E5: Inclusion Isn't A Policy, Its People

Hey everybody, how are you? Margaret Spence, welcome to Inclusion Learning Lab livestream, Inclusion Unscripted. Whether you're joining live or you're watching the replay, today we're gonna talk about inclusion, and boy, are we gonna talk about inclusion today. Oh my God, um, we're gonna talk about inclusion based on the legal case that just came out yesterday and how that all shaped out. And so I want to, um, address that and address inclusion. So we're going to define inclusion, we're gonna figure out if it's an individual or policy, and we are going to try to figure out how as an organization you can be or foster better inclusion. I think that's the gist of where we're headed. I'm going to see where this goes. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Margaret Spence. I'm the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab, and I'm pretty honored today. This is my first episode. I just won the Accord Women Advancing Award yesterday. I'm so super psyched about that. So to tell you a little bit about Inclusion Unscripted, have you ever wanted a place where you could talk about diversity, inclusion, career development, women's leadership issues all rolled into one? Basically a place to empower everyone. That's what we do on Inclusion Unscripted. We're live every Friday on LinkedIn, Facebook, and on YouTube. We know that inclusion doesn't occur on an island. We have to create a community where inclusion thrives, where inclusion is what we strive for. We work towards equity, we work towards equality. We know that we are diverse, but we make spaces for diverse people to thrive. On the Unscripted, Inclusion Unscripted, my goal is to say what needs to be said. It's not always going to be pretty, it's not going to be nice, it's not going to be perfect, It's what needs to be said. Oftentimes we dance around what should be said when it comes to diversity inclusion. We're politically correct. We don't want to offend anybody. We don't want to say anything out of turn. We don't want to ruffle feathers. But here's what I know. To do the work of diversity inclusion, we have to challenge people, But we have to challenge ourselves to think bigger. But we also have to challenge ourselves to give organizations and the people who run them and the people in them the credit for opening up the dialogue because we got to start somewhere. So my goal every Friday is to bring a topic to the table, to talk through it with you, my audience, I would like you to, you know, participate, you know, chime in on the chat. Tell me if you agree or disagree with me. You don't have to agree. This is totally unscripted. I don't write a script for these events every Friday. I pick a topic and then we talk completely off the cuff. But this week, this week, I have to talk about this jury trial where there was a male, um, a white male employee who sued his employer, um, and the jury awarded him $10 million because he claimed he was fired because he was a white man. So I had a whole like thought process in my head about what I should talk about this week, but that is what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about white males being uncomfortable. We're going to talk about exclusion. Even if we are creating diversity and inclusion, it's not hard for us to create exclusion in the diversity and inclusion process. I'm going to talk about the safe space. Can we create a safe space to talk about inclusion? Will we ruffle people's feathers? If we say inclusion? Will we ruffle people's feathers if we try to upend the normal, what is expected, what is supposed to be? You know, this case, um, sort of ruffled my feathers. I don't know how else to say it. So, so let me— and I'm struggling Um, audience, I'm struggling, right? I'm struggling with this one. So let me just read off what, what happened. It's probably easier for me to read it rather than putting in my own two spin on this. The jury awarded a white male employee $10 million because he claimed he was fired because he's a white male. He was terminated without cause as a part of an intentional campaign to promote diversity in the middle management ranks of his company. He was fired as a senior vice president of marketing communications, and he was terminated days shy of his 5th anniversary with the company. Ah, deep breath, deep breath, deep breath. Um, I sent this out when I, I got it. Um, one of my clients sent it to me. And I sent it out to a bunch of people and said, take a look at this. This is crazy, um, completely crazy. And thank you, um, I have someone who's driving and listening, so thank you for driving and listening. So here is, here is the roughest part of this that I can't even— anyway, okay, let me keep going. So this gentleman was replaced by two people, a Black woman and a white woman. He was replaced by two people. The jury said that, um, the company couldn't prove that they didn't terminate him because he was a white man. Boy, this, this— if you see me struggling with this today, I'm struggling. The jury said the employer couldn't prove that they didn't terminate him because he was a white guy, number one. Number two, um, his lawyer said something pretty interesting, which I think just flies in the face of all of this, right? His lawyer