Episode 15 - Diversity isn't the Problem. Leadership Is.

Women are outperforming across education and performance.

Yet they are still not advancing into leadership at the same rate.

So what’s actually broken?

In this episode, we unpack the real issue behind diversity gaps in organizations and why it’s not a pipeline problem. It’s a leadership problem.

We cover:

•  The “broken rung” and why women don’t make it into early leadership roles 
•  How lack of access, not lack of talent, is holding people back 
•  Why DEI has been misunderstood and misrepresented 
•  The impact of bias in hiring, promotions, and organizational systems 
•  How diverse leadership teams directly impact business performance 
•  What both leaders and individuals can do to change the trajectory 

This is a direct conversation about how organizations operate today and what needs to change for them to perform at a higher level.

If you’re an ambitious professional navigating your career or a leader responsible for building teams, this episode will challenge how you think about diversity, leadership, and opportunity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the No Filter, No Apologies Podcast with Rebecca Sachs and Katie Shapiro. When you look at the statistics now, women are outperforming men in terms of degrees, higher education, grades in school. And then there's evidence that shows that organizations that have more diverse leadership groups, including women and people of color, they outperform competitors financially with goals, et cetera, from employee satisfaction, everything. So it does force people who are still stuck in those old constructs. Change is hard for people, but they start thinking, oh no, the system is changing and this is going to be bad for me instead of the system is changing and it's going to be better for everyone. And if you don't get on board, you're going to be left behind because your organization won't be performing as well because you don't have women and people of color and more diverse populations contributing to your business. And you need to have the leadership of your company look like your consumer or the population that you serve. If they don't, you will always have a disconnect. And women are over 50% of the population. So what are we doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Right. And if you don't have people from different backgrounds, whether it's ethnicity, gender, religion, whatever the case may be, even socioeconomic diversity, you're never going to get the innovation and the high levels of productivity that come along with that because you have so many different people with so many different thought patterns contributing. Whereas if you have all upscale white males, they're all going to think the same way. And there's never going to be any creative approach to how they adjust their business or change their business because why do they need to? You're never going to get that innovation and productivity that all these other organizations have because of the diversity that they have within their company.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

And you and I have seen that takeaway genders and take away even ethnicity. And look at every company or a lot of companies now, and every company I've ever worked for has used some sort of personality test, you know, disc, Myers, Brakes, all the, you know, all of them. And you'll have hiring managers who say, I want this profile only. And there was that constant pushback of no, you don't. And I can use the disk as an example because something we used to always say was if anybody who's a high D, and people would say, especially in sales, no, I want everybody to have that high D in my profile. And it's like, no, you don't, because then you have too many cooks in the kitchen and you your collaboration suffers. You need a little bit of diversity. So you can look for that D in your disk assessment to be somewhere higher, but you don't want to have this exact profile and have 13 mini U's on the team. That's not productive. And when you think about neurodivergency and then diversity, gender, all of it, all of those things contribute to a higher performing team and more productivity, more collaboration, more connectivity with your consumer base. It's wild that we still miss that.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

What do we always say? You have all those high-Ds, everybody's going to be running a thousand miles a minute down the road trying to get to the finish line, but then nobody's providing the strategic map to get there, and nothing ever gets accomplished because you're just shooting for the finish line instead of actually how do we get there? How do we make this happen? What are our goals? And mapping those things out.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

