes into their 70s. So we see that as, for one thing, so it's more relevant than it's ever been to include those folks. But then people tend to think of things in very binary ways. They're thinking, okay, so disabled or old, but then there's something in between that nobody thinks about either. If you just take the slice of the population between the age of 50 and 69, Arguably very active still, but no longer 20, with declining hearing, sight, cognitive ability, the ability to sustain concentration and effort for a longer period of time. All these things start to slowly degrade over time. I painfully know what that's like now because I'm starting to get older that way. And in this past 7 years or so, I've seen a very clear decline in my ability to Work 3 or 4 hours once my kids are in bed at night. I'm just too tired. Netflix is so appealing. That's what I'm doing instead. And, you know, needing glasses, pretending like I don't need them, but actually needing glasses, asking people to repeat themselves a bit more than before. And I'm only 52. What's that going to look like when I'm, you know, 59, 62, 65, and so on and so forth? So as we're getting older, all these benefits that we can add for accessibility, for inclusion, They don't just benefit people with disabilities. They also benefit anyone who's on this spectrum of declining senses or declining abilities as we get older. And because we all live longer lives, this is only going to get accentuated with time.

Or evolving needs. Because at some point, you know, people in that— people who are in their 50s now, they're going between 50 and 60. You know, maybe they're part of the sandwich generation. I have kids at home but I have to take care of my parents now. So, even that creates extra stress, extra needs that the organization needs to understand of their workforce. We're not just talking necessarily about the fact that we might have a handicap but we might have just evolving needs.

Right, yeah. So, that's why I like to talk about it as yes, there's disabilities and you want to care about that because we all want a better, more inclusive society. I've never really met anyone who very openly said, no, I want to work against that ideal. And everybody wants that. But people, because people don't understand how prevalent that is, Yes. they just don't see, you know, the necessity. But when you start adding up, you know, people that are getting older that are either not disabled themselves or don't consider themselves to be, that population, which is pretty much everyone, like I said, from the age of 45, 50, and up, and then those who actually have a disability, you can't quite combine those percentages together because there's some overlap. But we're easily talking more than 40% of the population. If you have equal hiring practices internally in your organization and you do hire with different diversity criteria in mind, you are hiring those people. And if you're not doing anything to accommodate them, those folks basically mask when they come to work and they do their best. And you're not getting their best performances because the environment does not allow for that. And if only they feel more— I mean, when they feel more confident, when they feel more secure, then they start opening up. And the whole point is to build an environment in which people feel safe and feel like they can disclose those things and have those conversations. And you change the world one workplace at a time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, you know, it's so because it just so makes sense. And so, it, you know, when I go into organizations and I see that they're not taking advantage of it, it hurts my soul.

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. And like very, very sad stories about people who have so much potential. But that potential is just blocked from even blossoming in the first place because the environment does not allow for it.

Yeah, I would like to get into some solutions. So, I'd love to review your 15 Keys of Inclusive Leadership. And we'll get to that right after this. Business a star with a new book, Lights!

Camera!

Action!, Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights! Camera! Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back. I am speaking with Denis Boudreau, one of Canada's top leading experts in disability inclusion. Denise, I do not see a lot of lip service being paid to DEI. Sorry, I should say I am seeing a lot of lip service.

Hmm.

I see a lot of organizations who are, you know, they have it as part of their mission. They have, you know, they do little workshops and it becomes kind of the policy of the month. Hey, we have to work on this and we have to get better. I know that working with you on initiatives through the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers, we with your help are so focused on making sure that our intent is clear. How does a company know that they are on the right track and not just playing the political card?

