E1: Inclusion Unscripted: Finding Your DEI Super Power

Hey everyone, Margaret Spence here. Welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. This is our inaugural kickoff of our podcast videocast. We are live on Facebook LinkedIn, and YouTube. So welcome, welcome to the kickoff. I'm so happy you're here. And we are launching today our weekly podcast every Friday at 2 PM Eastern, and we'll have great guests and great people coming on. So let's talk about Inclusion Unscripted. Inclusion Unscripted is where we come live to talk about diversity and inclusion, women's leadership development, career advancement, all the things that make up the employment track for diverse people. And it's unscripted because I'm not necessarily using a script. Um, a lot of it will be free form, and a lot of it will be what we maybe need to talk about that we don't talk about. So let's start there. So welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm Margaret Spence. For those of you who don't know me, I am the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab, and the Inclusion Unscripted podcast is hosted and sponsored by the Inclusion Learning Lab. A little bit about me. I've been a consultant for 20+ years. I do consulting in the HR space as well as diversity, inclusion, women's leadership development. And about a year and a half ago, I decided that we needed another venue for DE&I. Not that there's not a lot of stuff out there right now for HR professionals, but for people doing the work of DE&I, it is exhausting. It is challenging. It stretches every part of us all the time. Inclusion Unscripted and the Inclusion Learning Lab is here to offer a safe space for those of us doing the work of DE&I. We're not here to reinvent the diversity wheel. That's not why we're here. What we're here to do is to give us a safe space to have the conversations that we are not able to have. The conversations that you are probably having in your head with your close circle of friends, the conversations around the struggles of getting your organization, your company, the place you work for to embrace DE&I fully. And that's really what we're doing. That's what we're talking about. I could tell you, One of the struggles that I've had as I'm working through doing DE&I is staying and maintaining the resilience, showing up on the Zoom calls with a smile on my face when, boy, I'm struggling to figure out if I'm making an impact with an organization. Inclusion Unscripted is really your place. This is a place for you to join in, talk about DE&I, talk about the struggles that we're having, talk about the positive things that's going on in the organizations, and really to uplift and build a safe space for us to embrace the work that we're doing, sometimes thankless work that we're doing. Being able to do that effectively across all platforms that we are on and creating that safe space. Let me tell you a little bit about the Inclusion Learning Lab. The Inclusion Learning Lab is there to foster inclusion and help organizations and organizational leaders build deliberately inclusive spaces. What I know that it's not just the hiring of talent, it's the development, it's the upleveling, it's the vendor management, it's the access. But it's also the daily work that is required because just as soon as we get comfortable and we think that we've done it all and we think that there's nothing left to do with what we are working through, I think the complacency can get in. We may think, okay, I've solved that DE&I problem. I've solved this hiring issue that we had. We hired a bunch of new people. The reality is, while we may be thinking we've solved it, diversity and inclusion is a daily work. It is a constant getting in the trenches and saying, what did we do right today? What did we get wrong today? What did we figure out in the process of doing this work? But that in itself takes a lot of resilience. It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude. It takes a lot of, um, you know, being able to stick with it, to go back over and over. You know, last night I was on a, um, a program on Clubhouse where they were talking about students and creating safe spaces for students to come in their first job and making sure that they're resilient on the first job that they get right out of college. So today Today, um, we are going to unscript, um, the superpower. So the superpower— why is it that you do the work that you do? So our topic today, our topic for our launch, our inaugural, um, Inclusion Unscripted podcast and livecast is Finding your DE&I superpower. Why you are the right person for the role that you're in right now. But I could ask, are you the right person for the role? Are you the right person to be managing DE&I? And I don't know that we ask that question enough. I don't know that we ask the question around our superpower. What is the superpower that allows us to do this work? Because it's not the work, it's not the job of the ENI, it's not the position that you hold as a diversity manager or diversity leader. That is not what gets you to this place of saying, I can come back tomorrow to do this again. That's not what gets you there, you know. That's not what makes you say, I think I could keep doing this. And so I did a program a few months ago around diversity leader burnout, and I had a lot of great feedback because I don't know that I realized how, um, much people were struggling with burnout when it comes to diversity and inclusion and doing the work of diversity inclusion. And this week, one of my connections posted this very long, heartfelt, vulnerable conversation about how tired he was to do the work of the E&I. And I wanted to just reach out, put my arms around him, and give him a hug. But