Responding to Shifting Societal Values with Torin Ellis

Foreign.

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening. I'm Johnny Campbell from Social Talent and you're listening to and watching the shortlist. It is today, Wednesday 9th September. It's been about six months since the pandemic started in my part of the world, in Europe and the United States, probably into month eight for those of you in Asia. But that's not the only big thing that's been happening this year. We've seen post pandemic, post lockdown. Anyway, one of the biggest movements begin in society around equity, around equality, around diversity, around inclusion, driven from events that really sparked off two days after, or two days before, I should say, our today's guest was last on our show. That was May 27th. And if you cast your mind back to May 27th, it was two days after George Floyd was murdered. It was a couple of days after the Central park bird watching incident with Amy Cooper. And both incidents, particularly the George Floyd murder, sparked a global movement, an outcry against what was felt to be mass inequality and injustice, particularly in the US but extending across across the world. When we spoke last with today's guest, which is Torrin Ellis, good friend of mine, speaker and activist on equality, inclusion and diversity in the US and host of a radio show on SiriusXFM, it was just unfolding and we had, I guess, some initial feeling and outpouring of rage and torn addressed a lot of that in our last show. But it's been several months since then and we've had riots, we've had social media blackouts, protests, calls for actions. There's been hirings, there's been firings. Companies have come out to say we're outraged, we're going to change, we're going to do this. They've announced initiatives, they've talked about what's been working for organizations. People have spoken. But I would understand what's working. What does the future hold? Is this just a moment that we remember as that thing in 2020, or is it truly a movement, as was put In a recent LinkedIn article talking about the stats around postings and interests on this topic, which I'll come back to. But before we get deeply into it, to remind our audience that you can follow the shortlist and watch previous episodes and check out Torren's previous episode from back in May. And you can subscribe to future episodes by going to socialtown.com the shortlist. And if you get cut off, don't worry, you can rejoin us there or subscribe to or listen to our podcast, which is available on Apple, Spotify, and all good podcast mediums. Let's jump right into it. Torin, maybe you can give us some background. Remind our audience about your own background, your passion for the subject, and what, from your perspective, you've seen over the last few months since you were last on the show.

I'm gonna flip it up, man. We're gonna do my introduction towards the end, because what I think is most important is that we just hop right into the conversation. And I think, you know, it's important for us to. To kind of address and be thinking about that. Com. That. That question you just asked a moment ago. Is this a moment or a movement? Is it a moment or is it a movement? We got to think about the. I mean, just the myriad of ways that this conversation has unfolded over the last five, six months. We've had grocery stores impacted. You know, we. We've removed items from grocery stores. Brands are looking at the messaging and the imagery and the packaging in the. The. The story behind products that they have on shelves. We have the Motion Picture Academy, the Academy of Motion Pictures, I'm sorry, just distributed a DNI statement last night that by 2024, they're going to have a different criteria for films, whether or not they get an Academy Award. We love that. We've had more deaths than George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and. And the young man up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, can't even remember his name. It's just so many, so many of them. We have corporate America going through a bit of a reckoning. Leadership asking themselves, what can I do differently? Employees challenging them, that they have to do something differently. Communities. I mean, there's so many different things that are happening, Johnny. And, And I asked myself, how do I continue to apply the pressure? How do I continue to agitate and apply a pressure that makes people recognize that being human is not such a bad thing, that chasing diversity and inclusion is not such a bad thing. I was on a call last week with TA folks from San Diego, some dedicated individuals that want to do better around dni, equity and belonging. And one young lady said, torn, how do I get my CEO to understand that DNI is important? I've tried for a while. How do I get him to understand? I said, you work for an. Period.

Pretty simple.

What more. Listen, if you are an executive, we. We tend to hold them in the highest of esteem. We categorize them as being smart and intelligent and crafty and business acumen and all of these flavorful and positive characteristics. That's what we bestow upon them when they hit the title of Chief Executive officer. So the question becomes, if, in fact those are all of the characteristics and attributes, then why is it that your CEO doesn't seem to understand and believe the reporting from Boston Consulting Group and Catalyst and Kaleidoscope and Deloitte and McKenzie? Why is he struggling to understand the value of diversity and inclusion? See, not understanding it is different than not doing it. And when a person says, I don't understand it, I think that they are being conscientiously stupid. That's just the bottom line. So I'm happy to be here.

