E29: Who Believes in You?

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.

So today I am dancing. I'm starting off our show Inclusion Unscripted Live, and I'm dancing today. So today's a dance day. Welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. My name is Margaret Spence. I am the host and the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab, and here at Inclusion Unscripted podcast live every Friday at 2:00 PM on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. And occasionally we go to Twitter, but today we are sticking with our brand 3. Here at Inclusion Unscripted, we are not just talking about diversity and inclusion, we are living it. Every topic that I bring to the table is about living diversity and inclusion. We are here to disrupt the premise that we should be just mediocre when it comes to DE&I. We're here to help everyone live more powerfully, more inclusive, with equity and equality at the core of what we do. We have to show up bolder as people, as people of color, and as women. We have to say what needs to be said.

What are the things that are on our mind?

We have to create safe spaces to have tough conversations within ourselves, outside of ourselves, in the communities we live in, but in the organizations that we work for. We have to say, how do we unscript DE&I and write a different script that is way more inclusive, that is broader, but answers the tough questions and has the hard conversations about diversity. So today I thank you for joining me. I'm super excited that you're here. For those of you who are watching live on LinkedIn, hello. For those of you who are on YouTube and Facebook, so happy that you're here today. And for those of you who are listening, which I didn't realize until last week, that we have a great following. There's about 400 people that listen to this livecast every Friday, and apparently you are listening with the video off and the sound on and in your headset, a lot of you. So I've gotten a bunch of people reaching out to me after the event to say, hey, I was listening live, but I can't watch you, I had to listen to you, um, in the quiet of my headset. So I appreciate all of you that are listening, um, and have joined us. We have hit a little milestone which I'm so excited about. Um, we have had 500 downloads of this podcast from Apple. Um, and we are so excited, um, to have 500 downloads. Um, this is all organic growth. We haven't really been pushing the podcast, but we've had 500 organic downloads from, um, Apple, and I am so, so excited about that. Thank you for all of you out there who are listening to Inclusion Unscripted and supporting my voice as I lend a different lens to the DNI space. For those of you who don't know me, maybe there are a few of you out there and you're listening to this for the first time and maybe you're listening to the recording on your favorite podcast app. We are on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, we're everywhere actually. We're syndicated on all of the podcasts. Apps. For those of you who don't know me, um, I am a DE&I and HR consultant. I've run my company for 23 years. We are actively engaged, and I was just telling one of the leaders I was talking with that we don't do DE&I. That's not what we do. What I do with organizations is I help them think strategically about how to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion within their organization seamlessly.

So it is not an add-on to the job.

It is the job. Diversity and inclusion is the job. It is the job for your leaders. It is a job for your employees. It is job for your frontline managers.

It is the job for your CEO.

So we have to engage diversity, not as a sidebar, not as a thing to do, but as an integrated part of the talent process. If you want me to feel that I belong, to feel that I thrive, to feel that I'm a part of the process, then you've got to include me everywhere. Inclusion has to be a square space for you, not an add-on. It's not an add-on.

I'm not an add-on.

I am diverse. I don't get to pick. As I said, I don't get to say, which is part of our motto, is we're not just talking about diversity and inclusion, we're living it. That is our motto here at Inclusion Unscripted and the work that I do within the Inclusion Learning Lab. For all of you that don't know about the Inclusion Learning Lab, please take a minute, visit our website. The Inclusion Learning Lab sponsors the Inclusion Unscripted podcast. It's inclusionlearninglab.com. If you'd like to join our D, E, and I, our community, for DE&I and talent leaders, go to inclusionlearninglab.com/community and you can learn all about the Inclusion Learning Lab community and what we offer.

Here we are today. Let's talk about today's topic.