said the message the jury sent was not to abandon diversity and inclusion. That is the message that the jury sent. But to do it legally, okay. Oh my God, to do it legally, okay. So, so let's unpack this, HR folks, HR people. Let's unpack this because this is for you. Today is all about HR, right? Um, it's about HR, it's about managers, it's about those of us in this trench trying to create greater equality and equity for everyone. First off, I have always said there are 5 types of people in the DE&I space. There are people who want things to stay the same, the status quo folks. There are people who, you know, diversity inclusion is a nice to have. There are people who sit in the middle that are persuadable, that you could get them to go in one direction or the other. There are people who are true believers, but when you ask them to come to the table, they don't necessarily show up the way we want them to. There are these people who are the champions for DE&I. But what I've always said is I can be a champion for DE&I until you come for me. When you come for me, when you come after my position, right, then I'm not sure that I like DE&I anymore. This case opens up so many cans of worms. I think what I'm gonna do is a follow-up to this with an employment attorney. So if you're an employment attorney out there and you wanna come on and talk me down off the ledge on this, DM me on LinkedIn, send me your info. I wanna talk through this with an employment attorney. But today, I don't have the gift of an employment attorney. I'm not an attorney. I'm not trying to play one. What I do know is that when we are building diversity and inclusion, We cannot exclude the white males in our organizations, period. End of the story. We just can't exclude them. I'm not sure, and I'm not going to say what this company did. I am not going to say it. But from the articles that I've read, and I've read 4 of them, and I'd love to actually get the case to see what was decided in this jury trial and what it looked like as the case went through to read it and just get some insight. I think this gentleman felt that he was terminated. Two women got his job, one Black, one white. Um, you want to make room for women and you didn't have room at the top for these women. So instead of grooming them and building out more positions, you looked around and picked out a guy, happened to be a white guy because those are the only people in this particular marketing communication role. You picked out the white guy and you fired him. And it could have been any white guy, it just so happened to be this white guy. But he utilized the very same civil rights law that we are using to champion our own inequities in the workforce. He utilized that very same Civil Rights Act to turn it on its head and win a $10 million jury award. So first off, let me, let me say this, because I've been saying this since I was doing work comp and I've worked in the insurance industry. Sometimes y'all need to settle these cases and not take them to trial. Lord, just let me say that again. Sometimes companies and lawyers, you need to settle cases and not take them to trial. Give the man a check and don't make legal precedence. Okay, I said it. You guys heard me. But now we have this case. Do you think that this is not going to open up a Pandora's box? I'm gonna find the case and drop it into the chat really quickly so everybody can have it. The case actually is pretty, it's monumental. It's a monumental shift in the work of DE&I. It is a monumental shift. I don't know that we've seen a case like this where the person utilized, and I'll tell you, um, he used Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to, um, to basically say he was discriminated against. He did. He used the Civil Rights Act, and I'm posting it into the chat so everybody could see the case. Um, he used the Civil Rights Act. So, so what do we do as minority people? And, and thank you, uh, Yachica, for putting bad facts make bad law. I'm gonna show this. I gotta put this off. This is good. Thank you, my attorney friend. Bad facts make bad law. There we go. This is, this is earth-shattering. What now? Let me, let me tell you my fear. Let me tell you my fear. My fear is that organizations are going to, to now bring in attorneys before they make DE&I decisions. This is my fear. My fear is that we're going to end up with organizations saying, 'No, I think we should dial this back a little bit because we may end up in litigation hell.' And so what's going to end up happening is any gains that we think we are trying to make, and when it comes to diversity and inclusion, is going to be gone. It's going to be gone. Because if I'm an employer and I'm reading this case, first off, I'm not going to run around in my organization and say, 'I need more young people.' Right? Which is a fact. We need more young people. We need next gen in the workforce, right? I'm not going to be able to say I need more women in executive leadership because if you then put a woman in executive leadership and a man is denied, a white man is denied his spot in the advancement, he may very well use Title VII to come after you. Dear Lord, as I said, Pandora's box. I don't really give a rat's what his lawyer said. Um, his lawyer said don't abandon diversity inclusion