Jay I'm going to jump right into the news, Torn, because I want to, I want to notch it up a bit and talk about what's happening right now this week and perhaps some of, some of the reasons why you have assholes like that in roles like that and now that can still exist in our society. Niall, let's roll with our first news story. This one here might have been missed by many of our listeners and viewers, but BBC reporting that Trump was banning anti American diversity training. And actually, in fact, what he did was he issued a letter or the government issued a letter to any federal agency asking them to immediately cease and desist from funding any training related to, as it says in the document, critical race Theory, white privilege, or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests that either the US Is an inherently racist or evil country or, or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. And I'm really, you know, I look at, you know, the role of government and the role of particularly one individual who's meant to hold such a higher moral ground to the rest of society, which is, you know, the President of the United States, and I look at the impact that having someone like that in office can have on these issues, and I immediately feel, what has he done now? What has he done now to make this worse? And I'm genuinely not sure around this one. Torn, I'd love you to maybe help me understand or get your own ideas on this. I don't know whether this is a genuinely bad thing that he's doing. Is it continue? Is it more Trumpism that basically is making us take a step back towards the Stone Age? Is this the type of thing that is going to fuel that asshole CEO mentality that goes, well, why, why should I invest in dni? Why is this important? Or is this actually something else? Is this something different? Is this something genuine? Because I didn't know much about, you know, the issues being, being, being raised critical Race theory, et cetera, et cetera. I dug into them, and I am none the wiser. Tell me, what do you see on the ground? What do you know about this? What is your take on this?

Yeah, put it in context. Part of this was started by a gentleman on Twitter. His name is Christopher F. Russo. And this guy was on with Tucker Carlson on Fox News sometime a couple of weeks ago, if you know, within the last month. Uh, and Christopher F. Russo really began. And he's also a journalist to some degree, a fellow at the Heritage foundation. And, you know, his political leanings are pretty clear. Cool. I have no issue with that. And so he started to do a bit of digging and looking into some of the training that was taking place inside of the federal government, talked about some of that on Tucker Carlson's show, cited some examples of training that was happening inside of agencies. And then, of course, he said he called on the President to. To stop using taxpayer dollars to fund this sort of training. Fair enough. Got it. And I, like you or I, unlike you, I jumped on the bandwagon and I didn't read the executive order. I'll get to that in a moment. And so what happened was, of course, the President put out the executive order, or through his. His individual that was responsible, put out the executive order, and it goes in to talk about critical race theory. And for those of you who. Who are not familiar, just a very quick definition of critical race theory just simply says that the United States, through all of its development, its laws, its practices, its systems, racism, is absolutely embedded and built into such. The second piece of critical race theory that I think is the piece that causes the bigger issue is that all white people are racist. So, of course, now when I read the executive order and I see that that's what he targeted, I have to absolutely kind of step back and say, listen, as much as I despise our President for various reasons, I don't want to be irresponsible with my platform or my voice. I don't want to be irresponsible with my platform, my voice, or my keyboard. And so I actually went in and, and, and said, you know, I apologize for jumping the gun or getting ahead of my skis, if you will, in terms of how I framed it. But I'm glad that I framed it because it got a lot of people talking on my social media feeds and beyond. And here's where I think the issue is. Johnny. I absolutely believe that while he was specific in mentioning critical race theory, I know, or I believe firmly believe that he is seeding that opposition to DNI training overall. He's seeding that without necessarily saying it.

Yeah, because I, I started thinking with this torn, right, I started thinking about, obviously to the end degree, none of us are sitting here saying that every white person or every, any person is inherently racist. But, but I started thinking, well, what have you. What if you say you look like unconscious bias, right? We all know we have bias, right? And a lot of bias is unconscious. A lot of bias is conscious, though. But, you know, you could you take it to the nth degree, I think this may be to your point and say, well, hang on a second. Unconscious bias, isn't that just racism? And therefore isn't anything that says we have unconscious bias inherently going to be aligned with critical race theory? I could see that argument being made by somebody who's a Trumpian or is just kind of trying to get rid of D and I training, trying to kill the movement. And that's what worries me is that it can be interpreted in that way.

