E2: Inclusion Unscripted: Let's Talk About Respect

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down within an ocean, like a sparrow with broken wings. But now I shine with your reflection on me. I'm getting back up on my feet. That you showed up.

Hey everybody, how are you? Margaret Spence, welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. Um, this is episode 2.

Uh, it's Friday at 2 o'clock. I'm so happy you're here with me.

We are streaming live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Super psyched to be here. Let me tell you a little bit about Inclusion Unscripted.

Let's think about it this way.

Have you ever said to yourself, I want to find a place where we could talk about diversity, inclusion, equity, and equality, plus women's leadership development and career development?

And just say what needs to be said.

Don't hide what needs to be said, you know, take the script and throw it away. Well, that's what Inclusion Unscripted is. It's our weekly live podcast. It is live, and I'm gonna try to do every single Friday where I show up here and we talk about hot topics. Eventually we'll have some guests on, but right now I just want everybody to get used to showing up for this program. So who's on the island is often the question that I ask myself when I thought about doing this live event every week. Who's on the island? How do we co-create an unscripted view of inclusion? Because we've all been following a script about what this is supposed to look like. What is this supposed to be? When it comes to us including everybody on our island. And maybe what we haven't thought about is who's not on the island, who's been excluded, who is on the island but doesn't know that they got voted off. You know, that's one way of looking at Inclusion Unscripted. It's the young people that show up in your workplace that we may treat with indifference because they're coming with new ideas. It's the mid-career person who never got access to career leveling and career training, but they're watching the younger people coming into the organization and they're getting that career mentorship and that buildup. You know, this unscripted program is for you, for you, my audience, the people who follow me on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and on, on YouTube. So today We're going to have a bold topic. We're going to talk about respect. But before I get there, I want to just acknowledge this podcast is being brought to you by the Inclusion Learning Lab, which is a brainchild of mine that I started this year. We are launching our community next week. I've been working behind the scenes almost 24 hours a day to get the community live. A community to support the HR talent and diversity leaders who want to become greater allies in the DE&I space. So a little bit about me, for those of you who may not know me, um, my name is Margaret Spence and I'm the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab and the host of Inclusion Unscripted. I have been in the consulting space now for 22 years. I started my work fighting for diversity and for disability inclusion on the workers' comp side of the house and moved out over to HR consulting. If you want to learn more about me, my website is margaretspence.com, or you can visit us at inclusionlearninglab.com. So enough about that. Let's talk about why you are all here, why you're here today. What are we talking about? Talking about respect. You know, it's easy to say we need to build a diversity and inclusion program. It's super easy to say we need to build a diversity inclusion program. The reality is, the reality is what we are building is not diversity and inclusion. See, diversity and inclusion assumes numbers, assumes that we're going to meet some requirement down the road. What we are building as diversity leaders, as people who are working in the space for greater inclusion for everyone, what we are building is really taking the normal, the script that has been written forever, and dismantling it. In talking about respect, let me describe respect to you.

See, I respect the people who come into my space, but the reality is, in order for you to discriminate against me as a Black woman, as a woman, or as a young person or an older person, it comes down to your deciding that I haven't earned the right to be respected. That's what this is all about. See, diversity— that the fight that we're in to get greater inclusion is really a fight for respect. It's a fight for respect.

We keep fighting for greater diversity and inclusion, but you can't get to diversity and inclusion at the numbers that we need to make a difference if we don't address the respect and disrespect that occurs in the workplace, in society as a whole. See, because if you respect me, if you truly respect me as a person, then you don't say I want the best candidate and eliminate, um, women from the pool and hire the same guys that you've always hired. You don't let young people feel uncomfortable when they join the team. You don't forget about your senior employees, your employees who've been sitting in the trenches with you forever and asking them what they need. If we are trying to build an inclusive workplace, an inclusive work environment, then what we are saying is we want you to respect the people on your team, the people in the organization, the women that you lead, the LGBTQ population, the Hispanic population, the Asian population, the Native American population, the everybody, because I'm sure I'm gonna miss somebody.

What we're saying to you is not be more inclusive.