we can't do that. We're in COVID land. But I don't know that we as organizations, for those of you in HR who are listening to this, as organizations, I don't know that when you select the person to do the work of DE&I, that you've actually sat down and thought about the work that the individual is doing and the stress related to that. And the process of what it takes to do the job effectively and what it takes to do the job when you're not getting the results. You know, how do you get up every day and come back into an organization, um, and do the work of empowering women into leadership, um, creating diverse opportunities for people when you put a policy together and there's a manager or a leader who doesn't cooperate, who doesn't fully embrace it. How do you expect people to show up the next day knowing that they're not seeing the results, they're not getting the validation, they're not seeing the movement within the organization? How do we expect folks As an organizational leader, as an HR director, how do you expect your diversity leader to show up over and over and over and over again every day without a result that they can see, that they can actually see? Here's a result. Here's a movement that we've made. Here's a consistent, sustainable movement towards diversity and inclusion. I could tell you that in my work as a consultant, um, I've struggled and I struggle with being extremely depressed at the end of trying to help an organization move forward. I end up super depressed, I end up distressed sometimes around it, and I had to sit back and say, what is the superpower, Margaret, that you're bringing to this situation? So there's a lot of superpowers that we can bring when we talk about DE&I. And over the last few weeks, I've felt in some moments that I wasn't making a proactive and bold enough impact. I felt oftentimes that even though I laid out a plan, the organization wasn't necessarily going to listen to the plan that had been laid out. That there was still a struggle. And so my team and I sit back at the end of every week and we go, did we make an impact this week? What did we do? What exactly did we do for the organizations we're working with? What did we do? What did they get from it? What did we give to them? But then we have to turn the mirror on ourselves and say, did we get what we needed to feel good about what we're doing? And that is where the superpowers come in. That's where the superpowers show up, you know. So I, I, I wanted, you know, what I said to myself, um, about a week ago when I was putting together the final touches for the launch of Inclusion Unscripted, and I said to myself, Margaret, what is the message you want to give to folks? What is the message that you want to give? And on that day, that day that I was putting this together, I was biting my lips because there were things I wanted to say and I couldn't say them. And so I stepped back and said, okay, Margaret, uh, you need some superpowers to keep doing this work. You need some superpowers to get up every day and do this work. And then I realized all of you need that superpower.

Power.

To be effective DE&I leaders, we need diplomacy. Diplomacy is a superpower that we have to engage to do the work of DE&I. Super— it's a superpower. We have to engage diplomacy because here's what I know, not only as a person doing the work and working in the HR space and working with women leaders, What I know is I can't often say what I'm thinking in my head. So anybody doing the work of diversity inclusion has to have a superpower around diplomacy. We have to be diplomatic. I don't think the United Nations has as much ingrained diplomacy as the people doing diversity inclusion, especially the minority or Black professionals doing the E&I. And you know this, you go home and you drive in the car and you're heading home and you're thinking, I should have said blah, but if I said it, would I still have a job? Would I still have a job if I said it? Would I still be able to, um, to come back the next day if I said what I was thinking? You know, so the work of DE&I is not just the job itself. It's not the job because we could follow and we could build roadmaps and we could build all the things that we put out to make DE&I effective. But the people doing the work, you and I doing this work, we are the ones paying the biggest emotional price for doing the work. To advance inclusion in the workplace. We pay the emotional price. And I don't know that organizations understand that. Even if you have a diversity committee and the diversity committee's doing the work, the emotional tax that it takes for diverse people to push against a system that has been created that doesn't foster us moving ahead. It's like a double tax. I show up every day knowing that I'm a Black woman. I show up every day knowing that I'm doing the work of diversity and inclusion. I show up every day knowing that I'm doing the work of human resources. I show up every day knowing that I'm doing the work of compliance. I'm helping organizations stay out of trouble. And I know this. And then on top of that, I'm taking on the burden of moving the organization towards change. And as I push towards change, the organization pulls back because people don't always want to change. And we have to learn how to transition an organization rather than changing the organization. We have to take the people from where they are and move them forward. A very good friend and one of my associates shared Simon Sinek's video on take the 25 or 30% who want to do the work and push them forward and let them be the catalyst for everybody else falling into place. That works great until you have a diverse person on a team who is working with a dysfunctional manager and