Yeah, well, first and foremost, I'm not a person who supports unconscious bias. I absolutely believe that people consciously know what it is that they are doing. Again, my example is very simple. If you clutch your bag or you move to the other side of the street, when I walk by at 5:11, £235, you consciously know that you clutched your bag and moved to the other side of the street. If I am walking in the corridor of the building and you close the elevator button so that I can't get on when you're on, you're consciously pushing that. But, and you know that you are doing that, it's the very same when people look at resumes. So I don't give them the COVID of hiding behind unconscious bias. The only place that I would slightly differ from what you just said, I don't believe that that bias is always racism, that bias is prejudice, that bias is fear, that biases. A couple of other things. It's not always to the degree of racism, which is certainly, certainly very toxic and something we should stamp out. But I absolutely believe that our president seeded the ground for individuals to say, you know what, we're not doing DNI training, not just in the federal government. Corporate America saw that too. In corporate America or some organizations like the asshole that the young lady worked for, they're going to use that as a reason for them to not have to pursue diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. One of the questions from our audience, Brian Balls, asked, you know, how does diversity hit the bottom line? It hits the bottom line in a variety of ways, it hits the bottom line because we get to look at organizations or as an organization, we get to determine where do we deliver our products and services and how do we formulate those products and those services, like what geographies, what communities should we be doing business in? More importantly, where are we not doing business? Where we can be doing business. I did a segment on Sirius XM and they talked about where the next one users coming from. All of the place that I listed were in Africa, in India, in Asia, Latin America. It wasn't in the us it wasn't in London, it was there. So how do we develop a slate of products and services that get us there? Well, in some instances we need some DNI to help us to get there. You need different people sitting at the table to help you say, you know what, this is what folks in Africa need. This is what the people in India need. This is what they're battling with. And, and this is how we get around that in developing our products and our service suites. So DNI has always been good for the bottom line. It's just a matter of, you know, organizations and leadership understanding that. And so the executive order for me, while I know he was specific about identifying critical race theory, no, I do not believe that all white people are racist. I don't believe that most white people are racist. I, I do believe that too many are being silent, far too many have been silent in the injustices that have gotten us to where we are right now. And this is the reason why you see uprising and protest and riot in cities, not just in the US but all across America, because people are tired of the bullshit. That's just the bottom line. Like why, why do we have to wake up and deal with the, the, the infractions, the microaggressions, the barriers, the challenges, the perceptions, the classifications that we're less than talented or we're not capable. Why should we have to deal with that?

I want to jump into our second news article. I want to just make a shout out first for anyone listening live or viewing live. We'd love to hear your comments, your questions. Don't worry, no question is too big, too small, too off the wall. We love to hear what you guys have to say. We'd love to hear your opinions as well and examples of what you're seeing in the front line for you, whether you're facing this challenge or whether you're part of the solution, I hope. And the second article I want to jump into comes from a European startup, kind of blog called Sifted. And it's an article, it's an anonymous article by A, A, A, A, A,. A what claims to be a gay woman who says she wants to, she's saying it's time to scrap the diversity committee. And you know, the byline here is di committees have never been effective and likely never will be. And this is, I thought this was really interesting, right, Because I read this and it rings really true, right? And basically this is kind of like this is going one step forward to say what's actually happening, right? Because there's the rhetoric, there's the let's do something about it. I'm on side, I believe in it. Like you mentioned the asshole CEO who's still there saying, hey, should we do this? Let's ignore them, right? They're just assholes. Let's hope they just disappear from the world at large, right? But even the more let's call them responsive CEOs who are saying we're up for this fight where we're going to do things, right? This article gets to the heart of what are they actually going to do? And is what they're doing actually going to work? And the author here kind of puts forward what she believes are three measures that actually do work while saying that putting a committee in place that's responsible for this. And she says herself, it's often a group of individuals who are chosen because they themselves are classified as diverse, whatever that means. And they're given the task of solving this for the organization, coming up with solutions whilst doing their actual normal job without being paid anymore. I'm being told to go back and make recommendations to the business. And the business feels brilliant because they got a committee dealing with the problem. What's, what's the reality of this kind of, kind of an argument? What are you seeing, Torren? Like, do these committees work? What are your thoughts on this?