What we are saying to you is respect who is on the team.

That's what we're saying to you. We are saying we want you to start respecting the people who are the applicants that are coming in the door.

Respect the people who work there.

Respect everybody from the janitor to the president of the organization. Everyone at every level deserves a level of respect.

And so I was talking with a group earlier today and I said, here's what I know.

Respect or the lack of it doesn't have a race attached to it. It doesn't have a gender attached to it. It's just plain Jane respect. Because if you respect me, you advocate for me. If you respect me, you truly show up as an ally. If you respect me, you don't discount the contribution that I'm making in the organization. If you respect me, then you say, Margaret, I'm happy you're here.

Maybe you're not operating at 100%, but I respect the contribution you're making right now, and we're going to work through how we're going to help you become a greater contributor on our team.

That's what respect looks like.

That's what it looks like, you know.

That is what it looks like. And so instead of us running out to build more and more and more diversity initiatives, diversity programs, diversity process, and we're putting Black and brown people and women through the dance that they have to do to fit into spaces where they're not We have to address the fundamental issues within the organization. Executive leaders can't say, we want greater diversity, we want greater inclusion, we're going to create opportunity for everyone, if at the core you still don't respect the place that these individuals occupy in your organization.

In your community.

That's it right there. So as diversity leaders, we run around trying to fix what is termed the diversity issue. But here's what I know: if a manager fails to hire a woman on his team, and you are in recruiting, you're in recruiting and you're trying to get, um, a manager to hire a woman, for example, okay? And you pre-qualified the people, you've, you've gone through every step that is necessary. You've qualified, pre-qualified, work through, and you bring this manager this very qualified individual who you've pre-screened. You guys, some of you have 99 steps to the throne of the final interview, but you give that person the final interview and the manager says, yeah, I liked her, but she wasn't the one. What is that all about? That's about one thing. It's about one thing.

It's about respect.

It's about respect. That's what it's all about. It's not that you need to bring him more diverse applicants. It's not that you need to bring him more diverse applicants. What you need to do is ask him why he disrespects the applicants that you're giving him. That's the answer. But what we do instead is we don't want to have those hard conversations. We don't want to have the tough, hard conversations that are required. So what we do instead is say, well, this manager doesn't really like to hire women on his team, and maybe we need to find better candidates for him. No, no, you don't need to find any better candidates for him. It doesn't matter what you do because fundamentally this individual does not respect having a woman on the team. That's it. They don't respect. So while you're busy trying to add more women to the pipeline and sending more women through this process where we end up emotionally hurt and emotionally scarred at the end of your process, you have never dealt with the elephant in the room, which is The fact that your managers, even with voluminous training, even with voluminous training, your managers don't respect the process. They don't respect the process. They don't respect the process. It doesn't matter if you write a great diversity and inclusion plan. It doesn't matter if you create diversity councils and programs and processes.

If nobody truly respects the process of diversity and inclusion, you are never going to have greater diversity in your midst.

It's never going to happen. At the core, at the fundamental bottom line spot is respect. All of you out there, all of you out there who are doing the work of diversity and inclusion, you need to add one word to it.

I am doing the work to create greater respect and diversity and inclusion and equality.

Because here's, here's what I know: organizations cannot fix D&I, they cannot fix diversity if they don't first fix respect. You could have all the conversations, all the town halls, all the meetings, You can hire every consultant in the planet, but if they don't respect the process of diversity, nothing will change. If they don't respect the diverse people on their team, nothing will change. If they don't respect the women in their ranks and hierarchy, nothing will change. And so we will be beating our heads up against the wall trying to change something that cannot be changed. And then we'll sit around our happy circle and we will have these discussions. Well, you know, our numbers don't look good this year, or there's a reason why the numbers don't look the way they should look, or oh, we implemented this procedure and it wasn't successful. It's not successful because your leaders don't respect the process you created. Let's have a talk about respect.

See, leaders have to understand that at the fundamental core, diversity is about people.

Diversity is about people. Diversity is about people. In order for you to see my potential as a person, as an employee, as a contributor to the team, You have to first say, I respect Margaret for who she is.

