E045: Exploring Inclusion & Diversity

now on to this episode. Hello. This is James and this is Jane, and

here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. We're still on our series about inclusion and diversity, pretty exciting. And today we're speaking with Dr Raymond Abdul Rachman from Manitoba in Canada. It's a really exciting conversation. I

think, yes, it is for a number of reasons, not least the fact that I believe he is in the middle of a fairly serious storm. Yes, he did. So we'll see how this goes. His little

boy's home from school, and partway through our recording, he actually loses power and bravely battles on and records using his laptop's battery and his phone to connect to the internet. I know, bless him, it'll be seamless. You won't even notice

it, but yeah, so I'm properly excited about this conversation, because there's multiple things I love about his work experience and his the subjects he talks about, yeah, so what is, what is the focus? What's the main focus? So

he is principally interested in exclusion and the way that societies have things like micro inequities. So the idea that there are these little acts that we consistently experience in our life, if we are from a minority group, that they all build up to be the sum of something far more. And we explore, we're going to explore some of the experiences that he's had, that people that he works with have, and what we can do as a society to try and improve the situation.

It's really interesting. Is it? Before we get into it, should we check in? Okay, shall we how are you? Listen to me. Listen Poor me. No. I mean, you know, clearly you are bung up, but you have brought it into my house. Yes,

I know I do feel bad about it, but yeah, so that's mainly what's been keeping me busy. What about you? Yeah, I'm

busy. I'm really busy at the moment, mostly with a very furry puppy. There's not a puppy anymore that's quite demanding this week, but also really busy with my second year. I'm into my second year of my masters. She's saying, hello, hello. I'm in the second year of my masters. Got a couple of new coaching clients, so quite a lot on loving it, though, right? Well, let's jump into the conversation.

Okay, so here we go. We're jumping into the content now and carrying on with our series on inclusion and diversity. What we're going to do today is have a little bit more of a deep dive around some of the areas of inclusion and diversity that listeners might not know as much about, and we're really lucky to do that today in a conversation with Raymond Abdul Raymond, who's joining us from Canada, from Manitoba. Where are you correct in the middle? Manitoba? Good, yeah. So why don't we start by having you introduce yourself a little bit for guests, if you could. Yeah.

So my name is Dr Raymond Abdurahman. I'm a clinical psychologist, clinical and consulting psychologist. So basically, I do work in working with individuals clinically, but have, over time, moved into coaching and consultation and professional development on issues of diversity inclusion, I moved into that space, kind of kicking and screaming. It's been, I think I've always had the interest, I've got the research in the background, but I always used to be, I always used to kind of be a little bit frustrated that it would be, you know, the token brown guy, the one who did the work. You know, the more I went into that, the more I understood the importance of lived experience, in addition to training, I rely on both when I do this

work. Yeah, okay, so, so when, when we're talking about inclusion and diversity, one of the things that we focus on a lot, or one of the strands, but it's focused on a lot, is ethnicity. What do you think the current state is from an inclusion perspective, when we think about ethnicity and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're from a religious minority as well. How does that sort of appear in day to day life?

Yeah, you know. So it's interesting, because I have, like, an intersectionality. You know, I'm a Canadian. I've a long time Canadian. Moved to Canada when I was seven years old. So it was an immigrant. At some point. I am an ethnic minority, a cultural minority and a religious minority as well, too. So have all that intersectionality there? I think, you know, I think in some ways, we've made some progress in the world when it comes to discrimination based on ethnicity. I don't, yeah, I don't. I certainly don't think we've come far enough. I think people are more aware of it. I. But I think where we fall short is we don't understand the experiences of people. I think we fall short when it comes to cultural diversity. I often say that we live in a multi ethnic society, but we don't live in a multicultural society, okay, so we have diversity present, but we're not really drawing on the experiences of that diversity. We still encourage. There's still a sense of colonialism where people are forced to kind of move towards a Eurocentric way of doing things, or a Western, so to speak, way of doing things. Yeah.

So in your opinion, then, does it feel like we're trying to homogenize the cultural identity of people in our countries? Is that where you headed?

Yes, absolutely. And you can take one good example of this is take a look at the names of individuals, you know. So what we're finding is basically a gradual kind of wiping out of this of both culture and language. You know, the number of people who come whose whose families come from different parts of the world may be British, maybe Canadian, maybe American, but their names reflect a Eurocentric background, right? And if you speak to many families, they'll say, You know what we would like? We would have liked to have given our children these names of great value, however, we didn't want to make it difficult for them.

Yeah. Do you see that sort of correlation between names and success and society and things like that. Well, actually,

the research shows that employers are 40% more likely to hire individuals with quote, unquote, white or European sounding names. Yeah, so it does have a huge impact. I mean, even even people with cultural names will often simplify it. I mean, you asked me for my name and I said, Raymond, and Frank truth is, you know, it's my full name was Abdul Rahman. My great grandfather, living in a, you know, British colonized country, decided to shorten it because he thought it was too old fashioned to Raymond. And that's how it sounds growing up. And so even when you do have a name that is of a cultural or an ethnic origin that reflects the different language in many ways, you're almost forced to, and so I keep myself, keep trying to, you know, bring back, like when I write my name, it's usually my first initial and my last name, but there's a great deal of pressure.