Yeah. In August of 2018, Deloitte did away with ergs inside of the organization. They recategorized them as something different. I can't remember the name that they gave them. But, but basically the reason why they did away with them in August of 2018 is because they felt, they felt like white men were not invited to the various groups. I've never understood why a, an individual needed to be invited, if you will, to be a better corporate citizen, to be a better human inside the corporate corridor, especially white men. And so I found it interesting that Deloitte, one of the first organizations or one of the largest organizations that we trust that we refer to when we talk about research and data collection, that they were doing away with ergs as it relates to this article written by a queer woman in San Francisco. And like you, I wish she was identified, if you will, because I was actually going to tweet her and tell her to come on the show because we were going to talk about it. But when I read it, well, she's not identified. But when we think about the article that she, she, she drafted, I, I'm not sure that, I'm not sure that it's off base. You know, I, I think that ergs can be very effective. I think that the way that a lot of them have been structured have been ineffective. Let me tell you why. Most often when we get together as groups of individuals, we are either using that time together as sort of a sounding board, a airing out, a safe place for us to, to talk about our experiences, if you will, good, bad and different, or it's an organization that has an external focus, external centric mission. We want to give blood. We want to build houses for habitat for Humanity. We want to do clothing drives, book drives, and all of those great things in the community. But I think ergs need to do a better job of having internal alignment, internal synchronicity, if you will, to the various business units and departments. And so when I go into organizations and consult with them now, we determine, and we stand up how we're going to be evaluated both internally and externally. How are we going to align so we can help build and push the mission of the organization forward. So it's not just a group, a fraternity or sorority, if you will. We are an addition to the business. We are a plus. We are bringing value to the business. So in her case, what I would say, in addition to what she said. Real quick, Johnny, and I'll, I'll delineate these quickly. Number one, you can't have a weak leader. You, the leader of the ERG and the CO lead must be individuals that have cache and panache in the organization so that when they raise their voice, their voice is heard by leadership. Number two, you need to have strong leaders that can build a consensus. They can build commitment, they can build volunteer representation with 20, 25% of the FTE base. If you can't get people to join the group, then why are you leading? Not the right person to lead the group? And then last but not least, there is power in numbers. There is absolute power in numbers. And so when that 20 to 25%, those great lead and co leads go to leadership. We tend to be able to get things accomplished faster than a weak organization or one that is tokenized, if you will. And so I don't want tokenized ergs, I want effective ergs in our companies.

So when I, when I read it, you know what hit me? It wasn't that it was one versus the other. And I guess maybe she pitched it as one versus the other. Right? To me, there's a role for groups, communities, committees that want to form, that have strength, that can to take action. I guess when I read the article, it was more. What I took from it was that you can't outsource the responsibility for this effort to a committee as a leadership team, as a management team, as an organization. That was what I read as our point here was saying, if you are doing this to say, I've now appointed four new non exec directors, we've put a committee together, we have this licked. It's more saying, and I got this myself, right, myself and my colleague Holly, who I know, you know, well, we were looking at our curriculum for the next three years, obviously, as an online learning platform and this talent space. We have diversity and inclusion and equity content, including great content from yourself. And we've had new demand for that, you know, which is great that people are looking again to try and train despite Trump's efforts, efforts to make them not train. And we were looking at curriculum around that. And there are specific things around, for example, diversity that we want to do. But when we looked at the employee life cycle, you know, initially we were like, okay, we have a pillar for diversity, equity, inclusion. I went, hang on a second. No, it isn't a thing on its own. It has to just be in everything. So whether you're hiring somebody, onboarding them, developing them, trying to look at their succession, or off boarding them, inclusion has to be every infused in everything. And if we were to see it as a thing on it by itself, like where is my people will say, can we look at your inclusion content? You know, our philosophy is very much, when we, you know, we sat down and said, it's all of our content should be inclusive. You know, you shouldn't necessarily, you know, take it away. And I think it's in business, like, what are our inclusion efforts? You know, let's point at our inclusion policies. Like, no, no, let's look at how we treat people in our business and everything in there should just be inclusive. It isn't a thing by itself. And that's what really hit me. And I, what I got out of the article here was to to rethink that, to not think of it as a separate entity, committee or pillar. You have to just be inclusive in everything you do. It isn't a separate committee, it isn't a separate department, isn't a separate initiative. It's a mantra of how you treat your people. It just has to be there in everything you do if it's ever going to work.

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with you. And again, I structure it from the standpoint of how do we set up a very strong committee to that second point of it not being separate or the responsibility of your black and brown employees or your person with a disability or someone from the LGBTQ spectrum. You're absolutely right. It must be woven through the entire organization. When we consult, we simply say, you must check for DEIB at every single value point in the organization. Every value point. We've been saying that since 2013, 2014. This right here is one plus one plus one plus one will get us to where we need to be, but the math will always be exactly the same. And so it should not just be the responsibility of the Chief Diversity Officer, it should be the responsibility of that chorus, that entire employee base. And certainly that may be a bit Pollyannish to think that we'll have everyone involved in dni, but I'm going to look for it anyway. I'm still be that ambitious. I'm still going to want to see if I can get most of the employees to feel like there's something that I can do differently in the organization. So you are absolutely right. It's not one person. One person may marshal the resources, lead the charge, make sure we hold people accountable. Kind of like the Academy of Motion Pictures, they have a little measurement now that says you have to have a co lead or a person who is playing a significant role in the movie. They have to be from an underrepresented population or you're not even going to receive nomination. So, yes, we got to have some people that are going to say, look, this is what we need. We got the resources, we got the support, we got the headcount. But we need to be able to distill that down to other people throughout the entire organization. And that's what moves a franchise forward. When we have more individuals pushing and roaring in the same direction, we don't need to be competing. Johnny, you know, if I want to use the social talent platform and learn and learn about dni, maybe I do sprinkle DNI in the sourcing and boolean Section. Maybe I do sprinkle it in the employer branding and messaging section. Maybe we do break up the content and put it over in onboarding and in supply chain and technology stack review. Maybe that is a great way for us to redistribute the DNI messaging through the social talent platform. Because I believe you, I believe, like you, that DNI should be woven through every aspect of who we are as an organization.