We're competing for ego fulfillment. Exactly. Exactly. But so I think one of the things we were talking about before is we talked about women in the workforce and how much progress has been made. The biggest gap that we see is from women at the entry level to women at the executive level. And I think the confusing part to that is that the biggest drop-off is right at the front. It's right at the beginning. It's that first promotion from entry level to managerial. And the biggest jump, the biggest fall-off is not after that middle management point. The problem is not enough women are getting into that initial step of leadership. And when you look at women of color, Latinas, black women, the number is even significantly lower than white women. And those numbers aren't great to begin with. So I think that is a big wake-up call for people who are willing to see it that you go, oh, well, women aren't making it to the C-suite. Yeah, but the problem is women aren't really making it to middle management either. And that's a big problem. And one of the things you were saying is diversity isn't the problem. Leadership is the problem. Right. And some people could take that as an insult because it does require a look in the mirror and some accountability. But I would hope that really effective and powerful leaders would look and say, wait a second, that gives me ownership over this problem. And if I have ownership, I can fix it. I can address it. I can start shaping change and dissecting why we're having that fall-off at the front from women.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah. And one of our previous episodes with Dr. Jerry, she was talking about how men with higher GPAs are getting hired at a faster rate than women with higher GPAs when they sh the women should be getting hired too, right? Like there shouldn't be there should be no disconnect there. If you're getting those grades, you have the intelligence, you're very smart, you should all be getting the roles and moving up. And I know we've seen this in previous organizations where if you do your job well, you get a manager title. But I don't believe that that's happening to women in the workforce. I think if they're good at their job, they don't want to lose them because they see them as critical to the team and they try to keep them pigeonholed to where they are because they'd become invaluable in that role, but not like if they want leadership, give them the opportunity to have leadership.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Well, that was a key thing that you just said. If they want leadership, give them the opportunity to have leadership. And what I would like to see is more women be vocal about their ambitions. Because I think a lot of times we as women will wait until we have 100% of the skills before we even express that we're interested. And by then, there are other people who are already being considered for the role. Instead of saying expressing interest earlier, maybe where you're at 60% and getting those stretch projects and taking those steps and vocalizing it before. So I think we we as women don't have to be victims of these constructs, right? We can take steps. It's it it has to be there has to be meeting in the middle and collaboration, but there are things that we as women can do to own moving this boat forward a little faster. And I think that that's one of them, too, is expressing our ambitions earlier and putting ourselves out there and being willing to leave when you do that. Because I also see women, we stay for far too long in that capacity that you just said because because we're told we're invaluable in our role. And that feels great. Who doesn't want to be invaluable in their role? And it feeds our ego a little bit when we think, well, I'm growing, I'm developing, and I'm I'm on their radar. But then you have to say, I'm ready for the next step, and I'm going to leave because this organization doesn't value me enough to promote me.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah. Yeah. And I think um just looking going back to the generational differences. I do feel that women now graduating college and maybe um not necessarily millennials, but what is it after Gen Z or Xennials, whatever comes after millennials? I feel like they're they're very vocal and they're not afraid to say, I'm not getting what I want. I need to move on. And I've seen that in candidates that I've recruited over the last two years, they may have success where they are, but they know that they can have more success and get what they need from a flexibility standpoint to meet their personal needs more than having to be in an office five days a week. And so they leave. Yes, I'm successful here, but you're not giving me the flexibility that I need. So I'm out. And so, like, that's a proud moment for me to see because I don't know in my 20s I would have ever done that.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

But what's really funny is I think the Gen Z gets such a bad rep. I happen to love Gen Z. Maybe it's because I'm a parent of Gen Z. Yeah. But I I look at the Gen Z and I speaking of diversity as we are today, the importance of generational diversity in businesses. I think that Gen Z, women especially, but even our sons, are seeing that the dream that we were sold doesn't happen anymore. All right. There was legislation from the 80s that that changed that loyalty paradigm that you had between corporations and employees, where now the corporations don't invest as much. You don't get the guaranteed pension and everything. We have 401ks now. And we see that, we've seen that as millennials and Gen Xers. And so we've raised our kids to protect themselves from that and to look and to ask these questions. So I think Gen Z sees the game and they say, I'm not playing by your rules. I'm gonna play by the real rules. I just had this conversation with my son because you and I both know when you create a role within a company, you've got a minimum salary and a maximum salary that that job is worth based on the experience that you bring in. And there were so many times that I would see a job being set with a minimum salary. Let's just pretend it's 80,000 for the most entry-level candidate. And a Gen Z college grad would apply to that and say, my salary requirements are 80,000. The reaction would be this kid has no experience, they're so entitled, they're this, they're that. And it's no, why are you lowering their worth based on their age group? You said the job at the lowest level is worth $80,000 to produce. This person is coming in with the least amount of required experience, and that puts them in the least, the lowest bracket for compensation. That's all they're asking for. And you don't want to give it to them because of your own bias against this generation and thinking they have to earn their stripes. And I think when you do that, now you miss out on the diversity that that generation can bring to you, the diversity of thought and performance and technology. I mean, just think of all the things that Gen Z brings to the table.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