I respect Margaret. Because if you don't say that first, you can't ever get to see me as a leader.

You can't get to see me as a promotable person. You can't get to see me as a contributor to the organization. You don't get to see any of that. Instead, what you see is, yeah, Margaret's on the team. So here's something I want to say to all of you.

As we're doing the work of DE&I, right, there are rooms that I get into because I'm working at this really higher level with executives. And I listen to the conversations that's not said. I was working with a client about 2 years ago. And the client said the VP of HR was terminated at this client. And I was in shock because the VP of HR is the one that brought me to the table. And she asked me to do some very specific work around disability inclusion. And I said, sure, I can do this. I built out a whole disability inclusion program. And one day I got a call from her and she said, um, I've been terminated. And I thought, wow, where did that come from? You know, where did— I thought she was doing a great job. I saw her interacting with the executive team. I saw her interacting with all of the executive leaders. They seem to appreciate and like her. So the very next day, because, you know, I'm a consultant, the person that brought me in the door is gone.

So I'm in shock.

Does that mean I'm going out the door too? And so I jumped in my car and I drove to their office And when I got there, I met with the director of operations, and he said something to me that has stuck in my brain, and I can't get it out since the day he said it to me. He said to me, the VP of HR thought she was more respected than she was, and no one here respected her. Let that sink in for a second.

Let that sink in.

This C-level executive said she wasn't respected and that's why we got rid of her. No one respected her. So while we were busy fixing women's leadership and disability inclusion, there was an issue underlying it of respect. If leaders aren't respected, they're not taken seriously. You know, I've been in rooms where I'll hear— I'll mention a leader's name and I'll say, you know, what about Harry?

What about Steve? What about, you know, any person? And I'll hear, well, you know, they're not really suitable for this process. They're not really suitable.

I don't think they're a good leader for this. Immediately what comes to my mind is the fact that the level of respect for that leader has been diminished at some point. So the reality is, in every organization, respect is at the core of what's missing. And we keep trying to build diversity on top of disrespect. We keep trying to build diversity on top of dysfunction.

Let me say that again.

We keep trying to build diversity on top of dysfunction. You cannot build a DE&I program where teams are fighting with each other internally where one team thinks they're better than the other team, when one team doesn't respect the other team, when the people who bring the money in the door discount the customer service and the people who actually do the work, right? And that dynamic is going on, but we've decided, we have decided because the mission has been given to us, the script, which is why this is Inclusion Unscripted, the script has been given to us to to say, hey, Margaret, go build a DE&I program. And so you set out, and oh, by the way, we need 25% more Black people, we need 15% more women, we need 30% more Hispanics, we need 40% more Asians, we need 50% more LGBTQ people, we need XYZ.

So that's the script you've been given. But the reality—

there's dysfunction, there's disrespect, there's non-functional people running the ship.

And so we buy into this crazy script, this asinine script that we buy into, that we're gonna go fix diversity. We're gonna go fix diversity. You cannot fix diversity if they don't respect each other, because they're never gonna— if they can't respect each other as white men and women in the room, do we expect them to respect the minority people we're trying to bring in the room? Come on, people, let's be real. Let's be real. Let's call it what it is. See, This is why I'm doing this live program every Friday, because I'm not willing to have the normal discussions that the planet wants to have about diversity and inclusion.

Because I knew when the George Floyd effect wore off, every company would go back to disrespecting the minority employees in their ranks, and we would fall into it. Because we expected something different, but they weren't respecting each other, and we were asking them to give us something different.

And this is the truth.

This is the truth that is not being talked about. This is the truth that's not being talked about. Let me give you a, a, a prime example, and this is not a a far-fetched out there example. You know, all of you know, and if you don't know, I'm from Jamaica and I've lived in the United States since I was 3 years old, on and off. Um, I went back to Jamaica and did high school there, and I came back to the United States, um, when I was 16. So here is what I know as a a point. Disrespect occurs within the Black community. We don't respect each other. Wow, Margaret, you went there today.

We don't respect each other.

