110 | Unlocking The Secret to Transformational Change | Sophia Kristjansson

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

If you don't have diverse perspectives, if you don't have different kinds of people in all layers of your business, you are leaving business on the table. You are basically leaving money on the table and saying, oh, I, I really don't care about that.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you back. First of all, as I always do, a quick thank you to our friends and supporters, Workvivo. You should absolutely be talking to them if you are struggling with communicating with that hybrid workforce that we are all now having to get to grips with as a result of the pandemic. You'll hear more from them later, but in the meantime, you can have a look at them at workvivo.com. Vivo.com. So my guest today, really excited, we're gonna cover a few areas that we haven't really delved into greatly before. Sophia Christiansen is a DEI people development and change professional. She's based in the US but did go to university in the UK. So we will semi-claim you if that's okay, Sophia. We'll get to that in a while. She's the US-based founder, as I said, of Lexicon Lens and is very much focused on helping leaders to create really strong team cultures, particularly during change. She also, outside of all of that, is an author and was one of the contributors to a book called The Secret Sauce for Leading Transformational Change. So, well worth having a look at that, and we will make sure that we put a link to that book in the show notes after. But for now, Sophia, good afternoon here, good morning to you. How are we getting on?

Good, thank you. Great to be here, and thank you for that lovely introduction. I will only add, well, I guess I'll to add two things. One is I'm on the faculty at the University of Denver, and so I teach, uh, change management, business strategy, uh, collaboration, and DEI structures at the school to graduate-level students, and which is just a lot of fun. Um, and then, you know, I am doing work that I feel very passionate about, but that It takes time to get you to your passion, I think, in life. So I had a prior career in marketing where I led different functions within marketing for a number of different organizations, primarily French ones doing business in the United States. I went to school in France, so, uh, 6 years there, and, and that was fantastic. So that's me. You got me in a nutshell.

In a nutshell. Normally, normally I don't get that much of it correct, um, so, um, so we're Well so far. I'll tell you what, let's kick off because this is something that we've been seeing and hearing and talking about more and more since the pandemic. I think we were probably talking about it before the pandemic, but I think the pandemic definitely accelerated the whole conversation around this sense of belonging, of people feeling a sense of belonging to teams, to organizations, to purpose, to the work that they do. Why in your books is that so important?

Uh, that is a big question and one that I think in order to answer, I have to, I have to approach it with an equation. So the sense of belonging is part of an equation where you have inclusion as the outcome, which, which is then determined by how you build a sense of belonging and uniqueness and appreciation of personal uniqueness on teams and in organizations. We all know, I hope, what it feels like to belong, to belong to a group of people, to belong in our family or our chosen family, to have a sense of safety and psychological, psychological safety, really. In where we function and where we live, a sense of home. And that's, that's, that is something that I'm striving for people to feel in their, in the organizations that they work for. Um, uniqueness is an appreciation for those things that make us different, right? The little things that, that we bring to an organization or to a team experience that are unique to us perspectives, experiences, uh, um, ways of thinking, um, cognitive diversity, all those things. And so the equation of having a sense of belonging and knowing that we're part of the group and knowing that we're there to fulfill a common cause alongside the appreciation of our unique differences equals this sense of inclusion that we're looking for in organizations. I would say that, you know, organizations are very good at operationalizing behavior, and that is not wrong. And there is a very important side of the work that needs to be done at a team level, at a leader level, which is more complicated and nuanced. But has to be done in order to promote the right behaviors and sensibilities across teams within a company, in order to achieve that sense of belonging, in air quotes, or feelings of inclusion. That's a long-winded answer.

Well, no, it's brilliant, 'cause actually you've covered a load of the stuff that I think probably leads on to subjects that we want to talk about today. You know, the one word that sprung to mind as you were talking about that was tribe. A sense of tribe, of feeling unique, of going for some common purpose, of feeling something together. Is that a reasonable word to use when it comes to that idea of belonging and inclusion?

Yes, and I think it makes people— it could make some people feel uncomfortable because having— feeling a sense of tribe or a sense of family, you know, we tend to separate work from our personal lives, but there is a sense of psychological safety, trust, rapport, transparency, transparency, candor that is built from recognizing the importance of finding something to belong to and believe in, in the work that people are accomplishing. When your feet hit the ground in the morning, you want to feel like you're belonging to a common cause. I think we all look for that.

Yeah, for sure. And one of the things that I've often said to leadership teams when I've been coaching them and running engagement sessions is, what's that thing that will make people want to get out of bed on a wet Tuesday morning in November to come to work? What's that thing that you have? It's probably your purpose, but it could also be that sense of team or tribe or belonging or somebody feeling as though they can make a difference or whatever it might be. But it's about organizations and leaders having that thing. Isn't it?