So oh, I think about the kids in colleges from going to all the college career fairs over the last six, seven years of my career. And all of these kids are dual majors. They've all, while they were in high school, worked multiple jobs, volunteer work, the amount of work that they've already done to get where they are. Yeah, they may not have real life work experience, but they do because they were managing multiple things all the time. There's no reason that we we can't bring them in, even if you think they don't have the experience because they have a lot more experience than I did when I was in college. I was not doing all of those things. I was not a dual man, like the fact that these kids, a lot of them are doing whatever business major they do and then finance. And I've always been mind-blown because I I just don't understand why would you do that? I mean, you guys you want to learn, but why would you do that?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

But look at the side hustles that they do too. Again, social media has a lot of flaws, but social media has allowed very young people to create side hustles that become full brands, that become full businesses that they're leading at a young age. And that kind of innovation and passion is something you should want at your company. And that kind of diversity of thought, again, from a generational difference. That's what's going to keep your company going forward at a faster pace and in a more competitive position than other companies. And if you keep resisting, you're you're not going to be as competitive. And I think people lose sight of that. I also think I have to get this out there while we're talking about this episode. It drives me bonkers when I hear people say, well, DEI is a load of crap, and I think the best person should get the job. The second part I agree with. The best person for the job should definitely get the job. The gap is does the best person for the job have the same access to the job? Because we just talked about women not even having access to that first level of management. And everything you just shared with us about degrees and GPAs and Dr. Jerry and performance of women and work experience of women, it's not because they're less talented, less experienced, less educated than their male counterparts. So when you look at DEI programs, policies, et cetera, if you make them about having access to, you want to ensure that you have equal access to, then you ensure that the best person gets the job. And I think everybody jumped onto this DEI is a bad thing, buzzword language, and didn't realize that no, what it is, is a pipeline for everybody's bias to infiltrate hiring and promotion process. And there's zero accountability and zero training for people in the position to make those decisions to understand that, hey, I do want the best person to get the job, but I need to make sure that everybody on my team, regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity, that they have access to these same opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, and just to go back to the ignorance of DEI, half people, half the people when you ask who are against it don't even know what it means. They don't even understand what it stands for. And so you want to get rid of something, like you don't even understand the purpose behind it, right? And I know previously we had different initiatives that we were doing to try and make it more inclusive for hiring. And I had somebody in one of my in my MBA cohort who's in HR, and I was talking about ways to organically get a diverse population of candidates. And I said, going to the different job boards, tapping into the different groups of accountants and making sure that you're going around to all the different associations and advertising within those to be able to get to the far reach. Organically, you're gonna get diverse candidates. And they were like, but you're targeting those people, right? But I'm also targeting all the other populations at the same time with the same job, and so all the people can apply, and then when it comes down to it, the best person will get the job, but we're still giving the opportunity to everyone. And looking at the makeups of the schools that you go to, because if you're if you're targeting college grads for an internship and 70% of the population's white at all the schools you go to, 70% of the population is white at all the schools, you're always gonna get white candidates, right? You're never gonna have a variety in the candidates that you target. So being able to look at the makeups of the schools and targets the different schools with the highest grades, going back to accountants, but the highest graduate percentage of accountants, and then what's that makeup look like and making sure that you're targeting different diverse populations, you're now opening it up to people who wouldn't necessarily have that opportunity. And so she was stunned when I was telling her this. So she said, but you're targeting, and then realize that she was wrong. You have to be able to give and open the door to everyone. And if you're not opening the door to everyone, you're limiting yourself, and you never really know if you get that top talent.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