It's really interesting. So my my part, my partner's South African, and we were over there a couple of weeks ago, and it was the first time I'd had a conversation with kind of an understanding about this concept around names. And we were chatting to a couple of the guys who live in the area where where we were on a holiday, on them on one of their national parks, and Saska sort of turned around to me and said, Well, that's not that. That won't be his name, right? If he's from this area with this tribe, that won't be his name. So I'm going to try and, you know, I have a chat with him, and he's very quickly explained to me that it was just too complicated for the people that he lived alongside in other parts of the community, because the, literally, the noises and the sounds that are made in the Zulu language are completely different from the European language. They just and he fell and he felt, you know, that he wasn't able to use his own name, so he, you know, just picked another one. And I just, I thought, I'd never really thought about just how difficult and challenging from an identity perspective that must

be, yeah, and so you can imagine, you know, like, like, so I'm a psychologist, and so for me, a lot of the issues when it comes to work, and issues of diversity and inclusion is really about the, you know, the the emotional and psychological well being of an individual that leads to success. And you can imagine when people face these barriers where they have to, kind of, you know, almost hide a piece of themselves, yeah, when they're at work, the impact that that would have on that, you know. And the interesting thing is, it's not that these names are so unpronounceable. It's just that we're not familiar and don't make that effort. So, you know, we live in a world where we can pronounce Dostoyevsky, yes, but, you know, yeah, we won't make the efforts. We make those efforts of pronouncing those complicated Eastern European names, but we don't make an effort when it comes to this pronouncing the names of other cultural names. Now, one example of that, for example, is take, for example, the East Asian culture. It's now kind of taken as a norm that you'll have your Chinese name and then you'll have your English Absolutely and you know, to a point where, where we have an entire culture now saying, Well, you've got to have these two names, because people are not making the effort. It's not that the name you know, they might internalize that that discrimination to say, well, our names are too difficult, and they're not. It's just we're not familiar with them, but they're just getting to the point where it's like, we should give you a name that will make it easier for you in life? Well, it's

just, I mean, it's, it feels incredibly lazy, like, on behalf of like, well, it's entitled. Is both entitled and lazy to suggest that someone's name, which is such a cool part of your identity, is not worth the effort or the time to to spend. The time learning how to say it particularly like you say when we seem to, particularly in Britain, for example, yeah, we, we've worked really hard to do that in some cultures and with some languages. Yes,

absolutely. I was actually went in for a meeting with a client at a professional firm just yesterday, and the Secretary asked for my name. And I said, my name is Dr, Raymond Abdur Rahman. And her eyes bulged out, and she, you know, and she kind of looked down. She's like, Could you, could you just write that name down here on paper? And, you know, yeah, sometimes it's, it's not, I think the process of all this is not that we can't make errors. It's more the process by which we acknowledge that we might not have that information and that we're in the process of learning. And when it comes to work and when it comes to leadership, this is the challenge often, is that leaders, or people who are proficient in certain areas, it it's difficult psychologically for us to admit that we're still in a path of learning that, you know, we spent a very long time becoming very good at what we do, and now to admit fault can be a very, you know, ego defeating kind of task.

Yeah. So do you think in this sort of instance, some people are sort of fearful or uncomfortable of getting it wrong and making faux pas and things? Yes,

absolutely. And that's a big part of it as well, too. Is, you know, in addition, as much as racism, discrimination and privilege and bias still exists in our society, we also live in a society where there's a great stigma in coming across as racist and as there should be. But what it can do is it can have people who absolutely are not racist, just ill informed or don't have that information, and frankly, the world is so big that none of us are going to have all of that information, that they will often refuse to or hold back any questions out of a fear of coming across as racist or ignorant. The sad part of that is what it does is that silence just makes it look like that individual is more entitled and less willing to learn. So people will make errors. Yeah? People will put their foot in their mouth. But rather than moving forward and saying, You know what, I apologize, I'm still in the process of gaining that information, could you help educate me? Yeah, they'll stay quiet out of a fear of coming across as ignorant. Yeah, yeah. Or compounding the situation or something. It's

really, it's so fascinating. I was, I was reading an essay by a lady who's, who's, has a young child who has a severe, visible physical disability, yeah. And she was talking about her experiences of other mothers in the playground, because it's her second child and her first child did not have a visible physical disability, and she said she was talking about the reactions of other mums, and you can see as soon as you dig into it, it's just they are absolutely fearful that either they or their child is in some way going to do something that is going to offend so they just remove themselves. But that signal is, we don't want to be anywhere near you, rather than we're prepared to take the risk and ask questions. Yes,

absolutely, absolutely. And I think in working on resolutions, it's about being able to understand what we know and what we don't know and being comfortable with what we don't know. Yeah, and most of the time we get so anxious we avoid, but avoidance is the worst thing you can do to overcome any anxiety.

So So in your experience, if somebody doesn't maybe know how to pronounce somebody's name, what's for? What's for, sort of most appropriate way to deal with that situation, I

think it's simply to say, You know what? I apologize. I'm not familiar on how to pronounce a name, and I'm but could you help me pronounce it? Yeah, most people are very accommodating, as long as they feel like assumptions aren't being made about who they are, and silence Just compounds the perception that judgment is being made. You mentioned

about your work and helping people who are dealing with some of the emotional consequences of things like this, and I just wondered when people experience this kind of what site, I think your word was silence, where you go, you know, they are not included in that way. What? How does that? How does that show up in people like, what's

the what's the impact?