Today's topic is deep and dear to my heart. I think it's an interesting topic to wrap ourselves around. It's one that we have to wrap ourselves around. We have to address this not from a place of diversity inclusion yet. We have to address this from a people process. If you hire me to come to work for your company, you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on recruiters and talent people. To get me to think that your company is the place I want to work. You've done all of this dance to get me to sign up and put on the dotted line that I want to come to work for you. And you place me in a group, on a team, with a leader who you expect to pull out the best of me.

That is the expectation.

The leader is going to create a space for me to be at my best. The question that I always ask organizations, and I ask it as a routine: when you are at your best, most inclusive self, who do you want to become? That's the question. But that's not what we're talking about today. You've hired me, you've spent recruiting money, You've gone through all the dance of recruiting, all of this of the recruiting process, right?

And at the end of the day, your leader, your supervisor, your manager, your folks that are there to, to groom and grow me don't believe in me as a person.

Oh yes, that's where we're going today.

So the question for today's episode is this simple: who believes in you?

That is the question today.

Who believes in you? If I were to ask you very specifically, as a diverse person, who believes in you Not your parents, not your family, not your friends— none of those people. On the team that you work on right now, every day, do the people on that team believe in you?

I'm gonna ask the question: do they believe in you?

Let me, let me share for a second.

2018, I wrote an amazing book called Inclusion Self-Transformation, Leadership Self-Transformation, and there are 52 questions. And the book is available on Amazon for all of you who want to look at it. It's called Leadership Self-Transformation: 52 Career-Defining Questions Every High-Achieving Woman Must Answer. This was my third book. I'm working on book 4, and so I've gone back to revisit the questions I asked in the book, which were really geared towards women. And I've gone back to revisit the book as I'm writing my 4th book called What's Your Possible? is the 4th book. And I wanted to ask some of the questions through the lens of DE&I, because when I wrote the book, I wrote it through the lens of women only. Now I'm taking this content and looking at it through the lens of diversity and inclusion. And so asking yourself who believes in you is the most critical step that you can ask your leaders and evaluate from your lens the leaders who you are working for, the managers, the supervisors, the executives, all of them.

Do they believe in your capability? Do they believe that you are a strong member of the team? Do they believe that your contribution is worthy? Do they believe that every day when you show up, whether you're in person or you are virtual, do they believe in your possibilities. Because here's what I know as a person of color: the reason that I've gotten to where I am right now is because people believed in me. They believed in my capability. They believed in my contribution. They believed in my, my ability to carry things from point A to point B. My clients that I have now that I work with, and the clients that I've worked with over the last 23 years, they believed in me. They believed in my capability.

They believed in my ability.

And even when we disagreed, and, and I said, okay, you want to do this a different way than I want you to do it, great, no problem. Even when we disagreed, my capability never came into question. We disagreed on substance. We disagreed on maybe execution of a process, but we never disagreed on my capability.

But here's what I know as a woman first.

Many of us as women are sitting on teams working for leaders who don't believe that women are capable. Let me say that again.

I'm gonna pull that one up a little bit more.

Many of you are working on teams where your leaders do not feel that you are capable of anything beyond what the task that they've given you to do.

And we show up every day to these work environments expecting that we're going to be able to grow our careers, expecting that we're going to be able to diversify their—

the operation, believing that our contribution will be seen and valued and appreciated, when the reality is the person you're working for does not believe in you.

We'll pause.

I'm gonna let you all stew on that for a minute.

The truth: most of you are working in environments where they don't believe in your capability.

Most of you are working in organizations that don't believe in your contribution. Many, many, many, many of you are working for leaders who do not see you as capable beyond the role you're in. And a lot of you, 80% of you are viewed as tactical tacticians. You are, you are viewed as initiative drivers and not strategic change agents. And because the lens that is being looked at you is, oh, she will execute the plan that I put forward, you are never being believed in and nobody sees your purpose beyond where you are right now. Oftentimes we feel stuck in the role, we feel stuck in the organization, we feel stuck in the process when the reality for most of us is nobody on your team or in your organization believes in you.