Yeah. And to me, like, the parallels I look at are like, kindness. There isn't a kindness committee or an honesty committee in organizations. It's like, you know, either you're an organization that values honesty or values kindness or you're not. Right. You're run by assholes or you're not. But there is, I think, to your point, sometimes you might have said, hang on a second. We're not good enough. So therefore, we need an initiative to get us there. And hopefully we'll get to the point where we don't have to think about it anymore. We don't even need a committee. But I, I think it's dangerous to leap to the conclusion that, hey, we're all good. We're just going to infuse it and we're fine. Because you probably won't get it get there. You do probably need that concerted effort, dedicated people who are fighting the good fight.

Absolutely.

I want to ask you, you know, I'm gonna ask again for anyone listening live or watching live maybe to jump in with their questions they have for Torrent or any examples you want to share with us as well. I'd love to hear from you, Torren, who is doing it well? Who's impressing you from an organizational point of view, from a talent, leadership perspective, who's gone out there? Can you give us some examples of organizations of people you can say, if you check out what this person did or this organization did, I think that's a good example, a good way of doing it. What are you seeing?

So let me try to do this without naming organizations. I have a category leader in Sweet Bay Goods who are doing an incredible job. You know, they are committed to hiring more underrepresented individual individuals at the highest levels in the organization. We're working now to try to get them to a point where we can add more representation on their board of directors. But through this effort, we're working down to get the leadership to understand these are things that should be important to you. You are a category leader in Sweet Baked Goods, but are you a leader in your space as it relates to diversity, equity, Inclusion and belonging. If I did a forensic view of your organ, am I going to find good policy in place that protects and nurtures and rewards employees equally with equity? Or am I going to find that favoritism is being bestowed upon certain individuals? If I dig into your organization, am I going to find that the warehouse team has done an incredible job, I mean, an incredible job of marshalling and navigating the choppy waters of COVID And have you all said, well, look, if you all are doing a great job, then they are probably individuals in the warehouse, in manufacturing that we should be looking at and maybe targeting, developing, mentoring, inspiring to grow and excel in our organization. Or are you all only looking outside of the organization? So this organization is doing a great job of where they are now and where they'd like to be 12, 18 months from now. I have another HR tech company that is doing an incredible job. We are now working on starting erg. The ERG seed has already been planted, but they have said it's important enough that we have equity and balance and representation and safety inside of our organization. We are a small company, but still we want to make sure that it's embedded in the foundation. And so we're going to start working with them both here in the US and their offices in London. So the bottom line is you have people in places where we don't often talk about dni, where it's important. We have clients and representation at HR Tech, which is a space that we absolutely love. We got places like consumer packaged goods. You have apparel organizations that have had a reckoning over the last 12, 18, 24 months where they say, you know what, we have to do a better job. And women are talking about how they are being compensated in unequally, if you will. I can tell you right now, I want to see and hopefully I'll be able to make this announcement towards the end of next month, if not this month. I did a lunch and learn session for a hardware provider. I said, if you want me to believe that you are serious about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, to take a portion of the corporate money and put it inside of a black bank. Johnny, I can tell you in 2000 there were 40, 41 black banks in the U.S. 40 or 41. Now there are 19. All 19. All 19 have assets less than $5 billion. 19 banks, total assets are lower than $5 billion. So I said, if you want me to believe that DNI matters to the organization, take some of the money and put it inside of a black institution, an institution that can then make loans to small business owners that are black and brown because those small business owners struggle still to get capital from typical VCs. You understand what I'm saying? So if you want to help, help financially, not just in lip service, not just in a tweet, put some money behind that action that you say is important. And hopefully this CEO will be able to make an announcement in the next four to six weeks that he did that.