Again, organizations know because when people feel safe to talk about these things, they will tell you if you're doing a good job or not. If you don't hear anything about anything, chances are people are just not ready to disclose anything or discuss any of those topics with you. That's a clear indication that you're not doing as good as you think you are. You know, DEI in a lot of ways is kind of like core values for an organization. When you talk to people in organizations and then, They have the core values on the wall and people are laughing at the core values because, oh yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Our core values. When it's seen like that, clearly, when there's sarcasm in the whole core value conversation, it's because people just don't feel it. So, we see a lot of that with DEI as well. I mean, most organizations started paying attention to DEI with the murder of George Floyd. So, with Black Lives Matter, this is where it started. The MeToo movement. Like, this is where really things started to change. A couple years, like 4 years ago, something like that, 2019, 2018, when it really started coming together more. And yeah, so a lot of people just stopped there. They said, okay, so we need to do something about this. Clearly, this is a problem. There's not enough representation of people of color, for instance. Let's work on that. And then pretty much everyone changed their stock photos on their websites and they said, job's done. And then they moved on to something else, not understanding that beyond the tokenism of really just having different representations, there was a much deeper work that needed to be done to transform the culture so that people who are underrepresented actually feel like they're part of it as well. And most organizations stop before that. So the way that you measure whether or not— I mean, I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but the way that you measure whether whether or not you're doing well with your DEI initiative is if people actually take it seriously. And if they don't, and, you know, if they don't and it's from someone who is from the minority— the majority, for instance, and, you know, typically that's, you know, the white population. So if you're white and you're laughing at this because you don't really care and you don't see the interest of it, that's one thing. I mean, maybe there's some education that needs to happen for you to understand why this matters. But if you are talking to people who are underrepresented, BIPOC, people of color, I mean, whatever the characteristic that we would want to talk about here, when you ask those folks and they don't seem to believe in it all that much, it's their lived experiences telling you that, well, I hear these things, but I don't see anything really happening on a daily basis. in the workplace. I still feel like I need to mask on those things. If I bring up that I'd like to have a day off because of a particular holiday and people are saying, yeah, well, wait. I mean, Easter is on the horizon. You'll have your day off then. I mean, something super simple as recognizing other holidays than the Christian ones. Than the Christian ones. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's this backlash right now around People are trying to cancel Christmas, for instance. And because we can't say Merry Christmas anymore, we should be saying Happy Holidays. I mean, it's only a matter of respect, right? I mean, there's over 13 or 14 different holidays between like the early November and somewhere mid-January that are religious holidays that are just as important as Christmas for other cultures. Why would the entire thing be about Christmas right now and not just Happy Holidays? It's a matter of respect. But if you don't understand that part and you're a leader in an organization and you're sort of minimizing the impact of not caring about those things, you're sending a very strong message regardless of your DEI policy. So, it comes down to education again. I mean, you have to educate your people to understand why this matters and why they should care a little more. And my experience again is that Even the people that are pushing back the most, at some point, leaders, at some point, if they're real leaders, if they see their role as leaders as being able to enable their team to grow and become better, because I think that's what a leader— I think the one thing a leader needs to do is grow other people to the extent at which they put themselves at risk of being replaced by one of them at some point. I mean, that's just a manifestation of having done a really good job. At some point, is that someone elevated to a level where they can compete with you? I think that's what leadership is all about. If you're a leader, that's what you do. You work, even if it's against your own beliefs, you work on those things. You ask yourself why you believe certain things, what your biases are, and you work on changing them if they're not what they should be. And by doing that, again, you change the culture because It's one thing to say those things, but it's another thing to actually embody them and model them. And again, your role as a leader is to model those things for everybody else to see so that they pick up on that and they slowly start to get better as well. You know, better in this particular case, big air quotes here, because we— like, I'm assuming that we agree on, you know, the premise, which is that we want to make the space a more inclusive one. Yeah, I mean, these 15 keys that we're about to talk about, I mean, they're all different elements that help you as a leader go down that particular journey and learn about these things, confront your own beliefs, confront the darker parts of you that you might not be as comfortable discussing or even contemplating, and working hard to change them if they're not what you want them to be.

Yeah. Through your dialogue today and through our conversation, the one thing is there's a couple of things that really smack me as being essential for organizations to want to be able to make a change and support what we think is right. And that is we need leadership to have humility in how they view their organization.