Absolutely. I agree with that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

It's interesting that you talk about the importance at team level, because I know that having done lots of work with Gallup and the Q12, particularly around action planning, and when they talk about engagement, and they say that actually from an engagement perspective, only 30% of engagement happens at an organizational level. The other 70% is driven in teams, driven by leaders. And if I had a euro for every time I'd said that that middle layer of leaders are some of the most important if not the most important people in organizations, I'd be a trillionaire by now. But it is true, isn't it? They are really, really important.

They are, absolutely. And I say that people leaders, any people leader in an organization is a catalyst for building a sense of belonging. You know, we, we get our jobs because we're, we're, we're technically savvy. For whatever area of work that we're getting into. But the business of leading people, managing people, is quite different. It's another skill set. And oftentimes we're not taught that skill set. We have to learn it, you know, in the playground of our team experience, right? Um, we, we are experimenting all the time with how to get along with one another. And the good news is that we're social beings, and so we look— we have a tendency to learn better from other people. You know, the, the challenge is that we can learn the worst, uh, behaviors, or we can work— we can learn the best behaviors. Um, so people leaders have a responsibility to create an environment for their people that promotes all the right things, and that environment is going to create the experience that the employee has of the culture, you know. So I'm not certain that it's really true that an or— that an individual will leave their organization only because of their boss. It could be because there aren't, you know, promotion opportunities, or, you know, a slew of other things, but But definitely what I have experienced is that, you know, employees will first say to themselves, you know, this manager is not what I need. This manager is not paying attention to me. This manager is not developing me. This manager isn't giving me opportunities. I'm not a go-to person for this individual. And so therefore, the opportunities are not coming through me to advance in the organization. I don't know about things. I don't have a good network here, and time for me to go. But the reason that they put down on paper in their exit interview would be, you know, I just wasn't getting the opportunities that I felt were important, and so I'm moving on. So getting to that kind of root cause of why people leave companies is challenging, um, to say the least, to access.

And much more complex than simply, people don't leave companies, they leave managers, from what you just said there. I think what was really interesting, looking back through the list of things that you said earlier on, when people feel that sense of belonging, when they are in inclusive structures, and that drives psychological safety, and it drives trust, and it drives respect, and it drives candor. For me, what's really interesting is that if you can create a team that has those aspects within it, then that actually is going to serve you as the leader really well as well. Because they're gonna be more open to giving you that feedback that you really need in order to keep getting better. Because you're, as you said, you're learning as you go. You know, very few organizations have, you know, subject matter experts in one career stream and people leaders in another. You're expected to do both jobs, aren't you?

Yes, I think, you know, if there's a subject matter expert track in an organization, It's not as common as one might think. There's always a bent, an emphasis put on people management. And let me extend this out to that subject matter expert who might not have people reporting to him or her. You know, there's no excuse for them while they're serving on cross-functional teams not to behave in an inclusive manner, in a leaderful manner. So while we place a lot of initial responsibility on the people leader, I do believe that leadership extends across the organization at every level of the organization. And building those, those skills as an individual contributor working on many different teams and being exposed to many different people is really important.

Listeners, just so you know, I am nodding so vigorously that my head feels like it might come off because I couldn't agree with that more. I think that's absolutely spot on because so often we've seen, well, let's bring in the expert on digitization, let's bring in the expert on legal, let's bring in the expert on forever. And they just aren't very nice people.

Right.

And there's no need for it. And they're not leaders. And I do believe, I agree with you that leaders exist at all levels, all the way through an organization. I only said to a team last week, you do not have to have epaulettes and stripes to be a leader.

That's absolutely right. Yeah, we remember those people who come into a team and contribute and add value and add happiness to the process of work that we're trying to accomplish. And I would add, senior leadership plays a unique role because everybody is copying one another. You know, we are creatures of habit and we will do what we see rather than what we're told to do. So having senior leaders behave consistently in leaderful ways, using best practice in inclusive ways, using best practices, very important as well, because that sets the tone for the rest of the organization. Hi, I'm Cliona from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from.

From.

For more, see workvivo.com.

I remember about 2 years ago, one of our clients used the term "leaders cast long shadows." Yes. And I've used it ever since because it's so true. As you say, it is people. People mimic what they see, not what they're told.

That's right.