If you've managed to do that, that's powerful. I've been hearing probably more on the international side, you know, the impact of the movement that started in late May. And I'm hearing issues, for example, in India where, you know, it's finally being talked about around. And not just gender, because obviously it's well documented how unequally women are treated in the workplace and society across India, but also the issue around skin color. You know, it's, it's the shade of your brown skin which is becoming an issue that's being talked about there. You know, people are, are becoming more comfortable talking about in places like India, huge market, how, you know, senior executives tend to be lighter skinned than those who are lower down in the organization. And this goes back to the caste system, goes back to a huge amount of, of, of inequity that, that, that is sitting there in society that has not been addressed. And I think it's, you know, we talk about the power of a movement beyond the US I think it's been the movement in May that's really kind of driven that discussion in places like India, where maybe it would have been many more years before this came out in the open as an issue that organizations wanted to actually tackle because you had us corporates and others who are doing a great work perhaps in the US and ignoring big issues in places like India that exist for other humans who are as equal as everybody else in your organization. But it isn't an American problem only. This is a problem that there's inequity in different levels in lots of parts of the world. I'm glad to see that. It's, it's, you know, we are genuinely seeing it as not just a color issue, not just as a race issue, as a, as a gender issue. It's really kind of getting to the heart of just purity. You know, what does equity look like in an organization in all parts of the organization in all parts of the world. This is the time I really hope, I'm an optimist. I really hope. Back to the first point. This is genuinely that movement and not a moment that everything you mentioned, fundamental changes to things. Like we might ask, what difference does the Oscars make? I think media makes a massive difference. When something as global as the Oscars makes such a dramatic change, I think you'll see more diverse people in movies and that representation influences everybody because you, if you. I've seen it in the last 10 years. We all have, right. The amount of superheroes and, and heroes in general and lead characters that are women on the gender issue. There's been a lot of progress in the last 20 years. Still not a whole lot of progress on, on, on, on, on color of skin and ethnicity in the same space. Right. So I'd love to see. And those women listening will say, well, hang on a second. There's not, hasn't been enough progress. And I agree, but there has been certain progress. I'd like to see it faster. I'd like to see it across more spectrums as well, as I'm sure you would as well. So what do you think? Do you hear that Global Challenge is that talked about?

Well, I mean, I hear it because I'm in the space. And you know, that cast is in that colorism, you know, that defining of diversity and inclusion being different here versus in a place like India or in a place like, let's say, the Middle east, if you will. DNI has a different definition. And, and so what I think is important is that we not only subscribe to a myopic view of dni, but that we always continue to say that this is something that we will always be journeying towards. There is no finish line, whether it be here or whether it be over there, that we will treat dni. We will treat equity, inclusion, belonging, balance. We will treat those things the very same way that we treat our product roadmaps. When I think about all that is happening right now, and going back to the question that you asked at the very top of the short list, is this a moment or movement? I think it's too early for us to, to, to answer that question, but I think it's a pressing question that all of us should be thinking about. And then when Johnny gets tired, Johnny knows that he can tap Torn. And Torn is going to keep running the race. When Torn gets tired, he knows that he can reach out and tap five other people because they're going to keep running the race. Mr. Daryl Graves. Who's out there? K. Favella. Who's out there? Aubrey Blanche. Who's out there? Brian Balls. Who's out there? People that are going to run this particular race when they get tired. Those individuals should be tapping individuals right now. What I want to see happen is that when you watch this broadcast that you don't just simply sit up here and say, oh, you know, okay, Johnny was on with Tornado. No, what are you going to do differently in your workplace? What are you going to do differently in your community? What are you going to do differently to impact people in their circumstance? What are you going to do differently? Stop watching, do something. That's what I want to see people do. When you watch the broadcast, ask yourself, what am I going to do differently?

I like that you earlier on you talked about unconscious bias and how you disagree with it. Right. And I really, I really kind of. I like that sentiment. Right, because it's a controversial thing to say. But, you know, those of us like, we have a bias, right. And the bias may not be our fault. It may be because we, you know, grew up in a society where we didn't see certain characters as being strong or we weren't, you know, we were driven by media. Are the people around us to believe a certain type of person was a danger or a threat? Right. And I don't blame anyone for that. But you're right in that, you know, you are conscious of it when it happens. You do know it's happened. Your brain might trigger a fear or, oh, I'm nervous. But it is your choice not to do something about that. I think that's your point around action. It's your choice to press the elevator button, to close it. The feeling might be something that's just inherent in you because it's the way you were brought up, but you can work against that. But it's not going to go away by just wishing it goes away. You have to take action. It's an active process. You know, I mentioned before Joe Gersten, a friend of ours who also speaks around this topic really well across the US he used the analogy around fitness, saying everyone agrees fitness and keeping healthy is good, but you're not going to get fitness. You get off your ass and do something. And I think the same is here. You're not going to change the world. You're going to make it more equitable. You should get off your ass and do something. And I think that is a great call to action for anyone listening to the show watching here today is get off your ass and do something. The next time you feel that thing, whatever it might be, there's a person, there's a scenario, there's a name on A resume. Something happened. You kind of go, ah, my instinct is to recognize that instinct. It's okay. But you're not allowed to just let it go. You got to stop and go, I got to do something about this. I got to force myself to not have this feeling, to do something positive, to change others, to. To be, as you say, an activist for the movement. It's not going to go anywhere unless we do that.