you're trying to save this person's job or keep them in the organization and keep them from leaving. So that's where our superpower falls into place. See, it's not the work of diversity and inclusion that we struggle with. It's the consistent ability to come back day after day after day after day to do the work. That's what we struggle with. That's what we struggle with as professionals doing this work. You know, you could build a plan, you could sit down in a committee, and you could build an amazing plan. All of us can pull together and write out great action plans and next steps for the organization. But when those plans don't go anywhere, there's a human being at the other end of that who's struggling with that. That's where the superpowers come in. One of the biggest superpowers for diversity inclusion professionals is endurance, and people don't talk about that enough. We endure in silence. We endure, um, not seeing the movement that we expect. We endure not seeing the movement that we expect. We endure not seeing the movement that we expect. I'd ask all of you out here, what is your DE&I superpower? If you're doing the work of diversity and inclusion, what is your superpower? What makes you get up every day and come back? What is that power? What's that word that allows you to come back over and over again? See, because I know what mine is. My big one is biting my lips. That's my superpower. You know, some days I do it better than others. Some days my facial expression takes over and you could tell exactly what my brain is thinking, and I just struggle through it. And I know that, um, it doesn't really matter because I know that, um, I am, um I'm struggling with the process. I'm struggling with the process. So my first superpower is Margaret, stop biting your lips today. That's my superpower, right? And then I have diplomacy because I'm navigating all the spaces. I'm navigating and advocating for the employee. I'm navigating the C-suite and the executive suite or the board or the equity firm that owns an organization. I'm navigating all of those spaces. But then I'm working through my superpower of endurance. My superpower of endurance is the second one that for me shows up. So what's your superpower? What is the superpower that allows you to continue every day doing the work of diversity inclusion? And maybe you never even thought about that before, but there is a superpower. That brings us back every single time. Another superpower that we may not think about is connector. Connector. I have a good friend who is a connector. She knows how to take people from one side of the room and the other side of the room and put them together to get things done. One of the main powers and one of the main skill set that diversity leaders need and must have is that connector ability. Because we are connecting people who may not be together, who may not feel that they should be together, and we're having and forcing to connect them together to make sure that the work we're trying to do around diversity and inclusion is productive. Then we are absolutely working through being Organizers. You know, I remember thinking, am I a community organizer when I'm working through DE&I? Absolutely. Absolutely. If you are doing the work of diversity inclusion, you are an organizer. Because you have to have this organizational skill to take the strategy and turn it into action. And if you don't have that organizational quality, then it doesn't matter how much you say you're effective at DE&I. If you cannot connect with diplomacy and organize a system, then you're not effective. Thank you, Inigo, for posting, um, about my openness. I, I want to be open. I want to share my own vulnerability. You know, I'm, I'm I'm saying to all of you doing the work of DE&I that this is probably the most stressful role in the organization. And I think it's the role that we underestimate the level of stress and the level of cultural taxation that occurs for people of color doing DE&I work. Because we're balancing, we're balancing seeing what is not good in the organization. And we're also balancing seeing what's so possible if we could get people to shift and change. And so we're balancing all of that. And we're there saying to the organization, hey, if you allow me to do my superpower work, if you allow me to do diplomacy, to be an organizer, to be an orator— see, here's the big superpower that we don't think about: being an orator. Being able to communicate, but communicate with conviction, communicate with purpose, communicate with strength is an essential component of the DE&I work. Because here's how this looks. Yep, I'm in a meeting. The organization's making a plan or policy. I don't really agree with that plan or policy. I shake my head and nod my head. Yep, this sounds good to me. And you know deep down in your soul, you know deep down that you don't agree with the direction they're headed. So do you, you know, chip in and turn on your superpower, or do you, you know, like a Violet shrink, and say, ah, it's okay, I'll go back to my office and stew and I'll figure it out or I'll help them figure it out, or I'll find a different way. It's essential that one of the key superpowers that you have as a DE&I professional is being an orator, being able to say what needs to be said, but saying it with diplomacy and conviction. And saying it so that even though it may not land the way that people want to hear it, it lands in the room. And people can't say, well, I didn't hear that. So we have to be willing to be— to take our conviction, take our convictions to the work and be able to say what needs to be said and be able to say it without a lot of fear. If you are living in fear, you cannot do this role effectively.