We find ways to disrespect each other. We find ways to disrespect women. Right?

At the core, we find ways to do that within our own Caribbean community. We don't respect the Big Island and the Little Island, right? Yeah, I'm calling all the dirt out today. Within the Black community, we don't often respect the LGBTQ Black people among us, right? Let's call it out. So at the core of our discrimination against each other is disrespect. At the core of us being excluded is disrespect. At the core of women being left behind, it's disrespect. At the core of men feeling they need to control a woman's body is that you don't respect us as women. It's respect. It's nothing but respect, but we want to call it something else. We want to call it, well, we have some diversity issues. No, you got a respect issue. We don't know how to recruit, uh, Black people. No, you don't respect the schools we come from.

You don't respect the fact that there's a lot of our students at historically Black colleges.

We don't have enough Native American people.

Boy, we have not respected them ever.

From the beginning, right? We don't have enough Asian people in our ranks.

Hmm.

You only respect them in some roles— IT—

but if they apply for another role, you don't give it to them because you don't respect them fundamentally, because in your mind where they belong is in IT. See, this is the stuff that we have to call out. This is the stuff we have to fix when we're having conversations about diversity and inclusion. We have to learn to hear who is in the room, the who that is showing up in the room, the who that is sitting there making decisions The who that is blocking progress is somebody saying, I don't respect what you are bringing to the table. That's what it is. Thank you all for joining me live today. Uh, Monica Inigo Shanoye— I'm probably saying your name wrong, but thank you for joining. Um, You know, I'll put some of your posts up here. Um, you know, the key to be open and inclusive is actual engagement. Um, you know, uh, thank you, Monica, for posting your post. Um, buy-in is critical, but if top leaders don't share the same values they're implementing, it will never change. Absolutely, Monica. Absolutely. You know, um, I love that idea. I'm doing the work to create respect, then we do the E&I. Absolutely. That is exactly what we're doing. We are doing the work of creating respect because we cannot— as I say it again— we cannot build We cannot build foundational diversity and inclusion on top of a disrespectful work environment.

We can't do it.

It's not possible.

We just can't do it.

Within people, one of the reasons why 60 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, we are still fighting for inclusion is because the level of respect was never put into place.

We never really talked about respect. We never really want to say the thing.

We never want to say in the room where we're building these strategies and so on, we never want to say, what about respect?

What about respect?

What about that word? And we never want to challenge the people in the room, the people who are making decisions. We never want to challenge them to say, hey, it's about respect. So now that I've talked about the process of respect and I've given you sort of the fundamental shaking of this tree called respect. Now let's talk about solutions. What can we do? How do we get people to respect each other more?

How do we do that?

What does that look like? What is it that is fundamentally missing that we have to, um, we have to bring together? You know, my Jamaican grandmother used to say, you earn respect. That was her thing. She used to say that all the time.

You have to earn respect. You earn respect. That was her big thing, you know. And then she would also follow it up by saying, respect is due to a dog. You got to give people respect.

So maybe what we need to start doing is having circles where we talk about how disrespect shows up in the workplace.

How does it show up?

How do people understand that disrespect is showing up? When an employee is being disrespected, what do you do is the question. Do you sit silently by and watch that person being berated or disrespected for their talent or contribution? If you're in a room where decisions are being made about people's advancement, do you quietly say, well, I, I agree with what you're saying about Margaret, you know, I don't think she's ready, I don't think she's done the time, I don't think she's a good enough candidate? Do you say that, or do you say, what level of respect do we need to add to Margaret?

How do we respect her more so that we could see her potential, right? How do we respect her more so we could see her potential? If you're an ally, what do you add to the respect discussion?

It's a great question. What do you add to the disrespect— to the respect discussion?

This is how allies should show up.

Margaret is not in the room. We're talking about her abilities and capabilities. How about if we simply say, why don't we bring Margaret in so we could hear her voice in this room? That means that I now respect Margaret because I'm giving her the ability to show up and bring her voice to the table rather than having other people's jaded lens determine her capabilities.