but do it legally. Well, by golly, that's what we've been doing. We've been trying to do this legally. We've been trying to get organizations to empower people legally. We've not been doing anything illegal with diversity inclusion. So when you imply that diversity and inclusion can be done illegally, now you've put another layer on top of the DE&I massive ugly triangle already. So he's basically thrown into the mix, do it legally. Like, okay. Um, so I, I, for all of you Let me just go back to what I planned to talk about today, 'cause I think it just intertwines. My plan today was to say to everybody, inclusion isn't a policy. It's not a policy, it's people. And I think this case proves my point. It proves my point. Within your organization right now, if you are not doing DE&I correctly, you can be sued. Without my favorite white guy here suing you for reverse discrimination, okay? You could be sued by a person who's experiencing microaggression, who's experiencing exclusion, who's experiencing the lack of opportunity. And when they're applying for a job and you're picking the same white guys for the job, if I'm a Black woman, the likelihood is I could say you're discriminating against me. That's already been in the mix. What hasn't been in the mix is this new world of, um, reverse discrimination. You know, we've talked about it for a long time. We've talked about the fact that if you are a man and you're the CEO and you're the head of the whatever the organizational level is. And you've built the stadium, you own the stands, you own the field we play on, you own the concession stand, you operate the ticket booth. And when diverse people come to the table, we're at a disadvantage because you literally have already monopolized everything. And so we are constantly in a fight for position and place. We're in a fight for position and place. And on top of that, we're dealing with managers who are microaggressive, who don't want young people, who don't want technologically advanced advancements, who don't want to change the status quo. And now baked into this cake, we have a jury who says we're doing it all wrong. We're doing it all wrong. Every bit of what we're doing is incorrect. So where do we go from here? How do we build? How do we, as people of color who are fighting for our space, contend with the white guy who's now going to fight legally for his space? How is that gonna work? How are we going to now compete? We are already competing in the workplace for a spot at the table. But if white guys are gonna start suing the employer because we want a spot at the table too, are we even gonna make any headway going forward? Is this the opening of the Pandora's box when it comes to diversity and inclusion? And I think honestly, we need to talk about this. I don't think that we could take this case and shove it off to the side and say, yep, this is just something that happened. Nope. This case is monumental and earth-shattering. It's monumental and earth-shattering, and we cannot discount it, and we can't pretend that it's not here. So what do you do? Let me first start to talk to my Black professionals first. Let's talk about us. For a second. I'm a Black professional in an organization and I'm fighting for space. And the options for the position is white male and me, right? And oftentimes white male gets the position. And the organization says, "We're being inclusive. You know, Margaret, we're really inclusive. We're working on the boundaries here and we're really inclusive." Okay, so how do we navigate that space from an emotional standpoint? How do we navigate that? You know, I think, um, we have to have a keen understanding of whether we're being included. We have to have a keen understanding of whether we are being included. Okay. Are we being included? Are we being included on paper with policies, or are we being included, physically included? And when we are physically included, is our voice also included? Because there's multiple layers of this. Is our voice being included? Is our presence being valued? Is our being in the room being appreciated? Right? That's how we have to unpack inclusion. That's how we have to unpack it. Because we can't say we're being included if we don't unpack all of it. When you put your voice out there, when you say something in your organization, Are you valued? Is your voice included? Is what you have said at the table added to the discussion? Or is someone taking what you said and crafting it as their own language? Because see, maybe it's Margaret said that, but we're not gonna hear it from Margaret because Margaret's a Black woman. We're gonna hear it from Jane, who is a white woman, or we're gonna hear it from Mark, who is a, white man, we're going to hear the same messaging from them and we're going to adopt their method. We're going to have an adaptation of their wording, even though Margaret said the same thing. When we talk about inclusion for Black and brown people and for women, specifically Black women, we have to also unpack the layers of inclusion and recognize at what layer we are being excluded, because there is a layer. So let's give— let me give you the example. You walk in the room. Yep, Margaret Spence. No sign is there anymore that says white— Black people excluded. Great.