Let's flip the lens a little bit now. Let's talk about diversity, equity, equality, inclusion, belonging, thriving, all the words, justice, Jedi, all the things that you guys want to give to the DE&I process, right?

Let's, let's talk through that.

Let me, um, if you follow me on LinkedIn, and if you don't, Margaret Spence on LinkedIn, I posted day before yesterday the most aggravating thing that I had seen as a woman of color and as a Jamaican woman, because I will say to you guys every day I am a Jamaican woman to my core.

There's nothing there. If you don't want to hear about my Jamaicanisms, it's fine, don't listen.

It's who I am, it's my core, it's what makes me the person that I am. It's that that I stand in to stand here. So Sheryl Lee Ralph won the Emmy. And when she won the Emmy, um, there was a posting of Shirley Ralph on the New York Times—

no, the LA Times.

Let me, let me rephrase.

It was posted on the LA Times, and it was posted at Salon.

And I'm gonna sort of hold it up here so that you all can see it. The LA Times had an article on their website with Sheryl Lee Ralph's photo, and at the top of it, it said, 2022 Emmys: Do the awards still matter in a TV business under siege? That was the first one. And the second one was again Shirley Ralph's photo, and the, the caption was, "Enduring the Emmys: Have award shows as we've known them outlived their purpose?" Yeah, somewhere in this process, both the New York Times and Salon didn't believe in Sheryl Lee Ralph.

I'm not saying that your article isn't valid, but the photo used to depict purpose and to depict the value of the Emmys happened to be the second Black woman who's won this award. You didn't just put up the statue of the award all by itself. You put in this woman who has earned her stripes to be on that stage, and she's waited patiently for this opportunity. As she said, as every Jamaican says, what for me, ah, for me. That's what we say. What's mine is mine. It'll come eventually. We're not going to worry about how it comes. But here's the thing, it's obvious from Sheryl Lee Ralph's acceptance speech that she believed in herself and her capabilities. She believed in her possibility. As I said, my new book is called What's Your Possible? And that's a bold question, but if you cannot find people to believe in you then you will never advance. If you don't believe that a Black woman can be an Emmy winner, or a Black woman can be a CEO, or a Black woman can be a leader of a division, or a Black woman can be a vice president of operations, then you will never believe in me at the levels that I need you to believe in me so that I can climb the ladder with power. If you want DE&I in your organization and you don't believe in the people who are diverse, then the paper tiger, the paper process, the paper, the wallpapering of DE&I will be irrelevant. It will be irrelevant because if you believe in the policy of DE&I, and you do not believe in the people that are diverse and the women that are in the pipeline, if you don't believe in the gender and the capability of diversity, then you're never going to push me to my heights. You will always get to sit in a meeting and say, you know, we want more diverse people in leadership. Uh, yeah, Margaret How do we get more diverse people in leadership? Put your hands up, Margaret Spence, because we want to know how to get more people into leadership. We want to know how to hire more Black people, more brown people, more Hispanic, more Asian, more Native American, more LGBTQ people. We want to know how to do that. Help us do that. But you don't believe in them once they come in the door. And so talent acquisition can do an amazing job around people, sourcing people and bringing them to the table. You can do an amazing job to source people in the door. You could bring me in, you can hire me, no issues. But if the leaders don't believe in me as a person, they will find multiple reasons and multiple layers to stop me from advancing. They will put that in place. You know, in my book I wrote pretty simply, um, Seth Godin said, you cannot have a tribe without a leader, and you cannot be a leader without a tribe. Seth Godin said that. This is the quote.

I pulled a quote from his and put it in here.

And I wrote, besides your parents and your family who believes in you, it's very important to decide who believes in you, who's on your team, who supports your vision. Without ardent supporters, you will never advance beyond the employee desk. Someone who believes in you is willing to give you directions that are meaningful and objective to advance your career. You know, Seth Godin said in his book Tribes, human beings can't help it, we need to belong. In order to prove that you can be a better leader, someone has to believe in you. You cannot lead without a tribe who is willing to raise their hands and follow you where you want to take them. Have you ever asked yourself who believes in you and your work? It doesn't matter where you are in the spectrum.