The impact is, is actually quite profound, and it starts really at an early age. So I talk about this idea of ethnic or cultural identity development. And if you're born in a western society and our person from a marginalized community, you are born into conflict. So you face like your identity is not represented, you are not your culture is not necessarily valued, and so you're always at odds with the rest of society, and that is related in media. It's related in workplaces, it's related in schools, and so you're always at conflict. Now, the example I give is, I give the example of my own son. You know, who's like, his name is Yusuf, but people say, you Saf, yeah. And he's like, he's six. He goes. We should change my name to you, SAF. And I'm like, Why should we change your name to you, SAF? He's like, it's see easier for other people to pronounce, you know. So he's at a conflict where he's almost forcing himself to go along with what's expected of him. When he was almost three, he said to me he didn't want to be Muslim anymore, and at three, you wouldn't know what that is. But I asked him, Oh, what is that? Why is that? And he said, Well, Paw Patrol, a cartoon he watches only celebrates Christmas. And so that identity is at a constant odds. So the impact is quite significant. The problem is, is that it's quite subversive. You know, people who experience that kind of marginalization, you start to internalize that. Okay? And so the racism is internalized. And when it's not even when there's an understanding of the impact of all of it, there's a great deal of pressure to not say anything. And so, you know, I usually give the example like, you know, if women are in a group and a man says something misogynistic. You know, might be subtle. You know, they'll look at each other and they'll make eye contact, then there'll be like, a nod, right? It'll be subtly enough that some people wouldn't notice it, but if you're from a community or a group has experienced that marginalization, you'll pick up on those subtleties really quick. Yeah, and you won't need anything. You'll know what that is. The same thing is true for people who are ethnic, cultural or religious minorities, where you'll pick up on it. The problem is, is that there's a sense of power and privilege in a workplace or in any organization or society as a whole, where people are not allowed to be able to express that. And there's an ideology of this angry brown man, angry black woman. You know that when you say something, you're often told You're too sensitive. People didn't mean it that way. And so your victimization is actually further kind of passed aside, and that just kind of minimizes your value of your experience, especially when it comes to trauma. So there are people who won't see it. There's a sense of the slang term of being woke. You know, there are people who don't see it, and they live with that internalized racism on a regular basis, and those that are more open to it and see it often can't speak against it. The psychology of the way all of this impacts people is to consider what human experience feels like. And so human experience, the way we typically tend to look at it is we consider just the emotional experience of what we go through, you know? So if we have a cupcake, it tastes amazing, and there's an experience tied to that. And sometimes we experience racism, it just produces a feeling. What we don't tend to realize is that that emotional experience is tied to two other critical pieces that influence that experience as well too. It is the is the cognitive piece, the way that we think, and number two, the way, the way that we behave. What we also don't recognize is that the choices that we make, and as a result, the thoughts that we experience and the experiences that we have are also determined by the context and the setting. Yeah, so if we live in a world that is that generally marginalizes people, where microaggressions exist in a societal way, in an institutional way, in an organizational way, that will limit the choices of people, and when they limit their choices. It it actually influences their thinking, right? And ultimately, then has an impact on their emotional experience. Now, now this doesn't just go for minority groups. It actually, actually goes for the majority groups as well too. And the research shows is that when we are not inclusive as a setting, what it does is it artificially inflates a sense of self worth in the majority population, right? And that's ultimately where a lot of ignorance and racism comes from. When people are not exposed to that diversity, they tend to see themselves as better, just because it's more and they inverse about true as well. Yes, it is absolutely.

When we have a change in settings, when the environment changes, when things are more inclusive, it opens up people's thing in the worldview, and racism decreases. And we see that in the research when it comes to leadership as it stands now, generally, people when they think leadership, they think white, and they tie more positive qualities to leadership, or leaders who are white than people who are people of color or cultural or ethnic or religious minorities. The research also shows is that when we have greater exposure to leaders who come from minority groups, our views about leadership being just white, or views about leaders who are not white, changes to be more realistic and in line with the way that people have typically seen leadership as a white standard. Yeah. I

mean, there's some great stuff in there. I'd like to unpick a few of the things that you talked about, because I think some of that's content that'll be really helpful for our listeners. I think as we got to the end, we talked about sort of role modeling and representation and things like that. But I'd like to start with some a phrase that you used earlier on. You used a phrase micro aggressions. And so some people will know what micro aggressions are. Some people will. Heard the phrase micro iniquities, would you be able to explain what both those are and maybe give some examples? Yeah,

my favorite one, and probably my biggest bugaboo, the one I get in a soapbox about, is the question, but where are you really from? I actually, I did a TED talk on that entire topic. The idea here is that microaggressions are these small, subtle ways of relaying a worldview that marginalizes people. So if you read between the lines, it, you know, and they're not always intentional ways of harming other people, but it does represent the worldview of somebody else. I'll give you a really fun example. So, you know, the question, Where are you from in certain settings is understandable. You know, if you are, you know, traveling and people are elsewhere, you're in a place where most people are traveling. But this question tends to come a lot to people who are not white, suggesting that they're not local. Yeah, and that somehow, and that's that that relays this impression that somehow they don't belong, they don't have the same rights, and it marginalizes those people. So when I was an undergrad, my friend and I used to travel a lot road trips, and he used to work at camps in the United States, and we were in the deep south of this of the United States, and we were at a camp where everybody was from somewhere else. And my friend had quickly learned in working in the states to just, you know, if people said, Where are you from, he wouldn't say the exact city. He would just simply point up and say Canada, right? So we were there, and this woman with a really lovely southern charm and accent said to him, and Oh, where are you from? And he said, pointed up, and said, you know Canada. And she looked at me, and she said, oh, oh. And where are you from? Yes. And I said, I'm with Tim, also from Winnipeg. And, oh, I just knew it had to someplace different. So a certain well meaning, a very well meaning meant to be welcoming, you know. But if you read between the lines, the idea here is that because I wasn't white, like my friend Tim, yeah, that I needed to be from somewhere else. And what that does is it reduces my rights, yeah, you know, my sense of status, my sense of agency in that setting. And that's the message that it relates.