So, it's absolutely critical that senior leaders are doing that role modeling piece every single day. And it's not a case of, you know, I'll do one thing and I expect you to do another. Let's cut back to this this idea of inclusion again for a second, because obviously the DEI agenda is rightly very much up and out there at the moment and being talked about an awful lot more than perhaps it was before. I still think people get quite confused with the difference between diversity and inclusion. How would you describe them?

So, diversity, we tend to think of diversity is the way people look or their background, right? Um, and in the United States, we measure for different classes of diversity. So Black, African American, uh, Latino, Latinx, um, religious, you know, sex, race, all of those things. Um, and inclusion is something that is more of a business paradigm and a leader action. So while you need diversity in the classic way that people tend to talk about it, I'd also like to stretch that definition to include cognitive diversity. Because if you look at cognitive diversity, then you're automatically going to be looking for people who are different than yourself, right? And having practices in place to support people who have not traditionally been heard or accepted, they've been marginalized, that is very important. That is definitely a part of, of the conversation. Inclusion is the result of that. It's also— let me talk about the business side of it. DEI, diversity and equity and inclusion, as we think about it in the United States, is a business way of thinking. It is about including uh, best practices for DEI in all aspects of your business, from, for example, the way that you go to market with products or services, who you market to, um, who you partner with in your business, who you hire, how you talk about your business, how you integrate different levels of diversity cognitive diversity, and other kinds of diversity at all layers of your organization. And the reason why I'm emphasizing this is because, um, if you don't have diverse perspectives, if you don't have different kinds of people in all layers of your business, you are leaving business on the table. You are basically leaving money on the table and saying Oh, I, I really don't care about that. Having people at every level of the organization who are eclectic helps you more completely do business wherever you are and however you define that. And, you know, if I were looking at diversity abroad, it's different than in the United States. We're unique and we have very special experiences with regard to that subject that we have to address outside of our country. When I work with global teams, they say, well, we have diversity, we've— we have got people from all over the place speaking all languages coming on to our global teams. So that is true. So how do you promote diverse thinking and inclusive behaviors in what you do. So there I land on the inclusive behaviors— or excuse me, on inclusive behaviors, but more importantly on, um, cognitive diversity. Okay, then if you wanted to deal with inclusion, that is the result of those things, that is the outcome. Going back to that definition of belonging plus uniqueness equals inclusion.

Okay. So how do we— so the billion-dollar question then is, how do organizations go about creating more inclusive cultures? What can they do? What should they practically be doing?

So I believe that organizations should think globally and act locally. We obviously have different legal structures across the globe for how companies need to function in different countries, and of course those laws need to be respected. Um, I would say that building on cognitive diversity is probably the most important aspect of what, uh, an organization can do, making sure that not only talent is sought but also interviewed, hired, onboarded, developed and even offboarded in a way that promotes inclusivity across the board. So that then, that leads to building the right structures. So employee, business and employee resource groups are very important to giving people a voice. They can act both globally and locally within organizations. They build, they help to build a bond. You know, you talked about tribe earlier. I would also say that going to the talent structures that you have in the organization, what are the policies and practices for hiring, onboarding, and developing people? What is done in that space and how can it be improved? To become more inclusive. And then I say, um, there's the team aspect that I talked about before, which is focusing in on the right behaviors for people to employ and emulate across teams in the organization, as well as integrating DEI as a business thought process into every aspect of the business. So for example, if you were working for a pharmaceutical firm, um, one of the issues that we have in the United States is around engaging diverse sets of people within clinical studies. And so that's a very important business change for pharmaceutical companies to look at to, to be more inclusive and to seek more diversity across their business and in their products that they serve their patients with. You could take this to tech, you know, how, how do algorithms function to either include or exclude different kinds of people? What is the functionality of that? What is the outcome that you're looking for? Who is that being marketed to? What is the availability? And you could look across the globe for that evidence to show the importance. So I've waxed on for quite a while, Scott, with regard to kind of the business side of it, but I do believe that it's very important.

Yeah. And that idea of think 'Think global, act local,' of course, brings us back very much to teams and brings us back very much to leaders, local leaders on teams. So if organizations are going down the route of being very, very deliberate, we spend a lot of time talking to organizations about being more deliberate about the type of cultures that they want to have rather than just letting them organically grow and spread as culture will. But if organizations are being more deliberate about creating more inclusive cultures, what specifically is the role for local leaders, just that guy or girl on the ground with 8 or 10 reports, what's their job? What do we expect of them? What do we need them to do?