Yes.

Plus, we need the organization, the culture itself to be trustworthy enough that people are going to be open and willing to be able to discuss what their needs are in a way that they're not going to get shut down. They're not going to have to start masking and filtering themselves in order to do that. I mean, in my mom's age, when I said that when she got pregnant, as soon as they found out she was pregnant, they said, you're done. They fired her. And so then, what forces the culture to do that? I mean, you end up with a very distrusting organization that says, oh, I have to hide this as long as I possibly can. And regardless of what it's going to do for my health because I'm going to lose my job the minute they find this out. And so, in today's world, we have a different kind of manifestation of that. But it's there.

It absolutely is. So, a couple of examples to feed into what you just said. Someone with anxiety issues, for instance, which is not uncommon these days. It feels like everybody has anxiety issues or some issues with mental health, especially having gone through COVID. I mean, that never certainly didn't help. So, if you have to pretend like everything is fine every single day and you feel like the entire world around you is on fire and you pretend like everything is fine, at some point, it's going to catch up to you, right? If you have every day to work in a very uncomfortable chair because you don't want to tell people that your body aches because you don't want them to feel or think differently of you. I mean, you might go through your day, but once you leave the office, when you finally leave the office at 5 and you can finally get out of that chair, you're done for that day. You no longer have any energy for your family, for your kids, for anything else because all your energy went into just staying in that chair for 8 hours. Like, there's so many examples of these things that People just power through because they feel like they have no other choice. And that's only because they don't feel safe asking for something different. And sometimes, like I said, it's nothing. It costs nothing or it costs a couple of hundreds of dollars to fix that problem for that person so that she can then thrive as she could otherwise. And sadly, most people never build up the courage to actually ask for those things because they need that job. They don't want to be seen differently. And people are miserable. And miserable people don't perform the way that happy people do. It's pretty obvious. But we never get that far in the way that we think about it, sadly.

Right. If this is resonating with the audience, can you let us know how people can get in contact with you if they want to pick your brain, hire you, whatever needs to happen?

So, my website is inklusiv.ca. So, that's a bit of a trick there. It's inklusiv.ca. You can get ahold of me there for sure. On LinkedIn, it's DBoudreau. So D-B-O-U-D-R-E-A-U on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's mostly where I live. LinkedIn is mostly where I live. Everything else is just a place to drop images and stuff. So not as relevant, I guess. But yeah, so LinkedIn, definitely where I spend most of my time. And the website, of course. On the website, I have a ton of resources that I give away for free. Every day, I share tips about inclusion, about, well, speaking inclusively, looking into web tips for your website for accessibility there, challenging your own biases, like things like that. So every day, there's something new that comes up. There's a blog post these days, like for the last 6 months or so, I write exclusively on leadership. As you were saying, I'm writing that book. So a lot of what I'm writing turns into blog posts. That's like the first draft of my ideas. So, I'm sharing that. So, there's a ton of stuff that I give away for free just because, yeah, you might be able to tell I'm quite passionate about this and I want to change the world in that sense. So, yeah, I try to share as much as possible.

Lovely! Tell us a little bit about your upcoming book.