Yeah. So the implicit underlying nature of that question in itself brings connotations, but that to some extent, force you to defend yourself, or force you to to feel marginalized and ostracized in what otherwise a well intended setting. Well, and it's but it's sorry. I

just, I'm when you phrase it so clearly and so in such a simple example, and it's something we see in Britain all the time, that is a question that so, yeah, I mean, it's just I'm thinking now, and I've been with people, friends and actually relatives of mine, that don't look like me and therefore do not meet some people's expectations of what they would expect of a Londoner and of all cities, you know. And I just it makes me recognize this, this ability to take away someone's, well, if someone hasn't got a very strong sense of their own identity, it really makes the chance that you take away their right to feel and own a piece of London and be a London, own that label, and that just shows, yeah, sorry.

And I would say that it's even problematic when you do have a strong sense of identity, and you keep getting, you keep getting that sense of identity removed from you and and when we, and we look at, when we look at who is asked that question, it speaks to a complacency about a belief that we hold about who is a Londoner, who is a Westerner, you know, who belongs wherever you might be. And that is a very frightening thing, yeah. And if we look around the world and and, you know, even if we look in the media, and I encourage you know listeners, just at this at this moment, just simply go on Google and type in beautiful people, yeah, and you're going to see that the majority of people that come up are going to be white. And the way Google Images works is basically it picks the most popular image and it shows and that's why Google Images like what image shows up first varies, because the popularity of images change, and it speaks to a standard that we have in the world that is predominantly white, and that's a very scary and what that suggests and what shows in the media is that this concept of a microaggression is not just personal. There can be those personal microaggressions that happen from individual to individual, but microaggressions are also institutional and organizational. If we take a look at who is represented in media, who is represented in in print, but even on staff, you know, you hire a person of color and you and they're the only person of color, even if you take. Take a look at leadership, and you take a look at the majority of leadership in the organization is white or doesn't come from a very cultural or religious or other sense of diversity. What does that relate?

Yeah, that's powerful. And on that you know that Google Search point, I think, I think it's not just searching for beautiful people, is it? There's so many different things you could search for it would draw up the same sort of implicit societal biases that we have. You know, back to your point, around what is a, what is a image of a leader, you know, things like that. So if microaggressions are these sort of smaller acts that do feel, you know, sort of emotionally aggressive or aggressive to identity and things about what is a micro iniquity,

I would say it's the same thing where you're noticing that one person would be getting more of a privilege than the other person. And to me, it's the same thing as a microaggression. If you think about who gets asked that question, where are you from? You know, think about having to change your name or adjust your name in order for somebody to in order for you to fit in. That's an inequity that only exists for a certain person or certain group of people. So micro inequities are the same sense as micro aggressions, in the same way that force people into into into senses of inequity. So

so the act itself is kind of a micro aggression, but the fact that some people receive these and some people don't, draws out the inequity side of things, absolutely,

but, but the impact, like I mean when you say a ton of feathers is still a ton of feathers, and so most people don't be sensitive. It's just a small thing. But you have to understand, when you come from a marginalized group, these inequities happen on a consistent and a regular basis, to the point that when you face them, you just choose not to pay attention. You have to choose the battle to fight. I myself. You know, I have the privilege of education, I have the privilege of being male. Both are not things that I would like to have a privilege for but, but they exist to so highly anyhow, and yet I could tell you I experienced discrimination or microaggressions, at least on a weekly basis, and that's a difficult thing, despite my education, despite the privilege that I might have to have. That inequity can be quite striking, of

course, yeah, and your point about a ton of ton of feathers still being a ton, I mean, minor things add up significantly. Well, I was just, I

was thinking about the metaphor of about the metaphor about 1000 cuts, and I just, yes, I don't, if anything, I think for the people. So I sometimes work with manufacturing and retail industries and the people who are living what might be perceived as society, as ordinary, everyday lives, those are exactly where those microaggressions and micro inequity is going to show up regularly. And if you experience anything, I mean, you're the psychologist, feel like I'm saying it more for our listeners, if you experience anything on a regular basis, the reinforcement of that message is just it's pervasive. Yes,

right. So we talked a lot there about microaggressions and micro iniquities, which I think is really interesting. One of the things that came up when you were speaking about that was the phrase privilege, which is something that we hear a little bit, but I think a lot of people don't really know what privilege is. Could you

sort of delve into that for us? Yeah, Privilege is a really loaded word that creates a very strong emotional reaction in a lot of people. It's a very anxiety provoking word. A lot of people don't like to use it, even in my presentations, people take great exception, even when they are people who are very proactive, who are very active in terms of diversity and inclusion, to say that somebody has privilege can really kind of throw them off balance, because it almost feels like you're intentionally saying that they're trying to be racist. But privilege is not about a personal struggle, you know, and that's the key piece people. People take these things very personally. And it's not always that privilege is about a broad sociopolitical political system. It's about a set of norms based on historical experiences that basically distribute power, privilege and benefits unequally amongst people. A lot of that can, you know, people can root a lot of that sense of colonialism when, especially when it comes to ethnic, religious or cultural inequities, but also issues with patriarchy and women. You know, there, there are privileges there, and that's why I said earlier, you know, I carry a privilege of being male, you know, which? You know, I It's not that I something that I want, but I know for sure. Yeah, there are times that I'm out with a woman or with a group, with a you know, that people would speak to me before they would speak to the woman. Yeah, you know, if I'm in a position where somebody's in a position of leadership above me, and there's a woman and someone's talking to me, assuming that I'm the person in charge that speaks to a privilege I have, yeah, and when it when, when that when that's the case. I have to understand that this privilege isn't something that I necessarily can control, but it is societal. And, you know, it's based on a almost a group think of expectations. How people like, how the world sees. Most people might see a certain situation. Now, if we're not mindful of that privilege, that's where we end up in trouble. The privilege that we hold can unintentionally perpetuate inequity and institutionalized discrimination, you know. So when we're not mindful, let's say, for example, we were never mindful about asbestos and buildings. Yeah, and think about the damage it did, right? We're like, oh, no, it's not a big deal. We can leave it in there. And then we realized it had a real it was a real health problem. And then, you know, every office building in the western world was getting their asbestos to run out of it to make sure that workplace, but we needed to be mindful of it, right? It was not that asbestos wasn't put in intentionally, necessarily. You know, people weren't trying to harm people. They just thought it was okay. We live in a world where we need to start to be aware of the impact of that privilege and discrimination, and sometimes that it can sit in our that power can sit in our left even though we don't want to. Now, when we do that, when we're mindful of it, we can now shift the dynamics a little bit. So if a if a person were to start to talk to me, when a woman in leadership is present, I would say, actually she, you know, she's the person organizing this. This is her thing. You should need to speak to her. And what it does is it starts to shift the thinking to the other person and and now gradually, little by little, we shift the way society thinks. And therefore privilege doesn't you know, privilege becomes more kind of even evened out. And that takes a while for that to occur, but we need to start to be we need to take ownership of that privilege, and we need to start to acknowledge it. It's