So that's the greatest point is sometimes, especially a lot of companies, they target the same universities, and then different people rotate through the college recruitment job and they'll go, Well, these are the universities we have partnerships with. And then they don't tie the two things together. Hey, we lack diversity and we're recruiting from the same talent pools to go, wait a second, there's gotta be a gap here. And this doesn't mean that you're intentionally discriminating, it just means you you are unaware of your blind spots. And I think there are great companies out there, like I know you and I are both familiar with companies like Lightcast, who would give you these in-depth perspectives of your labor supply. So going above just colleges and universities, right? You could look at your market. So if you if you operate in, we're in South Florida or if you're operating in Los Angeles, California, you can look at the makeup of your market, gender, age, compensation expectations, where they live, ethnicity, everything. And then you can look and say, wait a second, the way that I'm framing my job description is alienating 60% of my labor supply. And it's forcing me into this one little bucket. And now that's why I don't have diversity of thought, diversity of age, diversity of gender or ethnicity. Right. And I just think that there is this blind spot, and now there is this blind spot with this sort of dirty word terminology around DEI that makes you not want to look into your blind spot. And I think that's a really big leadership gap that we have. If you want to be a great leader and you want to impact the results of your company, then you need awareness of your blind spots and then you need to dig into them because there are tools and resources out there to do it.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Absolutely. And then I know another site that I use that's free. Um, it's run by Deloitte, uh, but it's, I believe it'd datausa.io, and they provide breakdowns of demographics. And I've used it in marketing initiatives for one of my classes, but I've also used it with assessing the labor market and schools because it has information on colleges as well. At a previous organization, I brought to them this issue where the schools they were going to, 70% of your population is white. We're never gonna get the diversity that we need for our organization. And so I tried to expand to other schools, but that didn't really last very long. So unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

And these kinds of things take time. So you really need to have a conscious investment in that change of culture that we were talking about. Someone once said to me, a a company is like a cruise ship. It's like trying to turn a cruise ship, right? It's very slow, even when you have the wheel turned as far as you can turn it. Right. So the sooner that you accept that as a as a leader, you have a responsibility and obligation to diversify your team. And as a leader, you know that you have blind spots that you can't define yet. Yeah. And you need to make a conscious effort to dig into those blind spots and then use the tools and resources that are out there for you to jump in and start start fixing them, start putting your lenses on, you know, and creating awareness and changing some policy and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

And also use your leadership team around you. If someone's bringing the information to you, they're not bringing it to you just to be like, ha ha, look what you're not doing. They're bringing it to you because they want to help you be better and your organization be better. And so take that opportunity, listen, then look in the mirror and see where the gaps are and the disconnects are.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yes. I had a boss once who his expertise prior to being my boss at the time was in diversity, equity, and inclusion. And everything we did, he would say, Katie, inclusion before diversity, always. If you keep inclusion at the forefront of what you do, diversity will come organically. And that was something we were trying to teach leaders to. Don't look at your team and say, is my team diverse? Because then it's going to misguide you on how to actually add diversity. But if you look and you say, Is my team inclusive? Are my positions inclusive? And going back to what you and I were just talking about, which does everyone have access to the same opportunities here? That's inclusion. And if you look at does everyone have access, and a small population doesn't, you fix the access point, right? And then inclusion happens and diversity follows. And now you've got a higher performing team as a result of that.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah. And that's one of the things, you know, with my mom being a special ed teacher, one of the things that she always said too, you always put the person before the disability or whatever the case may be, but inclusion before anything else. You always want to have that inclusive mindset and then figure the rest out.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yes. And I think would be remiss. I know we were talking about that that broken first rung for women specifically, but you had some really great data points that you were sharing with me that women of color represent about 18% of the US population, but hold only 5% of C suite roles. And that Latino women make up 9% of the workforce, but less than 2% of executive roles. And that black women are one of the fastest growing. Groups of entrepreneurs yet remain underrepresented in corporate leadership. I want to hover there if we can for a second, as you and I are both entrepreneurs as well. But this is what I mean when I talk about women not being victims of the societal constructs. So when you look at black women being one of the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs, this is a form of resistance that the system isn't making space for me. The system isn't allowing me to climb. The rung is broken. But I have all of the knowledge, all of the education, all the capabilities. I'm doing this on my own. I'm not going to conform to this system. So what a beautiful representation of culture change and resistance, once again, being led by black women. I do need to point that out by being one of the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs. I mean, it's just phenomenal information there. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but I am excited to see women rising, especially women of color.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

One of the women that I honored for my business during Women's History Month was Madame CJ Walker. She was one of one of the first self-made women of color in the country. And she was from Indiana, early 1900s, and she created a hair serum to help with hair issues. Like she had a lot of hair loss, and some woman came around and knocked on her door, sold her some hair product, and she took that and kind of refined it and made it better because she was just constantly burning her hair off. And so her hair finally grew and it was beautiful. And so she went to all these different places around the country to help women of color with their hair needs. And then she opened beauty salons everywhere, and she had all women working for her, all women being sales rep. And there was a series on Netflix kind of about her story that was really cool. But it's just it just goes, too, this isn't a new thing, right? This is something that's been going on for years. And where's everybody else? Why is it taking so long? And why is there such a hindrance for women to still break through and be the leaders that they are?