Sure. So think about 5 things. Think about supporting individuals as group members, ensuring justice and equity across your team, sharing in decision-making, so building in collaboration, building in a learning culture to share in that decision-making, Encouraging diverse contributions and helping group members to fully contribute. So 5, 5 seemingly basic things, but that can become big game changers. And what I recommend to the people I work with is pick one, pick the one that you think is going to be the most impactful, focus there, and strangely enough, everything else kind of follows behind You know, people start, once they feel safe, if you're supporting individuals and helping them feel like they're members of the group, then all of a sudden they are sharing more information with you, they're contributing more and in a more meaningful manner, they feel valued, and indirectly you're affecting justice and equity.

And I think picking one of those things is a great piece of advice because people, leaders, are getting stuff fired at them all the time from above, from beneath. So just thinking about doing one thing slightly differently is powerful. And as you say, it may lead on to the next. Or once you've got that first one humming along in your team meetings and in your team, then actually pick up a second one. But don't try and bite too much off at once.

That's right.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.co.uk. Hiringchange.ie for more. One thing I wanted to talk to you about as well, and I know you've done some work in this area, Sophia, is bias. And I think that exists everywhere. And I think it exists very much around culture. When we talk about, you know, hiring cognitive diversity, when we talk about hiring different types of people, we've all got biases. And it's probably only, if I'm, if I'm being perfectly honest, in the past few years that I've actually gotten to a place where I'd say to myself, Hang on a minute now, that thought that you've just had, why did you have that thought and not another thought? And I find that to be really powerful that at least I've gotten to the point in my life where I can challenge myself to say, why did I just think that about that situation? Why did I not think something else? And it exists.

Right.

Bias just exists. But what do you believe we can do to try and combat it in the workplace?

So first of all, congratulations on getting to that point. Uh, it— I think it's a challenging thing to work with. I'd like to reframe the question in a sense, because we're, we're always thinking about we have to combat something, we have to fight against it, we need to, um, we need to eradicate it, you know, it's a bad thing. Um, some bias is actually a positive. Most bias is not, um, and I don't want people to feel like they have to go to war with themselves to figure it out. What I like to do is provoke people to think, to, to, to, to gain their awareness of their own biases, and then to challenge them to think differently. And that process of gaining awareness and acting differently takes a little time because we're building new connections in our brain to override the biases that we have. You know, I, I, I say, and a lot of other people say too, if you have a brain, you have bias. It's very true. So working with leaders and their teams to discover bias I think is critically important. And looking for those moments that matter in a process, in a leadership process, in a management process, in a business process, I think are really, really critical. Let me just give you one example. So I'm working with an organization and they are evaluating their talent acquisition practices around diversity and inclusion. And we have gone through the process of implementing a bias workshop in talent acquisition. And now, so they have the awareness, and they— some of them already had a good level of awareness of how bias can exist in the recruitment process. And now they're coming to the point where they're going to take action. So they have outlined their entire talent acquisition process the recruitment process, they are evaluating the moments that matter within that process. And in those moments that matter, whether it's with the hiring manager or the HR business partner, they are empowering themselves to ask questions. Why would we choose this individual over the other individual who might be more diverse? What, what is that— what does that Person A A, who, who's more reflective of who you are, what is that person going to do that is better than Person B, who actually is coming to the table with stronger, uh, set of skills for this position? So feeling that sense of empowerment to ask probing questions to get to another kind of answer or conclusion or awareness is, I think, really important. So that is one set of, of people in a function, in a business function. Then you could build out to your HR business partners and definitely to your hiring managers. Again, coming back to the people leader and, and how that people leader functions within the organization and thinks. That individual has a lot of pressure on him or her They have to think about the business from all aspects. So they're building out a functional business of their own within this larger business to execute on work. How are they going to get there in the best way possible that is most inclusive and shows the most diversity that they possibly can? Those are some of the ways that you can do it.

And I love that. And I think that whole idea that— and thank you for reframing the question, because you're right, it's not necessarily about combating or getting rid of bias. There is some bias, as you say, is okay. There's lots that isn't okay. But I think the starting point, as you pointed out there, and it's something that I speak to groups about often, which is a line that we use in sessions is awareness precedes action.

Yes, absolutely. It's always the case, hopefully. When it's not the case, we get ourselves into trouble.

Yeah, for sure. But you can't take action unless you've got an awareness that there's a different or a better way to do something or a better way to think about a situation. Or maybe that's my 50-year-old white male bias kicking in to a Latin American 22-year-old female. But recognizing that's really, really important.