So, I mean, I can tell you, Johnny, since September of last year, almost 12 months, I've had to make two corrections or apologies, however you'd like to categorize them. One I told you about as it relates to the posting on Trump and the banning of DNI training, which was this past weekend. The other was September of last year when I was doing a presentation in Detroit. I happened to say to a young man, you ain't black now. I said it in a way that was fond, funny. People laughed. But he was offended. He was offended. So I did two public apologies, made a donation to a nonprofit of his choice and have offered to fly to Detroit to have lunch with him and his leader at any point that they want, just so that he understands how genuine I am in my apology to him. Now, this is coming from me, diversity strategist, risk mitigator, Serious XM host. Host of Crazy and the King author. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. As I'm black and breathing, I care about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging to. Nothing matters more to me than humanity and the connection to people. I make mistakes. So I say and share that because I want people watching to understand. You will not be perfect. You will sacrifice something. If you are serious about doing something different, it will cost you something. You're going to lose a promotion. You're going to lose five or 10 or 20 Facebook friends. You're going to sacrifice something. When you stand and fight for humanity, do it anyway. Because I didn't lose anything by giving this young man an apology. I didn't lose anything by apologizing on Saturday or yesterday via social media. I haven't lost anything. My Swag is still 1,000. You're going to lose something, but lose it anyway.

I think for me, you know, what I'm taking from this one is don't, don't waste your time with unconscious, unconscious bias training. Just, just gotta. You gotta move on with that. I think it's also, if you have to make the business case to your leaders around diversity, equity, inclusion, quit your job. You're working for.

That's exactly what I told you.

Don't even Make a business case, right? And an is, an an is not a protected class. I don't care what anyone says. No, it can be called out as assholes. Move on, right? Waste your time and actually doing good. But you got to take action. And it's okay, as you said, to make mistakes. It's okay for your instinct to be wrong or off. It's not okay to just move on and ignore it. It's not okay to do nothing about it. And it will require, as you said, sacrifice, loss. But it's okay. It's the right thing to do. You're going to maybe piss someone off. Maybe two of your friends, your family are going to say, I didn't like you saying that. Maybe your boss is saying, hey, I don't like you posting live. When you say, I work for this company, can I go? Like, tough. This is what I need to do, you know, I need to make it better. And I'm learning as well. There's been a question, by the way. Just want to bring it up, Torrent, because I know it's something that it's close to your heart because you brought it to me many years ago. Is ageism mature workers, a class of employees, are higher, our hires included in DNI or is that wholly a holy, separate, separate category?

No, no, ageism is absolutely included in the definition. Which is why I said it's an extremely broad definition of diversity, equity, inclusion and belong. And we have to do a far better job of attracting all types of individuals. So yes, ageism is definitely included.

I remember back in D.C. when we first filmed many years ago together, torn. And you brought a fantastic gentleman to tell his story on camera. And he told a story of working in a, you know, quite young tech company. And I say young as in its. The company was, was, was only maybe 10 years old. And he talked about how he was afraid to put pictures of his grandkids on his desk because nobody else was a granddad or grandparent. And he was fearful that by displaying this, which he really wanted to do, that he would reveal this thing about himself that would result in him being marginalized and pushed aside. And this really struck me as, wow, I never thought about that. I never saw, thought about somebody who would, who is not told to do that. Nobody in the organization said, don't put your pictures of your grandkids on your desk. But how, you know, the structures and the kind of way we work and the way we have conversations together in a non inclusive way can make someone feel like that, can make them feel like they have to hide that part of them. And Brian, if you're listening there, it's very much part of the subject, part of the topic, part of the problem to be fixed. And something I know is very dear to Torren's heart as he's, he's brought it up many times before. And, and that wide spectrum is important. Torren, we're coming to a close. I want to, want to maybe ask you a couple of things to close us out with. You did mention that intro you're going to leave to the end, and I do want you to maybe share with our audience where they can find out more about your, your, your ideas, where you'll be talking next, where they can tune into you. And then maybe I want to. Want to maybe see if you can leave us with a tip. Now, what is your piece of advice, you know, three, four months on from your last time on the show, after all that we've been through in this hopefully movement in the beginning stages of it, what is your piece of advice you'd like to leave our audience with and then maybe tell us a little bit about where we can hear more from you or connect with you?