SPEAKER_01 24:12

I think that there is an unconscious bias. Yeah. When we talk about diversity not being the problem, but leadership being the problem, this is where leadership becomes the problem. Because the first step is always awareness. You have to be aware of your blind spots. The second step is creating visibility within those blind spots and taking ownership over the fact that you have the ability to fix that broken rung for women at the beginning. If you see that women are applying to your jobs and they're being interviewed and they're being hired, but then they're not being promoted to middle management. And with applicant tracking systems and employee management systems, all of these, all of the technology and AI out there now, it's very simple to pull a comparative report of your talent in your company and remove all the personal identifying information and look at, okay, now why are we promoting men at a faster rate than women? Why? What's going on? And I think you and I have both I've consulted a number of times around diversification of someone's workforce. And I've seen the moment that managers realize their bias is impacting how they're diversifying their team. And in some beautiful ways, it it is honest. It's a it's a realization and it's an accountability and it's an ownership that I don't know why I was doing this. I don't know why I didn't recognize that I was doing this. But it took somebody pointing out their bias and showing them the data to go, I'm never doing that again. I'm not going back. I'm going to fix it. And so when you've got these constructs built over time and people are growing within those constructs, you start to accept them as normal. And then suddenly somebody shines a light on a blind spot. And now, as a leader, you have an opportunity to fix it. And I also think that we have a lot of companies who are afraid of change. A lot of leaders who are afraid of change are insecure in their leadership. They haven't received the training that they need. They don't want to turn the lights on. Because if you turn the lights on, it's going to expose you. It's going to expose your weak spots and your blind spots.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Expose the cockaroches. Yeah, nobody likes change. Everybody change is more of a struggle than keeping on par and just doing the norm. And so why would you know if it ain't broke, why fix it? But but the it is broke. It's very broken. You should be fixing it because it is broken. And you're not getting to help yourself. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yes, and there are some staggering statistics. I think one was companies with diverse leadership teams are 36% more likely to outperform financially. And let's be honest, that's that's the bottom line for businesses. You want to perform financially, that's what helps you sustain. So if you have a diverse team and you're going to increase by 36%, why wouldn't you want to turn on the lights, folks? Turn on the lights and improve. And then the other one, I think you shared this one was that a diverse team will make a better decision 87% of the time. I think you found that in clover pop research. 87% of the time, my team is going to make a better decision if they're diverse. I need to make this a priority.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Well, yeah, because if you think about it, prior to making a definitive decision, there's all kinds of internal debates and challenges and things happening. So you have all what ifs, right? That are accounted for and covered in those conversations before making a final decision. You're able to kind of weed through all the bad negative things that could potentially happen because you have all of these different thought processes coming together and it just makes a better decision and outcome. And so you're not dealing with this one-sided thought process. There's multiple thoughts going into that decision thought making.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

If your leadership team again or your team is diverse and they're giving you those diverse perspectives of your product or service, you enhance your service based on those perspectives and more consumers buy. But then on the flip side, and this is something else I thought was really great that you shared, inclusive organizations, this was from Deloitte, see 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

So now when you have an inclusive organization, your employees are making more money, they have more cash flow, they're going out and putting it back into the economy. And so all of this pressure on why DEI is a bad thing, it's actually a punishment to everyone. Everyone in all different ways. If you just take a moment to educate yourself, you'll see that inclusivity and diverse workforce policies are not handouts. Right. They're actually embracing everyone and making it better for society as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