Yep.

Check. I'm in. Lots of us here. Great. But if a big decision is being made, are we at the table? Maybe, um, the big decision is being made, we're invited to the table, and then somebody doesn't call on us the entire time we're in the room. Now we're excluded again. So we get included based on what's going on at the moment. Okay, so we're in the big room, we've been invited to the big room, And then we make a statement and the response is, Margaret is too much. She's too loud. She's too boisterous. Um, she's too aggressive. She's too direct. She's too everything. So now I'm battling again in that room to be included. And then when I do make my voice heard and you do adapt my process, you don't give me credit for it. So now I'm battling another battle of inclusion. So anybody who thinks that inclusion is writing a policy, tear your policies up. Inclusion is not about writing a policy. Inclusion is about the process and the places where we can exist comfortably and belong. That's what it's all about. It's not a policy, it's people. Inclusion is people. And there is multiple layers that we have to continuously unpack. Here's an example. I was doing a workshop a few months ago for Women's History Month. And in the chat, a woman wrote, "Yup, they've got new career development programs for all the new people who've arrived here, but I've sat here for 20 years and you've never tried to develop me." Right away, my spider senses went up and I started responding in the chat because the reality is There are multiple stakeholders in the exclusion category. People who have been marginalized for years, people who have been overlooked for years, people who have attempted to navigate within the spaces and not felt that they were included. So if you're doing the work of inclusion, which is what we are doing within the Inclusion Learning Lab, we have to learn the unpacking of the spaces. Inclusion is not a policy. Inclusion is an evaluation of process, an evaluation of spaces, an evaluation of how, an evaluation of why, an evaluation of what, and also when. When do we create exclusionary lens? And when do we show up with our privilege in the process and then create exclusion? So the lens of exclusion is one that organizations have to work on all the time. You cannot work on inclusion in a silo. Inclusion cannot be done in a silo. You know, we have to ask ourselves, If inclusion is an individual and not a policy, if inclusion is an individual and not a policy, what am I doing on the individual granular level that's creating exclusion for everyone? Because this white guy just showed us that he felt excluded. He felt excluded and he sued. And one, yeah, they'll appeal this and maybe it'll settle out for less money, but by golly, this one is written in granite now. So how do we navigate this? How do we navigate this? How do we say to ourselves, I'm being included? What is the conversation that we need to have with employees, with our team members, Even, let me, let me back up a little bit. There's exclusion that occurs within families. You know, I was watching Red Table Talk the other day and I can't remember the gentleman's name. He's on Queer Eye. He's Jamaican background. And I didn't realize that his grand, his mother, his mother was Cuban and his father was Jamaican, I think, or vice versa. And so He never felt included in the Hispanic side of his life because his grandmother constantly said, "You were too dark to be in the Cuban side of the family." So he has never embraced the Hispanic side of himself, even though he speaks Spanish fluently, his grandmother was Cuban, he clearly has Cuban upbringing, but because he was, darker, he was excluded. And so now in his 40s, he's trying to find his Cuban identity within his life. So we, while we may think that we are inclusive, that we don't mind having anybody in our circle, the reality is that is not true. Every single person has a blind spot of exclusion. Everybody has a blind spot of exclusion. This company got a $10 million blind spot of exclusion. That's what really happened. And yes, thank you for saying that, um, DE&I requires empathy and translates to all sectors. Absolutely, we have to have empathy. We have to have empathy. But here's what I also know: we have to address some of the things that occur. We have— we cannot, um, you know, we can't say, um, we're inclusive if we don't say when are we being not inclusive, when are we being exclusive, when are we being, you know, when are we creating this circle that doesn't include everybody. You know, one of the things that I think we overlook as people is young people. You know, they are for me just a petri dish of learning, right? A petri dish of learning for me, right? Young people join organizations really bubbly, and you guys, the old hands, the folks like me, the old hands, You see them as obstacles, not as empowerment. You don't see them as included voices, different