just really interesting. I've seen some lovely small moments in sport. So I work predominantly in sport, and I've seen some lovely small moments in sport of male athletes correcting journalists and media about us. There's one about Andy Murray, who has sort of said, Oh, you would be the first man to and he went, the first person to do this. And he went, first man, yes. Because, you know, Serena Williams did it like 10 years and I think, I think that's a, there's a lovely use of both his privilege as a man, but also his other profile to just remind everyone that there is a, there is a different way to view things.

Yeah, absolutely. And so here's, here's what happens. We take that emotion that's full of guilt, right and frustration, when we, when we understand where that's coming from, we can transform that guilt into an action, and we become an ally. And when we're in leadership, we're at work that that allyship as a leader allows us to create a sense of equity at work when we when we work on acknowledging our privilege when we create that equity, when we work on a more inclusive workplace, setting the economic output of that is significantly high. We know that countries that are more equitable, or where the communication between different groups is better, we know the economic output of that country is better. We know that in organizations, when teams are more inclusive, their productivity includes 10 times compared to those that are not inclusive. You know, there was some research, research, recent research done, and they found that with some of the large businesses in the United States, had they worked on being more inclusive with the LGBT community, they would have had an addition of like $23 billion so, and that's just with one group. You can imagine what happened when we start to be more inclusive as a larger group generally. I mean, if you think about behavioral economics, you want everybody to feel like they belong the moment you start to marginalize people, you know people are not going to feel included, and they're not going to they're not going to be spending as much. Take, for example, the celebration of holidays. If you look at a workplace, setting, schools, organizations, society, what holidays do we tend to celebrate in the Western world, even when those Western countries are really a conglomeration of very diverse and multicultural and multi religious people, those that diversity is never celebrated. And if you think about you know, we know the economy gets better around Christmas time, when people are spending more. What would happen if we were all celebrating different holidays on a more regular basis, what if everybody was buying, you know, their Jewish friend a Rosh Hashanah gift, or their Muslim friend a Ramadan or an Eid gift? What would that do with spending? What would that do with jobs? The business case for this is really strong. It shouldn't have to be, because there's an ethics to all of this, but the business case for this is incredibly powerful, right? So

it feels like there really is a clear business case for this. And I like what you're speaking there a little bit about the moral imperative as well. Like you said, you know, there's an ethical argument to it. Yeah,

I was smiling while James is smiling at me, because we've recorded a couple of episodes in this series already, and I. There have been three, three of our guests at this stage who have all used a phrase similar to either moral imperative or the ethics or the social cause. And I feel like that's new to the debate in the last few years, and it's quite exciting.

Yes, yes, yeah. Often, people are often asking, what's the business case? Well, frankly, the business case is easy. You know, you make more people and feel included, the more likely they are to work, the more likely they are to have opportunity, the more likely they are to spend, the more likely are that is to kind of generally help. You know, all of us. You know, we go further together. That's simply the case. But can we live in a world that's not equitable? Can we live in a world that favors one group over another? And I think that speaks to a sense of complacency. A lot of us think that we've come out of the civil rights movement when we did having achieved all that we do. We think that we, you know, are safe because we can all drink from the same water fountain. And the truth is, that's not the case. If you look at it, you know, we talk about the gender pay gap. There's actually a very significant pay gap between different ethnic minorities as well, too, you know, with white people earning the most. And even when you look at, you know, people say, and I don't think because of the fair argument, but people will say, Well, let's look at immigrants. And I'd say, you know, there's people, diverse people have been in Western society for a very long period of time, so we don't need to look it up. But even when you compare third generation, you know, people who've been here for three generations in a western world compared to, you know, an average white person, they're still making at least 15% less than that's incredible, isn't it? That's mindful name incredible.

And so what motivate, if we think about money as a motivating factor, what would motivate that person to work harder when we know that they're always going to be behind

eight? Yeah, well, and there's some lovely, I know it's pretty simplistic theory, but there's some lovely theory around equity theory and the theories of motivation isn't there around, you know, everything's so much of what's going on in our head is comparative anyway, so if we're already starting 15% behind someone, you know, what does that do to your morale and your motivation? What does that that awareness do constantly to be valued at a lesser level? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So

we've talked there about some some things around for way things out the minute, and the prevalence of microaggressions, and the fact that privilege does exist. And I liked the stuff that you said about privilege, about the importance of being mindful about privilege and then acting on it as a person with privilege. I think that's good. And we've talked a little bit about the case for change at an organization level. What do you think some of the things that organizations can do are that would help, you know, break this down, and help break down some of the barriers that exist at a societal level as well.