So, it's about those 15 keys, right? So, I mean, examples of those keys are things like we talked about understanding disability. So, I think for me, that's the first key on that roadmap. You know, understanding about disability and legislation, for instance. Like, what are the laws around this? What are you obligated to do in Canada and the US, for instance? There's a lot of things that people are not aware of, and that results into complaints, lawsuits, a lot of, you know, catastrophic impact from a reputational standpoint and just generally speaking for your organization. Workplace accessibility. How do you make your workplace more accessible is another example of what we're talking about from a digital standpoint, so your website, your applications, your PDF documents and whatnot. The etiquette around disability also. I mean, how do you talk about these things? You know, you've heard me today talk about people with disabilities and disabled people. These are 2 very different ways to talk about this. It's an identity-first versus a person-first type of language. There's a whole conversation to be had about which one is okay and which one isn't okay and who thinks which one is okay or not. So there's a lot to learn and debunk around that, among other things. And if you don't, if you're not comfortable with the language, how could you possibly have the conversations, right? So that's part of what we're talking about. Reasonable accommodations is another one. Representation is another one that we talk about. So all of these and more are part of these 15 keys that I'm writing about in that book to give people a very practical, series of tips and tricks about how to change the culture internally so that progressively it becomes a bit more inclusive. So the book is really about setting the frame around why this matters, kind of what we've been talking about today, and then getting into these 15 keys. And each key is basically presented as a journey from different characters that keep coming back in the story. 2 people managers and then a couple of employees that have disabilities and how they work together towards creating more inclusive workplaces. So, it's a combination of storytelling and data and ideas bundled together to go through that journey to get to a point where the workplace is more inclusive.

So, while we're at it, can you give us the Coles Notes of the 15-key roadmap to inclusive At a very high level, it's just helping you move from where you are right now.

I mean, we're all at a different stage in our understanding of what inclusion means in the workplace. So, it's taking you from where you are with your strengths and weaknesses, with what you know and what you don't know, and offering you different ways to build on top of that to get to another state of being where These things come to you more naturally where they become part of who you are, if that's something that you think you should have or you should be. So I very much see it as a roadmap where you get to pick your starting point, kind of a pick your own adventure kind of thing. Like you start here, you are going to look into, say, etiquette first, and we're going to learn about that a bit more. And then you're going to say, okay, so what about representation? What about accommodation? What about self-advocacy and empowering people to feel like they can talk about themselves? What about mental health? What about intersectionality between different types of disabilities and other situations of underrepresentation? I mean, it's one thing to be a white deaf man. It's a very different thing to be a Black woman who's also deaf. I mean, the deafness is the same, but the other aspects of your being condition a different experience through that. So, recognizing that intersectionality of different conditions also plays in that equation. So, at a high level, that's the idea. I mean, it's really a roadmap to get you to a point where, as a leader, as a people manager, you are creating an environment where people will feel more more comfortable, more safe, more confident that you have their backs. And so, they can bring their best selves to work.

I love this. For people wanting to make the change and realizing they have some work to do, are there any cautionaries? Are there any things that we should be on the watch out for? Kind of the— we've talked about the do list. Anything on the don't list?

The biggest thing on the don't list I think would be, you know, don't— I mean, maybe it's a do, I'm not sure. But, you know, do question your own biases. I mean, it's a hard thing to do. But if you agree, for instance, that, you know, this is an ideal state to achieve, every time that you catch yourself thinking something that doesn't work in that, that doesn't go in that direction, actually, challenge that. And I see that with a lot of people, for instance, who are saying, yeah, I'm anti-racist, for instance. And when you have deep conversations with people, you realize that everyone has a little bit of that into them. I mean, even those— and typically the ones who claim the loudest that they don't are the ones who actually do. So you want to— And whenever you catch yourself in a situation where you're discriminating for whatever reason or you're thinking less of someone for whatever reason, stop, catch yourself, stop, and then ask yourself why you do that. And try to identify what that is, where that belief comes from. And then, try to debunk it. Try to work on that so that at some point, these things leave you. Because if you hire, if you're a hiring manager, for instance, and you look at resumes, And then, you see 2 resumes that are equally qualified. But then, one of them has a name that feels a little strange to you and that pushes you towards the other one. You should really question that. We see that all the time. If you associate different names with different skin colors and you tend to shy away from those because you're not as comfortable, ask yourself why that is. If you feel that it's weird and silly, to want to be labeled as they/them as opposed to he or she, ask yourself why that is. Why is it bothering you all that much? Because it shouldn't bother you. I mean, it's them. It's not you. I mean, it doesn't change anything about you. It's the exact same thing as we've been doing over the last 20, 30 years with, you know, just with gay folks and being so— like homophobia is an example of this really where like, why would it bother you if these 2 guys kiss one another? How does that change anything in your life? But yet, you know, we— and we've grown. I mean, some of us have grown past that. And, uh, and this is the same— this is the same journey. I mean, it's all about bettering ourselves, becoming better human beings. And yeah, so I mean, this— this is— no, I'm— I'm on a bit of a soapbox right now, but I mean, the idea is that if you believe that You can be better and you care about creating an environment where people will feel like they can be themselves. That's what that book is about. That's what our conversation is about. And there's not an instruction list of here's what you need to do in which order. I mean, it's all different for everybody. We all start at different— we all have different starting points, but the end goal is pretty much the same for all of us.