voices coming to the table to say things differently. I was doing a program a couple weeks ago and a young lady came on and she said, "I'm in an organization that I'm trying to make changes. And the people who've been there for 20 years have basically said, 'We're not doing that.'" Don't even come to that. Don't come with that newfangled stuff to us. We're not doing that. So we do exclude people all the time. We do it all the time. So what am I gonna say to you to make you think differently? What am I gonna say? Let's talk about something that we don't talk about very often. We don't talk about it enough. Microaggression. It's a form of how exclusion is demonstrated. Organizations don't unpack microaggression enough. If you want to have empathy around diversity and inclusion, you have to unpack microaggression because microaggression doesn't only occur with minority people, it occurs with young people, it occurs with older people in your workforce. A person who's been in the workforce forever, somebody will say, "Yeah, she can't get technology." That's microaggression, right? It's subtle, you know, "Oh, look at Lucy, she just can't get it." It's subtle, but it's direct and it's like a knife. It's going to the heart of the person. So if we want to really address inclusion, We have to absolutely understand that we must stomp out microaggression. We have to stomp it out when we see it, right? Verbal and nonverbal exclusion exists. As an organization, instead of doing a lot of unconscious bias training, we need to do a lot of inclusion training. How to train managers when they are being inclusive and when they are not. How to train them to communicate in an inclusive way. We have to get to the place where we say to managers, tell me what's not working for you when it comes to building the ENI in your team, and tell me how we can help you become a more inclusive leader. Right? Inclusive leadership is at the core of DE&I. We could talk about equity, we could talk about all that stuff, we could talk about numbers, but if you don't get your leaders to understand inclusion, we are doing the work without any success in the horizon. But let me get back to this case 'cause I really wanna talk about this even more. We can't exclude white men. Let me, let me say that again. As much as I'd like to say, you know what, all you white men move out the way, Black people and women need to take over because God knows you've done a lousy job of including us in the past, we're barking into their territory. We're walking on eggshells, and this case has proved to us that we are walking on eggshells. We are walking on eggshells. We are walking on eggshells. We are. Because if we don't address white male exclusion, or they're feeling threatened in the workforce, if we don't address this, we are going to have more cases like this. So how do we foster inclusion with white males at the table? And how do we not fire somebody and replace them with two— a Black woman and a white woman? See, we also— let me, let me pause for a second. Let me say this. As Black people and as women and minority people, Black and brown people and women, we need to not be used in the pawn of diversity and inclusion. Let me say that again. As Black people, brown people, we cannot be used as a pawn in diversity and inclusion. You know, in the old days, my grandmother used to say, oh, he's the token one. We can't be the token, even though they've dolled it up, nice it up, put a pretty happy face on it, put some lipstick on it, it's still a bad pig. It's horrible. We cannot be used to foster the re-exclusion of other people. And here is something that I— that is just— oh boy, this one opened a can of worms. Like I said, it opened a can of worms for me. A lot of times organizations will pit us against each other. Let's talk about that, because this is what this shows. This case could be viewed one way. It could be viewed as the white guy coming to complain. It could be— it could be viewed as the white guy coming to sue the pants off of his company for firing him days before his 5th anniversary. And if he was doing such a horrible job, why the hell did you keep him there for 5 years? Why was he there for 5 years? Why was he there for 5 years? So I'm not going to talk about this case because I still haven't read the whole legal stuff, and I would like to bring this back with an attorney, um, to unpack this case on around best practices that we need to move forward with. So we're gonna do that. I, I, I, I am feeling that we need to do this. But here's what I'm gonna say to all of you. If you are building DE&I programs on the back of Black people and brown people, stop it. Don't pit us against each other in your quest to make inclusion a part of your workplace. Don't say Margaret is the good one. Margaret is the one that we've blessed. Margaret is the one that we've empowered. See, there she is, our good Black lady. There