You just can't.

Fear is not a part of this role. Fear is not a part of this role. So have you ever asked yourself, am I the right person to be doing DE&I? Is there somebody else in this organization who could do it better? Okay, have you ever asked yourself that question? And in an organization, what support are you giving your DE&I director, manager, strategist, what support are you giving that person? What are you giving them so that they show back up next week, they show back up every day, they show up in the next Zoom meeting that you have excited to work on the strategy to build DE&I in the organization? Because if we don't help people find their superpower, and bring out their superpower. Your superpower can be your strength. It can be your strength. Superpower can absolutely be your strength. But we have to find it and bring it into the work that we are doing. It's not okay for you to not recognize the power you have within yourself to do the work of empowering diversity and inclusion. It's not okay. You have to ask yourself every day, am I the right person for this role? And am I bringing my superpower every day? And what superpower do I need to tap into that I may not have tapped into before? What is that that I can tap into that I haven't tapped into before? The biggest superpower that anyone can have within the DE&I role is being an educator. See, it's not about the policies we write. We could write great policies, but if we don't know how to educate people first on what they're doing that's not right, and then educating them on where they could go if they embrace certain skills and, and, and, and components, and then educating and pushing them to gain the skill set necessary to be effective leaders. Because here's what I know, and we're going to talk about this in next week's show. Next week we're going to be talking about what problem are you trying to solve as a DE&I manager. Here's what I know. We're not trying to solve the problem that we think we're solving, but we're going to talk about that next week. Next week, that is our show. If you are doing this work, and you're shaky on your power grab and you're shaky on your power, your ability to bring your power to the table, then you're missing an opportunity to not only protect yourself from a resiliency standpoint, but also to show up with a clear vision and a clear expectation of what it will take to move the organization forward. We have to embrace the superpower that we have. Are you creative? Are you an educator, an orator, an organizer, a writer, a connector? Are you a decision maker? Because oftentimes in this role, you have to do all of that. All of those powers have to come to the table, all of those powers. Have to show up at the table all the time. So I'd love to hear what you're thinking. I'd love to hear and listen to you, read your comments around diversity and inclusion superpower. Is it something you've ever even ever thought about? You know, as I said, my strength interplays with my superpower, but my strength also is what derails and causes me the most anxiety because I want things to happen quickly. I want them to happen now. One of the biggest fear that I have, which is why I launch Inclusion Unscripted, is that last year after George Floyd's murder, everybody had ideas. And I've watched it. The weeks and months have gone by, and the ideas and the process and the purpose and the vision and the, and the, the comments and the great statements have gone virtually into the toilet bowl and been flushed out into the sewer. And organizations have embraced but lowered expectations, embraced but said, well, maybe we could do it a little bit different. Or they've dragged their feet on implementation. Yes, you put out a great mission statement. You put out all the things, you said all the right things. But now as a person of color, as a woman, I'm sick and tired of waiting for you to make a decision. We have to embrace this. I think as a DE&I director or manager or strategist, it's imperative now that we find our superpower and our voice. Because if we don't find our superpower and our voice, we are not doing an effective job for the organizations that we're working with. You have to find your own resilience, which is a superpower, your own what makes me show up tomorrow, what makes me keep doing this work, what is it that's going to keep the fire in me going? Because this work is exhausting. I thought when I handled workers' comp and I was trying to get people to do, um, implement, um, you know, disability management, I thought that that was hard work. Now that I'm doing this work of empowering women and pushing people forward, what I have found out is that everybody resists resist this even more. The resistance is greater. The boxes that get put in is greater. Everybody, it's greater. And so I had to dig deep, especially in the month of August. I'll tell you, my team member Inigo will tell me— tell you, he was pulling me off the walls because I was literally distressed. In the month of August, in the beginning of September. And I questioned, do I want to keep doing this work because I don't see quick improvement? Do I want to keep doing this when organizations are trying to figure out, do they want to accept the proposal? Do they want to