When you're working with teams, it's important that as we do this work of DE&I, that we look at the fact that if teams don't respect each other, we have to bridge the respect gap before we can bring in diverse people to work in that environment.

Because if there's a toxic hostile environment between two departments, we have to fix that issue while we're simultaneously introducing DE&I and asking for greater movement towards equity in the department, right? But we can't pretend like that is not happening and go about our business of creating greater DE&I.

We can't, we can't pretend that that's not happening. So we have to address everything in the room.

So let's dive into what respect means. See, respect is the catalyst to belonging. I can't belong in your organization if I don't feel that you respected me, that you're respecting me. So the R in respect means recognize me.

I want to be seen. I want to be seen. Recognize me, you know, recognize, reward, appreciate me for my similarities and for my differences.

That's the R in respect. That is the R in respect, right? The E in respect, as we're spelling this out, because I want you all to understand at the most granular level how this works.

The E in respect is empowerment. If you respect me, you empower me so that I feel connected. So the question that you ask your leaders is, how do we empower our employees so they feel connected and respected in this organization? We don't go to asking, how do we bring more Black people to the table? For God knows we don't want to work in your dysfunctional work environment anymore. This is the reason why the Great Resignation is happening.

The Great Resignation is happening because we are sick and tired of working in your dysfunctional world. We are sick and tired of being disrespected. We're sick and tired of having to show up and beg and plead for respect.

That's what's going on. But you know what, HR people, my fellow HR peeps, we run around trying to fix the HR problem. Let's start fixing respect. Those of you who show up at a restaurant and don't treat the waitress well, you don't respect the fact that she brought you the food. It's so granular, it's so granular. That we do it without thinking. We do it without thinking. One of the reasons why we have police officers dragging Black people out of cars is because they don't respect us as Black people. Don't talk about it as police brutality. It's disrespect. That's what it is. It's disrespect. But I digress. The S in RESPECT is support me. Support me. If you respect me and my contributions in your organization, if you respect me, truly respect me in your organization, then you support me You support my growth. You invest in me. You don't let me sit in a role for 10 years and you promise me a promotion and you don't give it to me, and you expect me to sit there and smile and show up and not have a feeling and not care. You support me. You support my advancement. You support my growth. You support my opportunities. Because you respect me. See, the P in respect is protecting me. It's protecting me. It is protecting me, right? It is protecting me. It is protecting me. Protect me.

So that I can feel proud working for your organization.

I can feel proud and feel that I'm aligned with the work that I'm doing, feeling that the people I work with have common purpose, common values, common vision, because you will protect me. And if you're protecting me, If you're protecting me, if you are protecting me, then you are respecting me. You're not going to allow me to be emotionally damaged by your dysfunctional leaders. You're not going to allow me to feel psychologically unsafe because your leaders are dysfunctional.

And psychotic and crazy.

If you respect me, you will protect me. You will protect me. You will offer a level of protection. You won't allow me to show up in your office and say, you know, the manager did XYZ to me, and you say, Margaret, it really wasn't so bad. You will protect me. You will hear me. You will validate what I'm saying. You may not be able to fix it immediately, but you won't discount it.

You won't toss it out the window. You won't disrespect the fact that I am a human being and I have feelings.

If the E in respect is feeling heard, feeling that everyone in the organization hears my voice, that you acknowledge me You acknowledge my feelings, you acknowledge my emotions, right? You acknowledge me. That is the E in respect. The C in respect is empowering my creativity, helping me to be creative. Don't put a cap on my possibilities. Don't put the lid on the frying pan. Empower me, right? Give me the ability to be authentic, show up as myself without the judgment. You don't know what I've gone through to get to where I am. You have no idea, but you're able, because you don't respect me, to discount my contribution or even my journey. That's the real deal, right? That's the real deal. And T, the T in RESPECT, is transform. Transform how you see me. Transform how you see me. I'm tired of fighting for you to see me for the full potential that I have. I'm sick and tired of you discounting what I bring to the table. I'm sick and tired of not being validated. That's how your employees feel. So if you respect your employee, you transform your lens of equity and you build it at the foundation with respect first. You don't build a DE&I program on top of disrespect.