she is. Oh, there is Margaret. Because when you do that, when you pit us against each other or you elevate us by deflating this white guy, then what happens is he sues and we feel guilty for having taken his job. We feel guilty because at the end of the day, now our self-conscious self is coming to the table to say, I didn't necessarily earn this, they gave this to me and they kicked the white guy out to give me the spot. So I talked last week about emotional taxation and how you guys tax us emotionally and psychologically when it comes to diversity and inclusion. But let me tell you, if you take this white guy out of his spot and you put a Black woman and a white woman in there, and you put them in, you're also creating psychological trauma for me. You're creating psychological trauma for me. You are. So you can't do inclusion on the backs of Black and brown people. And on the back of women. You can't do it. We have to get much more strategic about what we're doing and why we're doing it. DE&I is a long-range process. DE&I has lots of ways to go, but we have to unpack inclusion at the most granular level. As I said, you may let me in the room, but you don't want to hear my voice. You may let me in the room, you may craft my ideas as yours and never give me credit for it. You might let me in the room and when I leave the room, you talk badly about me. You may let me in the room and then try to figure out ways to get me out of there after you've let me in the room. All of that is a part of what happens behind the scenes after you create your diversity inclusion policy. Because as much as some of you wanna champion DE&I, you really don't want it to permeate into your own territory. So this case, which I put in the chat for those of you who hadn't heard of it before, it's also on my LinkedIn page. I posted it to my LinkedIn page earlier yesterday, right? This case is highlighting the holes in the process when it comes to diversity and inclusion. We have to unpack inclusion. In order for us to do it effectively, I'm gonna say it again, inclusion is an individual. Inclusion is a person. It is not a policy. Write your DE&I policies, but by God, start looking at your people. Your people have suffered under exclusion. Your people have, have lost their voice. Your people have struggled to build careers within platforms that weren't created for us. Your people have struggled with microaggression from your managers who don't want us to be there. Your people, the individuals, have struggled to find their voice in a voiceless environment. All of that has happened to us. So if you wanna do inclusion, you've got to look at us. Inclusion is about me. It is not about the policy you wanna write, because here's the thing, your policy will never create action. Your people will create action. Your people will address the processes and policies. And we cannot— yes, yes, yes, Yashica, thank you for saying that— we cannot alienate allies. We can't. There are boundaries within what we have to work in. I guarantee you that this gentleman felt, um, excluded. But here's what's happened to him, and here's what's happening to every white male that reads the article that was written about him. It validates how they feel about DE&I. They feel that DE&I is coming for them. They feel that it's coming for them. They feel that it is coming for them. They do. They feel that it is coming for them. And the only way for us to create an inclusive work environment The only way for us to create this space where we can all be included, where we can all gain equality, where we can all have equity, is to keep the people at the table. HR people, who— if this is real, let me, let me just hypothetically say this. If you decided we need to get more Black people on our executive team and we need to get more women on our executive team, Firing the white guy is not the way to do it. Sorry, that's not how we wanna rise. We don't wanna rise with you firing the white guy. HR, I'm talking to you. We do not want to rise because you fired the white guy to give us the spot. No, create two more positions, one for the white woman, one for the Black woman, put 'em in it. Create 2 more positions. Dig deep into your profit center and come up with the money to put 2 new positions in place and pay us equally. Don't pay us less, pay us equally, but don't fire the white guy to give us the spot. We don't want it that badly. We don't want it that badly. We do not want to rise in your organization on the back of your firing somebody and pushing them out the door so we can rise. No, you find a way for us to rise. Expand the top of your organization. If you got 20 people at the top, add another layer because the 20 people at the top are probably already overworked and you could actually use another layer of support. In your leadership hierarchy. But we do not want— we do not want to be the token promotion because you're excluding