negotiate a new rate? Do they want to do part of a thing or a quarter of a thing? I had— I struggled with it.. And I had to create a circle around me that kept me going to do this work. If I ask an organization, hey, build a women's leadership development program, empower women to lead, empower young folks to want this role moving forward. And then I get, well, you know, we'll do that. Next year. Why not do it right now? Let's do it now. So there is that superpower of saying, how do I push people to do what has to be done now? That is not resilience. That's also the ability to be diplomatic and to be fierce. So as a DE&I person, as an HR person, You— the one of the superpowers we bring to the table is being fierce, not caring. I haven't always been here, honestly. I'll be telling this with you. I haven't always cared. I haven't always been like this person that, that doesn't care. You know, if I say something and it lands wrong, I used to go home and think about it and self-talk and get stressed out over what I was saying to organizations. Now I don't do that so much. Now I don't do that so much. Thank you, Rhonda and Maxine, for joining. I don't do that so much anymore. What I do now is I say, I'm here to put forth a process. How it lands on the other side is up to the organization. For all of you, what's your biggest stressor around diversity, around HR? Around DE&I? What is that big stressor that you have that you're saying to yourself, this is a stressor? What I would say to all of you as we wrap up our show today is I'm very focused on burnout and resilience. It's a part of the reason why we're launching the Inclusion Learning Lab community, and we're launching next week. The community will be live, I think, on Tuesday. We're launching the community to create a safe space for people doing the work of HR diversity, talent management, talent development, to have a place to come in and talk about the stressors and challenges that you're facing. A place that you can come in and talk through that. We have several courses under the Inclusion Learning Lab that we're launching in the coming weeks. To help you do the work of diversity and inclusion more strategically and really thinking outside of the box. So it's not the same old, same old. Here's a taste of what I think. Oftentimes when we try to do empowerment for women, for diverse individuals, we don't look at the full picture. Here's the full picture for you. We will ask for women to be in leadership, but they're in leadership on the cost center side of the process, not on the profit center side. So what— let me, let me give you a taste of what this looks like. The profit center side of the house is where the money is divided up and shared up, and the, and the, and the processes are divided on the, on the profit center side of the house. On the cost center side of the house is where that is a bottom line cost to the organization. If we are asking for diversity and inclusion and we want to have more diverse people and women, where we need those people is in the profit center side of the house. We can't continue to ask for diversity and inclusion to be on the cost center side of the house. Especially for those of you working in the insurance sector. We do a lot of work and our focus is in the insurance sector. In the insurance sector, there's two sides of the house. There's the profit side and there's a cost side. On the profit side, somebody's getting a commission check in addition to their pay. But guess what? Diverse people and women are missing from the big checks. They're missing from the profit side of the house. They can hire us on the cost center, customer service manager, supervisor, director, even on the cost center side of the house. So if you're building a diversity and inclusion program, we have to be a little bit deeper in our thought and our expectation from organizations. We can't pile ourselves up on the cost center side of the house. Because when there is cost overrun, we are the first people cut. Because see, organizations don't cut the profit centers. Where the money is being made is always there. Where the cost is being incurred, that's where it gets cut. So if we're building DE&I programs and we're putting everybody in the cost center side of the house, then we're not doing an effective job of building a DE&I program. That's the reality. That's what I'm talking about. That's the shift, the strategic shift on the way that we build diversity and inclusion programs for organizations. So as I wrap up, I'm going to tell you a little bit again. Inclusion Unscripted is every Friday at 2 PM Eastern. We go live on LinkedIn. On YouTube and on Facebook, and we also will go live, um, in our group community. Our group community will go live next week, and we want you to join us. We want you to be a part of the discussion. We want you to be a part of the discourse. We want you to be a part of shaping how we do this best. And Rhonda, you're so right. The biggest stressor— organization doesn't really get what's in it for them other than the basic numbers game. That is so right. That is so right. One of the key things that we're going to do starting next week is we're going to submit, um, this broadcast for HR and HRCI credit. So we're going to be able to offer