Someone has to believe in your capability, your purpose.

Somebody has to believe in your, um, capability to be more. They have to see a vision for you that you may not always see for yourself. And if someone can't see a vision for you and hold your hands and walk you towards that vision and help you embrace that vision, then we will never advance as people of color and women. There will always be data. Lean In will always put out a report every year saying there aren't enough women in leadership, there aren't enough Black people in leadership, we don't have enough, uh, Fortune 500 diverse CEOs. There will always be a report and a study that is done that shows the failure of the process. But the process didn't fail. The process was put in place, but nobody believed in the people inside of the process. Nobody believed in the people. If you are running a team and you don't believe in your team's capability, how do they deliver for you? If you only believe in your bright shining stars on your team, what happens to the other 80% who are out there putting out effort every single day? In order for me to rise, in order for me to get, you know, extreme validation for what I'm doing, I need somebody in my corner. I need somebody who's willing to say, Margaret, right now you are a lump of coal. You may not have all the chops that we need, but I'm willing to polish this lump of coal until it becomes a diamond. Because every lump of coal has the capability of being a diamond. But if you cannot see me as a diamond and all you see me at is a— at is a lump of coal— if all you see me as is a lump of coal, then how do I become the diamond? I could do it on my own, but on my own I still need people who believe in me to advance me. If you leave your corporate job tomorrow morning and you go out and you start your own business and you set up your own shop out there and you decide, okay, I want to leave this corporate job I have and I'm going to become a consultant. Fantastic, more power to you. I'm happy you're in the game. There is enough work for all of us.

There's no competition. But here's the difference between getting to point A and staying at point A. Here's the difference. You can get to point A making the decision, I think I want to do this. But you will never get to point Z unless somebody believes in you.

This is a critical thing that organizations have to hammer home. We cannot sit back, we cannot sit back and wait for people to exhibit diversity and inclusion capabilities. See, a lot of you organizations are out there running diversity inclusion capability. Oh, we got to get managers to be capable and show in this and, and exhibit diversity tendencies.

No, that's not the lesson.

That's not the assignment.

99% of you are working on the wrong assignment.

It's not about getting them to embrace your policies. It's not about bringing a new thing to the table. It's not about implementing another strategy. It's not about buying another set of stuff. It's about one thing: getting your leaders to believe in me as a diverse person. Because if you believe in me, fully believe in me, then you see my ability. You, you decide, yep, Margaret needs to have career conversations. You decide that you want to have career growth and opportunity for me. You want to give me stretch assignments. You want to empower me more. You want to say my names in the room and say my name in the rooms I'm not in. You want to empower and say, yep, Margaret Spence needs to be in this room. What about Margaret? Who's saying the what about Margaret about you? Who's saying that? So we are busy trying to fix leaders and make them more inclusive behaviorally when the single thing we need to get them to do is to believe in diverse people. The mental model that your leaders have about a woman of color or a man of color is what you have to disrupt. They have a mental model that I don't want to be promoted. They have a mental model that I'm not capable. They have a mental model that I don't want empowerment. They have a mental model in their brain about Black and brown people And that mental model stops them from believing in me and my capability and accepting my contribution as valid. So while you write your DE&I policies and your DE&I strategies, if your leaders don't believe in your people and the capability of your people, they will never advance diverse people. You will hire them and we will be stuck on the vine. We will be in the lowest level roles and you will get to do your data analysis and your data statistics, and you'll get to put out your data every year that says we hired 500 Black people and brown people, but you know what, we only had one go into leadership. You know why that happens?

Let me whisper it for you. Let me say it quietly down close to the mic. Let me tell you why that happened. Your leaders don't believe in your people. Your leaders don't believe that Black and brown people are capable.

See, Black women earn the most college degrees of any race.