Yeah. The one piece of advice that I want to leave, just curiosity, you know, ask yourself, how can I be better? You know, that doesn't, that doesn't cost you anything. It just, it's a question that I want you to wrestle with. In the evening when you wake up at 2am and you reach over to grab your cell phone, as you are reaching to grab it off of the nightstand, I want you to say, how can I, how can I be better? How can I do better? What is it that I can intake in my diet on YouTube? I, I know I want to have some entertainment and some sports and some music, but. But I'm gonna give up something there. I'm 30 minutes, an hour, and I'm gonna research and, and, and listen to something different. Or, or I'm gonna read Layla Saad's book Me and White Supremacy. And, or I'm gonna do something different. What am I going to do? My curiosity allow that to take me someplace that. That's the one piece I don't want to leave people with because that defined in such a beautiful and unique way because it's yours. It's where you are. So, so that's the one thing that I want to leave people with. Where can you find me? Across all of social media at Torren Ellis. Across all of social media at Torren Ellis. I use one of four platforms and I use each one of them differently. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, the least of which is Facebook. For my own personal reasons but, but I use all four of them differently. And when I said my, my bio at the end, it's because I move through this space differently than other consultants and people that do DNI work. I don't say that to impress anyone, but to impress upon you that when you engage with me, I'm not trying to be the smartest individual sitting in the room. I'm not trying to pretend like I'm an academician. I'm not trying to pretend like I'm anything other than Torn, who is challenging you to be a better human. And so I have a unique way of asking questions that makes and prompts you think differently about how you do the work inside of the constraints of your organization. I don't need you to have the best practices of that company or this company. I want you to have your own best practices. I move differently, Johnny, in this space because I'm chasing greatness. I'm not chasing success, I'm already successful. I'm chasing greatness. I want to do things in the space that leave people, millions of people operating differently, chasing a different type of greatness, a different type of result, some of which I can't even talk about because they're really, really ambitious, but I'm chasing them anyway. And then the next thing that you ask me is where can we see? Well, I'm going to do a ask me anything series of round tables with smart recruiters. If you go to smartrecruiters.com Sign up for their events, look for the events where first one is going to be on September 16th. It's a series of round tables. I'm doing three of them. Incredible. And then I think I can say this without getting in trouble. I'm going to be in conversation with some very high power people from one of the top five tech companies next month. I'm looking forward to that. When I say I'm trying to change this thing, I'm trying to change it. Johnny Torn.

We'll be sure to share those links out, try and promote it as much as we can to get people to take action, to listen, to get involved in the conversation, to give that 30 minutes to something important and try and make this the movement it deserves to be. Torn, it's been great having on the show. I hope you come back maybe in a few months time. Let's keep the conversation going. Let's not make it just a moment let's all together try and make this the movement it's deserves to be. Torrin, thanks for joining us. I'm going to say a big thank you to all of you for joining us as well. I want to quickly just tell you about our guest next week. I'm delighted next week to be joined by Ann Fulton. She's the CEO of Fuel50 which is a platform for internal career mobility and engagement and she's also best selling author. She literally wrote the book on internal career mobility. It's a hot topic. I want to unpack it with Ann next week. Get her insights from the customer she works with, but also also from the research she's done. Talk about the lessons from her book as well. For those of you who are interested in literally the most untapped source of talent within your organization and is going to share with us those lessons next week, that's Wednesday, September 16th at 4pm UK Ireland time. Don't forget that is 11am on the east coast of the US, 8am on the west coast, 11pm in Singapore if you're tuning in from Asia. So join us next week. And don't forget you can subscribe to the Shortlist and check out any of our previous episodes our podcast by going to socialtalent.com the shortlist and you'll find more with Torren Ellis on his media. But you'll also find Torren on the social talent platform where he's one of our most popular and loved speakers making the change for hundreds of thousands of recruiters and talent leaders around the world. Thanks for listening. Hopefully you've got something out of this, something different for each of you. But don't forget, you got to take action. You got to take responsibility. You got to give and care about this movement. You actually have to give a little of yourself. Hopefully you've thought of something you can do and you'll be more conscious when your unconscious bias comes to fruition in an event. When you're looking at a cv, thinking about a candidate, you're in a room with somebody who perhaps is a little more diverse than you, and you'll remember that this is not your fault. But not taking action is. We'll see you next week.