CEUs for the watching of this program, and we're going to be able to offer, um, CEUs for this. Yep. Um, thank you. Yes. Wow. Cost center, profit center, food for thought. Absolutely, absolutely food for thought. That is the biggest game changer. So here, let me, let me give you a little bit about cost center, profit center. On the profit center side of the house, when you quit, they give you a check, right? When they fire you, they have to give you a check. That's the difference. They have to give you a check to leave. So oftentimes we're on the cost center side of the house, and on the cost center side of the house Somebody else is making the profits and we're getting a paycheck and we're sitting there waiting for our 5%. But somebody in your organization is on the profit center side and they're getting a check on top of their paycheck. They're getting to slice the pie and divide it up. Take a good look at organizations, the upper level of the leaders. Often white men. We're missing there, and we're not preparing ourselves to get into the profit center side of the house. So I want all of you who are doing the work of DE&I to stop accepting and asking for the normal. Stop asking for the normal. We want more Black people. No, we want more Black people who have access to the profit center in your organization. That's the ask. We want more women who have access to the profit center in the organization. That's the ask. That's what this looks like. That's what makes this different. That's what makes this different in the insurance world. That is the difference between us retiring comfortably or us struggling for the rest of our life. Because when the paycheck is done, we have nothing but the 401k that we had to invest in. We didn't get a share of the profit. And one of the things that happens, especially in new companies that are starting up, we don't end up at the table where equity is being divided. We end up at the table where equity is already divided, and we're just given the worker beaver role. We're just given the worker beaver role. So I want us to stop asking for the lowest hanging fruit— more Black people, more Hispanic people, more Asian people, more LGBTQ people. Let's stop asking for the lowest hanging fruits. Let's start saying, how many people in this organization are at the profit table? And how do we get more of us at that table? What is that going to look like, organization? What is that going to look like? See, this is the reason why I launched Inclusion Unscripted, because I want to tell you what I've been thinking. And we'll have guests on, and we'll bring people to the table, and we'll talk about all kinds of dynamic things around diversity and inclusion, and women's leadership development and career management. Because what I know is if we don't get more strategic, 30 years from now when I'm like not doing this and hopefully still alive— um, my dad is 92, so maybe I've got a shot at being 100. Um, you know, when I'm not at this table anymore, I want to, to have someone being able to verbalize what I'm saying. Without fear, being able to say what I'm saying without fear. So, um, join us every week Fridays at 2 PM Eastern for Inclusion Unscripted Live. Next week's program, if you are a diversity leader or a women's leadership development manager talent acquisition, talent development, recruiter, all of you trainers, what is the problem around diversity and inclusion that you are trying to solve? And here's a little hint: it's not diversity and inclusion. You're not trying to solve that. That's not what you're trying to solve. You're not trying to solve diversity and inclusion. You're trying to solve something else. The question is, have you figured out what that something else is? So for all of you that joined us live, thank you so much for our inaugural kickoff. I'm too excited about this, um, too, too excited about this. Um, here's one of our comments. Wow, cost center versus, versus profit center. One of our other comments, this was useful info. If anyone could implement this agenda, it's you. You have the superpower. Thank you so much. Connecting the right players, the right stakeholders, we can help you bring diversity to the organization. Absolutely. Love this, Margaret Spence, glad it's more than one time. Must be an ongoing conversation so growth can continue and won't drop off the wayside. So thank you all for joining us. I cannot say enough how happy I am to get this off the ground. We are always going to be 45 minutes on our, on our program, and we will be live again on Friday. So thank you, thank you for all of you that showed up for me today. I appreciate all of you and thank you again. Inclusion Unscripted brought to you by the Inclusion Learning Lab, and my name is Margaret Spence. Enjoy and continue to watch and continue to show up to support us as we move forward. Thank you again.

Safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings, but now I shine with your reflection on me. I'm getting back up on my feet.

Thank you again. I was enjoying the music and dancing along to it. So thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day and see you next week, 2 PM Eastern time, for Inclusion Unscripted. Can't do this without you, so please show up. Thanks again. Take care.

Bye.