Yeah, I think there's many things they can do. I think the first thing that we need to do is not put this, you know, not make this a specialty, niche topic, not make this, you know, something on the back burner. I think this needs to be a priority for every single organization and every single business, because there's going to be diversity in your organization, whether you recognize it or not. So number one, and I think that starts with developing a sense of a policy of what that looks like and and what are the goals are you going to try to attain? Now, in order to be able to do that, you also need to be able to leave room for change. Now that doesn't mean you allow discrimination to exist, but you need to be able to create a setting where people can talk about these difficulties, both people who feel marginalized, who can bring up the issues when they feel like they are marginal, marginalized and are taken seriously, but also creating an opportunity for those people who may not be aware, who may not have the Knowledge, who may inadvertently and not intentionally, come across, you know, as disrespectful, you know, with those microaggressions to have an opportunity to learn so it decreases the anxiety on the minority side, let's say, or the marginalized side, where people don't feel like they can't bring this up anymore, because I can assure you, you know, any single person who's from a marginalized group right now, listening to this will say, Yep, I face that. I

could never speak up against it. We need to remove that barrier. Number two, anybody who's ever put their foot in their mouth has never wanted to talk about what they need to to improve, and so know that the cognitive piece never changes. There's no opportunity for learning. So the policy needs to be able to address that, and to be able to now put that into action, to say, how are we going to talk about it? What that means, though,

is that almost at every single meeting on a regular basis, organizations need to be asking themselves, what are we doing to be able to resolve this problem? What is, what are,

how far we've gotten? What are we doing? How far we come in our goals? So we need to have benchmarks to be able to achieve that as well, too. The other thing that needs to happen is to seek training in this. Now, there's a lot of training available. People can do this, diversity, inclusion training, but it has to go two fold in order for it to work. A lot of people will now pull somebody in do. This training and say, we've done it, it's great. We've got it. But change, human change, doesn't exist when we just offer a single incident or opportunity for that to exist unless the change that happens is traumatic or dramatic. So I like to think you know about flash bulb memories. So 911 you know, everybody can think about where they were when that happened, you know, or the London bombings, I knew where I was when that happened. You know, we've got these flashbulb moments now. Those are traumatic or dramatic that might create that change, and they have created that change, unfortunately, negatively towards certain groups of people. When we are trying to make change for the better, you can't rely on a single like training event to be able to create that change. I think it's a good start, but unless that training is both trained, you know, dramatic and traumatic, you're not going to be able to create that change. So the second piece of it is that that organization needs some sense of accountability, and so I tend to recommend coaching on a regular basis for other leaders, because change happens easier when it goes top down than bottom up. Because grassroots changes are harder. You have to overcome a lot more barriers, but when you're in a position of leadership, you can elicit change that goes from the bottom down that works faster. Now, in addition to that, I don't think organizations just need to consult this externally. So you can hire somebody to be a coach, you can hire somebody and to be to do professional development, but you also need to be able to consult internally. You've not you need to give voice and agency to the people in your organization, because they will understand the nuances of that organization more than any external individual, and they can speak to their experiences that they've had to say, this is how I feel in this organization. That's powerful. This is what I feel I need. I'm going to give one more piece here. We have to remember. So I'll give you an example, like a personal example. It's not a business one, but you know, my son was in Montessori School, in a very diverse class. And I And they, they only celebrated Christmas at a very high level. And I said to the director, you know, you got a really diverse group of students here, it'd be well worth your while to start to acknowledge and celebrate, you know, the holidays of their communities, these other Canadian holidays at the same level you do Christmas and, you know, and they were quite defensive, and they said, Well, you know, if it's important to them, they will ask. And that is a big misnomer. You have to remember that when you come from a marginalized population, you don't often have the privilege or the sense of entitlement, or sometimes even the awareness, if you've internalized that racism, to be able to ask for what you need, and that's why you need to be able to go one step above what people are asking for and just make diversity and inclusion

the norm. You know, we one of the things that you were saying there about starting with leadership that really resonates with me, or, you know, giving leadership an opportunity to change and helping people share their lived experiences as well. Something we did in an organization I was in as we, um, we introduced something that we called tell me anything sessions. And what we did is we'd get senior I'm sure you've heard some of the things. We'd get a senior leader, and then we'd get people significantly more junior from a specific diversity strand, or from a set of experiences, and I just have an hour to speak to that person. And that had huge impacts on some of the leaders that we worked with. And it really created allies, which was powerful, but again, it needs about space. I mean, I don't think people would always choose to speak up like that on their own. If you create an environment that invites them to then it's a fact, yeah,

yeah. And I'm just, I'm thinking about, so we've talked quite a lot about change generally, but I think there's one of the things that I think's really organizations, certainly, that I've worked with quite often. They go through periods of transition and change, which is an almost a perfect opportunity to potentially open up some other conversations. Think about doing things differently, and yet, it's usually at those exact vulnerable times where maybe people feel disproportionately at risk of redundancy, or disproportionately at risk of maybe suffering through the transition that they don't speak up. And the number of conversations I've sat and said, Well, these are confident professionals. They'll tell me if something's wrong, and it's just such a horrific assumption, because they won't, because they're in some level, they may give up something.

I think we make this mistake that when people are professionals, that they're bulletproof, and we forget the humanity in all of this. You know, both in people who are marginalized, and both who people might be in leaders who might be unintentionally, you know, maintaining a sense of inequity. And that's why it's that's why it's very critical to have a sense of coaching available in large organizations or smaller organizations, because there are times where individuals may not feel comfortable to speak up against inequities. Yeah. Or to admit inequities, and in those kinds of places, you need somebody to guide you through that process. That's why it's critical for businesses to have coaches who work in this area to guide them through this. Because what it does is it takes a human experience and then it applies it at a larger scale, so that in some ways, that organization becomes more human. You know, I think sometimes we've when, when we have organizations, it's almost like we lose our humanity in them.