It is. It's very important. And what happens with people who who have traditionally had more privilege and are not aware of their biases is that during moments of stress, that individual will say something that exhibits their bias that then sounds perhaps like a microaggression toward an individual who has not had as much voice or who's been traditionally marginalized. And so gaining perspective on what we say and how it affects other people. It takes time, and it takes energy, and it takes listening. And that is a skill, listening, that I think is foundational to, to this DEI process, to a change management process, to a learning and development process that people leaders tend to poo-poo because they, they're busy, they have too many things going on. But again, coming back to what you had talked about at the beginning of this, people leaders, those middle-level leaders in organizations, are really critical to the experience that their employees are going to have in the organization. So it behooves them to learn the skill.

Yeah, for sure. And even if people think they are listening, generally, we know they're not. They're not actively listening. They're waiting for you to get to a point so they can respond. So, definitely one worth having a little think about. As we get towards the end of our conversation, Sophia, one thing that we haven't really talked about is the role of values when it comes to creating more inclusive cultures. And of course, you and I have both often heard about, well, yes, we do have values. They're up there on the wall. They're not lived. It says things like integrity and honesty and doing the right thing and togetherness. And actually, nobody's ever told anybody what those words mean, or even if they lived in an organization at all. It happens all over the place. But I wonder, from your perspective, from the work that you've done, what role do values play in creating those inclusive cultures?

So, there's what is said and there's what's actually done. Right? Those values on the wall, are they put into practice? And if they're not the right values, then when do you redefine them? Um, that's maybe a whole other conversation around change management, behavioral change management. But I believe that values matter greatly, and, um, I believe that an organization that is functioning with some kind of synchronicity will make serious attempts to align those values that are on the wall with behaviors and then with evaluation, if you will. So they're followed through all the way to the bonus, so to speak, right?

To performance, to performance. It's not okay if you've done 150% of your number, Right. But you've left a trail of dead bodies behind you.

That's right.

You're not, you're not getting the money.

Yeah. And I have a, I have an example there. I worked with an individual who was a brilliant leader in terms of getting results and, you know, a top performer. His teams were always top performing in the organization, but he was hitting, he was hitting a wall. And that was because he did leave those dead bodies everywhere. And his style was quite abrasive, so, uh, he turned people off and burned some bridges. One of the most remarkable things that I found with this individual was that when we started working together and he started to understand his people impact, um, he completely switched gears. So he knows how to drive for results, he gets that, but he doesn't have to leave dead bodies along the way. And he became became one of the most introspective and thought-provoking leaders in the organization, who then turned into a mentor because he started living the values of the organization, because he behaved in an inclusive manner. Um, he was told that if he didn't make some serious changes in his behavior, that he would not be promoted, he wouldn't go any farther in the company. Now he's a senior vice president. So, you know, it makes a difference how those values are enacted. Big one.

Yeah. And I love the idea that somebody would be told, unless you change your behavior, you won't make it any further in this organization because there are so many organizations that actually don't care, just keep making the money. And however you're gonna make the money, make the money. And then we can get on with it because it's about shareholder value. They're the ones we have to keep happy and therefore we have to just keep making the money. So if there's dead bodies, there's dead bodies. You know what? We'll get more people. Totally not the right way to build an inclusive, diverse, successful organization in my book. And I don't think in yours either.

And I would add, I don't think that that's a very sustainable business model. You know, I mean, you're working for the short term, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Get the shareholder value, get the price and get out.

That's right. Exactly.

Listen, last question for you, Sophia. Sure. We're coming to the end of the conversation. I tend to ask this and kind of put listeners or guests on the spot a wee bit. But if leaders are thinking today about what they can do to create more inclusive cultures on their teams or CEOs, he or she is thinking about how they can create a more inclusive culture in the organization broadly. What's the one thing they should start doing? What's the starting point potentially?

Oh, I'm so glad that you asked that question. So I'm gonna wrap values into this. And one of the things that is so important is recognizing that there is a connection between belonging, creating that sense of belonging, and creating the feelings of uniqueness and valuing that, allowing group members to identify with psychological empowerment, and lead— leading creative processes, or maybe innovative processes across the organization. Those three things are built back into the values of diversity humility, cognitive complexity, um, and those build DEI structures and cultures that work in companies.

Brilliant, brilliant. What a great way to finish. Um, Sophia, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. If people want to get in touch with you, where can they go? Where can they find out more about you and the work that you do?

Sure. So I can be reached at LinkedIn, uh, at Sophia Christiansen, or at sophia@lexiconlens.com.

Brilliant stuff. And I presume there's a website attached there as well somewhere.

Yes.

Lexiconlens.com.

Yep. That's right.

Brilliant stuff. Sophia, it's been a joy chatting to you. Thanks so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.