But we still get questioned about our capability. Yeah, you still have people with master's degrees sitting in customer service roles because we don't see their capability.

There was a young lady that I was coaching just before the pandemic. She had an MBA. And she was sitting in a clerical role with an MBA.

And when I saw her for the first time, she came to an event that I did for HR leaders in transition. And at the end of the event, I invited her to come to some coaching sessions with me, and I coached her into the current role that she's in right now. And I said to her immediately, you cannot be in a clerical role with a master's degree.

You just can't do it.

Let me give you another instance. I live here in Florida. There's a supermarket called Publix here. I went in and I saw this amazing cashier, and I kept walking by her week after week. And finally I said to her, why are you in this supermarket ringing up groceries?

Why are you in here?

Because you seem too smart to be in the supermarket ringing up groceries. This is a true story. This is an exact story. It's the story of when people don't believe in you.

And she said to me—

she didn't know my name—

I said, have you been to college?

And she says, yes, I have two college degrees. This is— this happened.

I have two college degrees, she said.

I have a degree in microbiology and I can't find a job, and so I'm ringing up groceries. I have a second degree in biomedical engineering, biomedical process, and because I didn't have any internships, I haven't been able to find a job. So after I have two college degrees, I'm ringing up groceries. For 3 and a half years, I mentored this young lady into her current situation. I haven't talked to her in years, but I made it my mission to get her out of the supermarket because I believed in her. She told me, like, the 10th time I went through— and I tell people, I was a full-fledged vegetarian when I met her, so I would go to the supermarket every day and buy groceries, buy vegetables, because when you're vegetarian, full-on vegetarian, vegetables don't last very long, and if you're eating a lot of green bush, you need it every single hour on the hour almost. So I would go into the supermarket every day and buy my green bush for my vegetarian lifestyle. And every day I would talk to her because she worked the day shift and she was a full-time cashier. And I convinced her, I said, what is it that you want to do with your life? And she said she wanted to become a dentist. And I said, fine. She ended up enrolling in a, a master's program that was a feeder to one of the local dental colleges here in Florida. And when she got a year into the master's, I said to her, we're gonna start a plan to get the dean over at the dental school to believe in you so he will give you a spot. And I groomed her and spoke to her every day for 3 years, Saturday and Sunday included. When she doubted herself, I stood there for her. Not a dime was paid to me. I did this because I believed in her. I saw her capability from a cash register. Millions of people pass through that supermarket every day. They ring up their groceries, and she was invisible to them. And as time went along, I helped her to get accepted into dental school and worked with her every day. When she self-doubted, I said, no, no, no, we can do this. When she didn't get the highest score, On her MCATs, we did it again. When she didn't think she was capable, I said, "Yes, you are." And I was able— she invited me. The last time I saw her was at her pinning ceremony, um, at Nova Southeastern in the School of Dentistry. That's the story. And why do I tell this story? Why is this story important today. There are many people out there, many people out there. I can name all the folks that I have impacted because I see them and I believe in them. You know, there's several folks that I've said, you need to be on a stage speaking, you need to take a better job, you need to do something different.

But the reason I do that is because I see you. I see your capability. I believe that you could do more. I believe in you as a person, as an individual. I have coached thousands of women without a dollar in out of my pocket because a mission for me, a personal mission for me, is seeing people and believing in them. Because once I believed in that person, they began to believe in themselves. They began to believe in their own capability. They began to build a vision. They began to say to themselves, I can do this. So the issue that we try to solve of diversity and inclusion is not the issue we need to solve. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of capable, amazing, diverse people and women in this workforce who are capable, but we don't see them. We would rather write another freaking diversity policy, buy another stupid system, create another layer of BS rather than addressing the issue. If your leaders don't believe in your people, whether they are young, coming in the door for the first time as a brand new talent or if they have been a seasoned talent for years, if they don't believe in them, they will never advance them. You see, we need mentors who clean us up. We need sponsors who say, Margaret Spence, I believe in your capability. I believe in you. But here's what we need from your leaders. We need your leaders to champion and believe in the people. Believe in the people. Believe in the people's capability. Believe in their ability to rise. It's not about getting a new job title, getting promoted, moving up in the organization. That's not what it's about. It's about believing in me so that I can be empowered to believe in myself. Let me tell you a small other story. When I started this business, I was a director of HR, and I decided to leave the director of HR role to start this business. And I reached out to my insurance agent.