Okay, cool. So we've talked about a lot of really good stuff. I like the reflections on the importance of coaching and helping people through this journey of development as they can strive towards improving their own sort of inclusion and recognition of this side of stuff, one of the phrases that we hear from time to time is cultural competence. What are your views on cultural competence? Is that something people can develop? Or, Oh, absolutely, I

think. I think most people don't realize this, but they have been developing their multicultural or cross cultural competence without even on a regular basis, anytime we engage with people who are dissimilar to us, and we actually engage with them versus just a passing engagement, we understand a little bit more about that person's world view. So the definition I like to use is actually based on experts in this area, Su and Sue, and they say it's ultimately the acquisition of awareness, knowledge and skills needed to function effectively in both a pluralistic and democratic society. And ultimately, what that means that we need to be able to communicate, interact, but also negotiate and intervene on behalf of people who may not come from the same background as we are. And so if you think about you know, if you've never met somebody who is gay, if you've never met anybody who's Jewish, never met anybody who's Muslim, you know, your ideas about that individual might be very limited, but the moment you engage with them, your competence about their cultural background. And I and I think there is a cultural difference, even in between, you know, the LGBT community and, you know, and the rest and those who are not from that community, from men and women. I think those are subtle nuances that people don't understand, but also as we know it as well too. So I think it is something that we can do. I think is something that we do do. The dilemma is that we tend to approach it from this perspective of, you know, this exoticism. You know, that we, even when we're well meaning, we kind of press our faces and hands up against the glass, you know, in an anthropologist kind of way, trying to Ooh, like, tell me about your culture. You know, this food is so tasty, you know? And yes, and what happens is, when

we do that, unfortunately, is it makes us feel like we are fish outside a goldfish bowl, looking in when we ourselves are also fish. We have to remember that we all swim in the same bowl. And in order for us to develop a sense of cross cultural competence, we don't first need to be aware of the other individual. We first need to be aware of ourselves, of our own cultural sense of self, our own biases and our assumptions. And that's where it's important to now be aware of these unconscious biases, and then when we're aware of ourselves, then we understand the awareness of the other individual, and then, based on those two, we have a culturally sensitive working alliance, yeah. So it has to go in that, in that process, and when it does, it works

well, yeah. And you know what you're talking about, there is really interesting bit of a need to start with your own, your own cultural awareness is really powerful. And if I'd call out a theme throughout a lot of the things we've talked about today, it goes back to being aware of yourself and aware of your privilege if you have it, aware of your behaviors to others. And so much of what we talk about seems to go back to that core of self development and self awareness, well,

the sense of mindfulness, right? Yeah, you know anything related? You know, as a psychologist, I can tell you anything related to change never happens with complacency. When we assume we've done everything we can do, whether it's education or personal development or anything, when we're complacent, we fall behind, and we do this a lot. We're very complacent when it comes to issues of inclusion and diversity when we're mindful about it, and it doesn't mean we need to be hyper vigilant, but we do need to be mindful about it. And when we're mindful about it, that's when we make positive changes.

You mentioned that you were talking about our unconscious biases, and we've touched on unconscious bias in other episodes we've done. But could you tell us a little bit about your thoughts about unconscious bias training and what it brings to organizations. Yeah,

I think again, it has to be followed up with more regular like, you know, some sort of follow up. It can't just be a one time thing, but bias, bias is ultimately just about the information that we have in our head. It can have a very negatively associated term. People feel like it places them in the hot seat, and they're uncomfortable. But ultimately, it's just about a lack of information. If I don't have an in from a set of information, my bias is going to go towards what I already know. And so when we increase that information, we provide a more nuanced sense of information about different things, about different people, then we reduce our bias. So so we all carry it in some way or the other. And a lot of times, people will talk about, you know, people often feel like this is a white person versus a person of color thing, and this is not that we all carry. I speak about my own bias on a regular basis. I I remember, I was coming back from from Tanzania. I do some work there, and our family stopped in Dubai. Now, my family is originally from Tanzania. That is my culture. I'm very well grounded to it. But when we were in Dubai, we were at the Dubai Mall, and that's, you know, people who are actually shopping there, not just touristing. There are people who are generally quite affluent. And so in Tanzania, where I had just come from, you know, there's this trend of taking this local fabric called Katanga and turn in and sewing it into these really vibrant and really creative dresses. So when we're in Dubai Mall, and I just came from there, when I was in Dubai Mall, there's a woman in the elevator who's wearing a dress that, to me, resemble the Katanga. And I said to her, and she's like, that's a, that's a beautiful dress. Did you it's like, it's a, did you have that made? Like, you know, did you have that made in Tanzania? Or, you know, is that a Tanzanian Katanga? And she looks at me, and she goes, this is Dolce and Gabbana, right? Yeah. So I

was like, this is this is my culture. These were my people. But I made an but I made an assumption about her social standards, about her affluence, because those dresses are not usually made by people who are wealthy, right? I But simply based on her skin color. Now, yeah, that's a very powerful thing. Now, that's the thing. If it's admitting that is embarrassing, you know, it's difficult, but it's also human. And when I do that, it might be, risk, might be, but it perhaps might be relatable, and it understands that me, even as a person of color, even coming from that culture, can make those errors. We have these biases. But it when we open it up, when we talk about it, it demonstrates a willingness to learn. It demonstrates an insight that we might have when we don't do that. The alternative is it appears to make us stuck, entitled, unwilling to and maybe even dishonest with having very little insight. So we have to remember that to air is human right. It is not just white people making these errors. We all make these errors all of the time. It's not about the errors. It's about how we deal with the errors. And it goes back to that policy that we created in our organization to say, look, we are moving through this process of becoming more competent, more culturally competent, more inclusive. And in this process, we must learn from our errors, instead of being accusatory with our errors, but we must also allow people who have been aired against, to be able to talk about this so we learn from it.