You teach your managers first how to respect the team that has been put together.

You teach your managers that first. You teach them first. You cannot— all of you, every single person that's watching this, that will watch this into the future, that will listen to the podcast episode—

you cannot build diversity and inclusion without addressing disrespect. Respect me, hear me, acknowledge me, give me the space to grow, give me the space to be who I am, right?

Give me that space.

Equity and equality cannot exist until we learn how to respect each other. It can't exist. We cannot build equity and equality without respect, because you will not give me a space to be equitable without respecting me. It won't happen.

So For all of you building DE&I, stop building DE&I and start building the capacity to respect people.

Start building that.

Respect the space that I occupy. Respect the air that I breathe. Respect the foundation that I stand on.

Respect the life that I am.

Because if you can't respect that at fundamental levels, you cannot create an inclusive space for me to rise. You can't create it. It's not possible. You just can't.

You just cannot do it. You cannot do it without respect. You just can't.

So as I wrap up today, what's the takeaway? What's the—

what am I leaving you all with? I want to leave you all with a, with a core belief, my core belief, my belief, and one that I hope that you'll embrace, that what we need Beyond being kind, as my sign says behind me, and in a world where we could be anything, we have to be kind. But in a world where we could be anything, we have to be respectful. We could disagree, we could not have the same vision in view. You could feel threatened by me being in the space that I'm currently in because you've never seen someone like me in that space. But at the core, what I ask you to do is respect me. Respect me. What I ask you to do is respect me. Let me go through the R, because someone's asking, um, what is the, the second E. So the first R, the R in respect is recognize me. The first E is empower me. The S is support me. The P is protect me. The E, the second E, is elevate me. Elevate me. Hear my voice. Hear me. Give me that voice. The C is creating that creativity, giving me the ability to be creative, empowering my authenticity. And the T is transforming your lens to create greater respect for me. That is the whole respect. That is the entire part of respect. See, for me, diversity and inclusion is the oxygen that allows all of us to breathe, and respect is the ability for us to pull that oxygen in and it permeate through us and go back out. Because without us being able to pull that in, pull that in fully, and breathe fully in the spaces that we are that we occupy, without being able to, to bring, to come in and breathe within the spaces we occupy, we miss an opportunity to be our authentic self. So I want to tell you guys a couple things. Um, we are, um, live every Friday at 2 PM. If there's a topic you want me to take on, DM me on LinkedIn or Facebook or, or, or live. We are in the process of launching, and next week I will share it with you. Go to our website inclusionlearninglab.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter and our webinars and training series, www.inclusionlearninglab.com. Next week, I am so excited. Next week we launch our community. I'm looking for 25 beta testers to come on this journey with us in our community. Um, we are like 98% done with building the community, and I want to have 25 folks who want to participate in the discussion around diversity and inclusion, around greater opportunity for everyone, to come into our beta live. And I will announce that next week and give everybody a link to the beta. So how do I leave you? The question is, what about respect? The question is, what about respect? Again, our program is brought to you by the Inclusion Learning Lab. Inclusion Unscripted is our weekly podcast. Join us every Friday at 2 PM live because I don't want to do this as a pre-recorded podcast. I don't mind people listening to it after the fact. I want to do this live. So next week we're going to talk about what are we asking for exactly. Is it equity or equality?

And oh boy, if you thought I was on fire with respect You ain't seen nothing yet on equity and equality. What are we asking for?

What are we asking for is the key. What are we asking for? So thank you all for joining me live. I so appreciate you. Completely, completely appreciate you for joining and all of you that put in comments. Thank you so much. Tell a friend. We want to keep this going.

I want to keep this going.

I would love to get feedback. If this was empowering for you, join our newsletter, go to inclusionlearninglab.com, join one of our labs we have. We're expanding our website in the next couple of days. So thank you again. See you next week live, 2:00 PM Eastern for Inclusion Unscripted Live. Thank you. And remember, in a world where you can be anything, which is what my sign says. Be kind to each other, respect each other, and respect the spaces that we occupy. Take care. See you next week.

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you've 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. That you showed up was