His name is Tony Abella. I say his name all the time.

He was the head of the Arthur J.

Gallagher, Gallagher office in Miami.

And I called him and I said, Tony, I'm gonna start a business. I don't have a client.

I don't know how I'm gonna get from point A to point B, but I am putting in my resignation today and I am starting this now. And Tony said to me, I'll give you your first client. I will give you your first client. I'm gonna go into my Rolodex of clients and I'm gonna find one that needs your help from an HR standpoint, and you figure out what you're gonna charge, you figure out how this is gonna look, and I'm gonna get you your first client.

And this man went out on a limb and called people in his network, and he got me my first client.

I am 23 years in.

It has been people getting me clients, people believing in me, people empowering me, people saying, 'You can do it.' And even when I doubted and I hit brick walls and I couldn't go forward, and I couldn't move the needle, and I watched my white counterparts moving the needle because they were able to get investments and cash and stuff, I still stuck with it.

I said I stood because people believed in me. Every client I've had believed in me.

I have one client, one client that I have had for 23 years.

One client.

That was my second client that I got, and he is still a client today. Still today he calls me on my cell.

I need HR help, Margaret. I need you to help me with my HR. I have been his outsourced HR consultant for 23 years. Because he believes in me.

So as you build out your DE&I strategies and your policies and your stuff, how about if you start with, do our managers and leaders believe in our people? Do they believe in our people?

Do they believe in our people?

Stop all the other BS that you guys are doing and ask one question: do our leaders believe in our diverse people?

And if they don't believe in them, how do we get them to believe in them?

Because once you believe in me, you will help me rise.

And I'm sick and tired of people not believing that we are capable, because every time a woman or a man calls me about their career and they're stuck, I can look back 5 years after that conversation and I could see them in a massive leadership role because of the things that I empowered them to believe in themselves. So before I go, before I wrap up today, thank you all for joining me. Um, Jeffrey, appreciate your comment. Excellent. Thank you, Maxine. Oh my God, I love you, Maxine. Margaret, you're a mentor par excellence. Thank you, Sabrina. Love you, love you, Sabrina. Um, thank you for giving me our congratulations on getting our 500 downloads. I'm so excited there. And you are an amazing leader and a beacon in the insurance industry. Believe in you the first day I saw you. And it's about getting our leaders to believe in us. It is.

So I want to tell you guys a little bit before I go.

We, um, on Wednesday, September 21st, we have an open forum. It's called Third Wednesday Open Forum on DE&I. This Wednesday coming up, our topic is DE&I data storytelling. I have built out a comprehensive course on how to take DE&I data and turn it into storytelling, a storytelling process focused on DE&I data, and to transition that into making change happen in organizations. We can't just regurgitate data within our organizations. We have to learn how to tell better stories with our data because our data is our people. So join me on Wednesday next week at 1:00 PM Eastern. I'm gonna post it into LinkedIn. So you all can join. I may do it as a live so that everybody can watch the, the ENI data storytelling program. And we are looking forward to having you on Wednesday. It is on our website inclusionlearninglab.com/events, and you will be able to register for the program on Wednesday, September 21st. If you're watching this after the fact, we have recordings from our events. So thank you again for joining Inclusion Unscripted. Um, I will see you all next week.

I have a guest next week, um, and we are going to talk about purpose.

Next week's episode is about purpose, finding your purpose within a sea of possibilities. See you next week. Have a wonderful, wonderful week ahead. Take care.

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.

See you next Friday.