Yeah, it's a balancing act, isn't it? I mean, everybody is, to some extent, vulnerable in this effort

to change. And yet the unifying part of all of it is that we are all human, fallible, every single one of us. That's the very nature of our language. We talk about being human as being fallible. And if we can get comfortable with that then, and we're well intentioned, you know, that's 90 that's gotta, that's gotta be a lot of it, yeah, absolutely, if

we've talked about a fair amount of things there, if you were gonna have maybe one piece of advice for, you know, a smallish organization on what they could do to start the journey towards improved inclusion, particularly for maybe ethnic or religious minorities. What would you suggest they do? You know,

maybe I can give you two suggestions. One, because I'm biased initiative, but, but number one, talk to your employees. You know, talk to talk to them and say to them, we need to understand and not just talk to them once. Talk to them consistently and say we're in a process of becoming inclusive. We want to learn. We want to talk to you. You talk to somebody once. They might not open that door. They may not even be aware of what their rights might be if they have internalized that racism. But if you open that door, and you consistently open that door, eventually somebody will walk through it. And so if, if we don't create an infrastructure, if we don't create a road, nothing will be driven on. So we need to be able to create that road and have faith in the idea that that road will be driven on if we build it. And I assure you there's enough diversity in this world that that road will be driven on. So build that road. Mm. One thing that I'd like that one, there's an initiative that we've started. It's been a civic pride campaign that we've developed here in the city, called Win love. And so win love.ca, people want to visit W, I n, n, l, o, v, e.ca, and a couple of those about civic pride is looking at a city as an organization. Has been about working on becoming more inclusive as a city. And one of those tips is about celebrating everything many of us, you know, and to look at including different religious and cultural holidays into, you know, an organizational holiday. You know, are we just going to have a Christmas party, or are we also going to have a Diwali party? You know, if we can start to do that even when it's not asked for, you know, and we include people who might be from our team, who might be open to leading that, we start to have a situation where, where this is not just based on errors and learning, but also based on celebration, you know, on having some fun with it and and what better way to connect with other people through some sense of celebration? Yeah? But

positivity is excellent there. Yeah, right. Okay, so I think we're kind of getting to the end. I mean, we've had a fantastic chat. I mean,

we're not even close to the end. Unfortunately, our time has run out. Yeah, end of our time.

Is there anything that listeners could do to find out more about what you do or to learn a little bit more about the space? Anything that you recommend that they look at apart from winlove.ca? Which people

can take a look at my website? Lead with diversity.com there's a TED Talk that they can link to from there if they want to hear a little bit more about that. There's a media tab where you can hear me talk on different media outlets, and I'm attempting to write more with as much time as I can get. And there's a blog that they can follow and read there as well, too. And you can also follow me on LinkedIn. Well, that's excellent.

I'm sure people will be in touch. I'd just like to finish up by saying, Thank you. It's been an excellent conversation. I've learned a huge amount and found it enjoyable as well as informative. Yeah, thank you very much. And thank you for bearing with the problem with technology in the storm

we would have born through a lot more than that. It was a really, really fabulous conversation. So thank you. I think our listeners are going to get a huge amount out of it, yeah, and I did. Thank you so much. Very kind of you to say, thank you. Okay,

so that was our conversation. Here you are back with us. Just a little bit of time to reflect on that episode before we check out. Jen, have you got any key reflections that you'd like to bring

up favorite episode I've ever recorded, I think, right? And that includes the slight trauma of the storm, yeah, which just added to it somewhat, yeah, loads I've taken away loads of stuff personally from that conversation, nevermind what I've taken back for the podcast. But I think probably the overriding thing is that he, he presents such a sense of, I guess compassion is the word I'm looking for. You know, he recognizes that there is there is injustice, and that some of those injustice are perpetuated and committed by people, but he does not his his solution is never about punishment. It's about education. It's about bringing people back together. It's about thinking about reflecting about how we as a society can set ourselves up to avoid these things and to improve people's knowledge and understanding of what they are. So I took that way. I took away the fact that I walked in thinking, Hmm, not sure. I

think about the phrase cultural competence, and I walked away going, it's brilliant. Love it. I

think it's a really good explanation. It helps people understand something. And yeah, it took loads, loads and loads and loads of stuff. What about you? Yeah,

similarly, I found it a very reflective episode. I got a huge amount from it, as well as enjoying it. I think a couple things stood out from for me, like you. You know, compassion is a common theme that's in there. I think that a lot of the content really does touch on and bring to life equality and inclusion, which I think is really important. And I think all the content fits to, you know, treating everybody equally as valued individuals, regardless of whether they are, you know, in a marginalized part of society or if they're in the majority as well. I mean, I think the sort of compassion extended to the majority is important. And I actually really liked our conversation about the power of names as well, and the importance of of, you know, names and getting names right. I thought that was really, really good, Jane.

So I was wondering what the joke was there. James always looks me when he makes a joke. Say, Hey, I'm making a joke. The best jokes

the ones that you explain that's, that's at least my own living experience. Anyway, I really, really enjoyed that. I thought it was excellent. All right, well, let us just check out and say that we will catch you in another week as we carry on with our next episodes of inclusion and diversity. Bye, everyone.