the white guy. So I'ma say that loud, HR, who— whatever HR this was, because obviously if you had proof that this guy was a bad employee, the jury wouldn't have given him $10 million. So let's be frank, I'm in HR, you guys know this. You know this. If, if, if you had documentation on his bad work and, and you had written him up a thousand times and he wasn't meeting goals and he wasn't doing this and he wasn't doing that, the jury probably wouldn't have given him $10 million. But he was pretty confident that you didn't have any documentation and you fired him and you gave the role to two women. And now those two women will be looked at in the organization as token hires. They will be looked at as token hires. Yes, and, and I agree, to fire him and replace him with two people gives pause. Exactly. That's why this made no sense, because obviously he was doing a lot because you had to replace him with two people. Not one, right? So to me, you lost the case on the two people thing, right? But you also set bad policy, bad policy for every other organization trying to do diversity and inclusion. Because I guarantee you, when this circulates, when this circulates, when the fact that this man got $10 million because he was fired and replaced by a Black woman and a white woman when this circulates around, every organization is going to rethink how they promote Black people and women into executive leadership. So this case, one HR decision has screwed it for all of us. Now organizations are going to say, wait, hold up, um, let me do more vetting of Margaret. You guys know what's going to happen when this thing hits. Let's vet Margaret a little bit more before we promote her. Let's vet her because maybe there'll be a white guy that sues us. That's what this case opened up. It opened up a can of worms. And I was, I'm gonna tell you, I sent this to a few people yesterday and I was in, I wasn't in a good place yesterday when I saw this. And I had to say to my own clients, just say we need a more inclusive team Please don't identify who we need to include anymore. And I'm not an attorney, but I'm already saying to my clients, be cautious in how you speak. Be cautious in how you speak. That's what this has done. So where do we move? Where do we go from here? And I always want to leave everybody with a thought process. Diversity is biology, not a process. Let me say that again. Diversity is biology. It's not a process. Okay? Inclusion is an individual. It's not a policy. It's not a policy. It's an individual. Understand how to do the deep dive on inclusion. And I said it in this early part. It's where am I included and at what layer do you absolutely begin to exclude me? At what layer did you begin to exclude me? Because there is a layer. Everyone has a layer where you turn them off. Think of it if you're a mom. Your kid is talking, talking, talking, and there's a point where your brain goes, that's enough, I'm good, I don't want to hear anything else. And you turn it off, and you've just said to your little child, okay, that's it, I'm done, I've heard everything you have to say. And the poor little child is still talking. We are that poor little child that's still talking. That's who we are. One of the things that I want all of you to evaluate is how you know that you're making progress addressing inclusion. Constantly ask yourself, are we making progress? Are we progressing in this process? And I want you to understand, don't underestimate the emotions of white men, when you're building DE&I. Do not underestimate— and I'm going to say it again loudly— do not underestimate, right? Do not underestimate the anxiety of white men and women when you are creating diversity and inclusion, okay? Do not underestimate it. We are— I am live every Friday at 2 PM Eastern. If you think there's a topic you want me to tackle or there's a speaker I should bring to the Inclusion Unscripted table, um, so that we can talk— I feel like I should be running the Red Table Talk, right? The Inclusion Unscripted table. If you think there's somebody I should interview, and I'm serious about the lawyer, I want to interview an attorney about this case. I want to get some best practices around this case, and maybe we'll do that next week if I can find someone. Join us live every Friday, 2:00 PM. Tell a friend, share it on your LinkedIn profile, share it on Facebook and on YouTube. And I appreciate all of you. Remember, it's up to us to create inclusive spaces. We must create inclusive spaces. As individuals, not as policies. Thank you all for joining me this week. I will be back next week. Not sure what we're going to talk about yet. If I get the attorney that I can talk to about this case, I'd love to do that next week. So thank you again, all of you, for joining me. See you next week. Thanks.

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 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