Yeah.

I mean, if you manage this group of people, if you oversee their work, their production, and you manage to create an environment where everyone feels like they truly belong, no matter how diverse they are, you nailed it. And the only way to really do that is to do it as a group. I mean, we all know, like we've all heard things like it takes a village and all these different things.

Right.

But this is particularly true in this case. I mean, you cannot understand How it's like to be deaf, how it's like to be someone who deals with anxiety issues, who has mental health problems, who has depression, like all these different things. Being hard of hearing and being annoyed because you can't quite understand what was said in the corner of the meeting room over there because they were talking a little too quiet and feeling frustrated. If I don't have that problem or if I was sitting right next to that person, I might not understand why that is. It's not a matter of understanding. It's a matter of acknowledging what the person is saying and say, yeah, I hear what you're saying. What can we do to help you with that? And the more you do this, the more you normalize in that way, then we move from us and them to— I mean, us versus them to just us.

Right.

And it creates, again, it contributes to creating this space where people feel safe and comfortable. And want to come in and contribute. And that's when your business starts soaring even more.

Yeah. When is your book coming out? When are you planning to release it?

That's the million-dollar question. If everything goes well, summer of 2024.

So fall.

Possibly. Let's say 2024. Let's say that. I think I can commit to that.

Yeah, fine. This has been such a great conversation, Denis. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about?

Sure. My last thought is just jump in. I mean, give yourself grace. You're not going to do it all perfect. You're going to make a ton of mistakes. You're going to have people— if you do it well, people are going to become more comfortable telling you where you screwed up basically on different things. We all do. The idea is fail often and fail fast, fail often, but learn from this and keep going. I mean, like I said, it's very humbling to see all the things we don't know and all the biases that we have and the things that we just don't understand just yet. And every time that something adds to this, you get a little better. And it's the only way to grow. You grow in uncomfortable spaces. You don't grow in the comfort zone, right? I mean, we all know this. So this is exactly the same. If it feels uncomfortable, if it feels a little painful, you're probably doing it right. And just acknowledge and give yourself grace for having done that and give yourself the time to do it, to eventually get there. If your team understands what you're trying to do, most of them will be supporting you as well.

Definitely.

And you'll reinforce that relationship.

Yeah. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Absolutely. So, inclusive.ca, inclusive.ca is the website. You can get a hold of me with my, well, first letter of my first name and then last name. So, dboudreau@inclusive.ca is a good way to reach out to me. And yeah, that's probably the easiest way. Or just find me on LinkedIn. That's also very easy. Denis, thank you so much. Yeah, I'm the only Denis Boudreau with a big beard on LinkedIn. So, easy enough to find.

We're gonna have to test that. Thank you so much. This is, you know, it is absolutely clear that this is your passion. And I appreciate you sharing your expertise with us today. This has been really truly a blessing. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. It was great.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As you could tell, Dini and I are passionate and really focused on supporting businesses just like yours. So, if you would like to make some time to meet, to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book time on the online calendar. My online calendar is down below. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. And of course, you can meet Denis on his website or at his email. It would be my honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you leave a comment about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? And of course, if you haven't done so yet, make sure that you've subscribed to this podcast. That way, you get notification when we launch the next episode. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.