They're a benefit to your business and your bottom line. And I think that's the piece that everybody's missing. And so here we are. Yes, AI is something in the world that's making people be more efficient, companies be more efficient, yet they're laying off all these people because they think AI is going to replace everybody, where AI is meant to be a tool to assist with human intervention, not just on its own. But when you lack that diverse thinking and the people who are going to challenge you at the top to not get rid of all these people, you're going to see all these layoffs too. And so here is the economy suffering because of it.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Really interesting, too, is I do love AI and I appreciate AI and the efficiencies that AI brings. And I encourage everyone if you're not embracing it, you're going to be behind. You need to embrace it. That's the reality of where we are. You need to really lean into AI, educate yourself, et cetera. Yep. What I think is happening though in within organizations is that AI is the shiny new tool. And it's being adopted too quickly without enough training, without enough education, without enough root cause analysis of processes and policies and things like that. And I it makes me go back to this is almost now, probably 10 years ago at least, I had a leader who sent me to a conference, and this was AI was just sort of tripping its toe in. And there was a leader she was talking about HR systems, and she said you have to be very careful about automation of HR systems because if you have an undiagnosed bias in your system anywhere, AI technology will amplify that bias. So AI can be great and you can really use it and you can build systems and platforms with it, but you better get down into the nitty-gritty of your process and you better train your leaders. And this was specific to HR systems, but because otherwise you're going to have a bigger problem on your hands. And we've seen that with some lawsuits that are happening now on these from a talent perspective, the auto-scoring and auto-rejection of candidates. If you're accidentally, because you have an undiagnosed blind spot, you're building your bias into your recruiting process. And then before you know it, you've got age discrimination, gender discrimination, ethnicity discrimination. Yeah. You've got it all because you didn't take the time to train your leaders appropriately.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Well, and that's like if you're using a job description that's outdated, right? That has more masculine language in it as opposed to more neutral language, you're doing yourself a disservice there, right? Because you're you have that type of language and then looking at anybody's resume that may not have those terms in it. And then also think about the person's resume that you put into your AI resume screener, depending on what their experience is, what college they they went to, what type of terminology or verbiage they have in their resume, it automatically rejects everybody else who's not in line with it. So it doesn't matter if you're skilled or not with the AI systems that are in place. There's a lack of checks and balances there. That's why for resume scanning specifically, I'm not a fan because I also don't think that AI is ever gonna see what I see on a resume that another recruiter may not see too, as to why I'm gonna call that person. We also don't have laws and legalities around AI like some other countries do right now. So it's like the wild, wild west, too, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Well, I think AI lacks the critical thinking capabilities when it comes to human capital in particular. I know that's where our expertise is, but when you or I would look at a resume and see somebody with a job title that we were recruiting, they might not list something on that job portion of their resume, but we know that that company uses a similar system to us. Or we know that that role has connections with compliance organizations that we also partner with. So the transition for that person will be a smooth one, even though they didn't put it in a bullet point on their resume. And AI can't put those things together yet. Yeah, right. Right. I said that, and that's where human beings come in, where you can embrace AI and you can do it in a really healthy way. But if you are just looking at AI to replace your workforce in these critical positions where you're moving human beings around, AI will not have emotional intelligence. AI will not be able to see those things that I think good recruiters do, not the button pusher recruiters, but the good recruiters do, where they know their company, they know the hiring managers, they know the teams, and they know the other companies and the other people. And you start looking at what are the transferable skill sets, the intangible skill sets that aren't on this resume that I'm aware of. And I think that can be applied to any business, and it's just going to give you a more diverse workforce. But AI, in its current form, in many places, it's not being developed in that way.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Right. Are you familiar with the Waymo cars? So the self-driving cabs. So, like they have them in San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago. One of the issues was somebody had been in one and they needed to be dropped off at the next step. And the right that they were supposed to make was kind of a cutout. It wasn't like a hard write, and there was a truck in that cutout. So it kept going around the block because it has no critical thinking to be able to divert to drop them off, and then it dropped them off six blocks away from where they had to be because they just said stop. It lacks critical thinking. And so when you're in a self-driving vehicle and it doesn't have the way the right route to go, it's not gonna change that route because it doesn't know how. Like it is that's the scary part, right? Like, because then you're trapped in there, like, where am I going? What's happening?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

That is the scary part, but you just proved my point. If we go back to leadership, if leadership is not trained on the importance of diversity within their workforce, right, then they will lack the critical thinking, able to adapt and change a scenario. And now those same leaders are transferring those processes and systems into AI, and you're just going to create this bigger problem of a lack of diversity because you are streamlining everything into a system. There's so many components of this in today's world, but I do want to go back to that looking at black women being one of the fastest groups of entrepreneurs, right? Life always finds a way. Right. People will always find a way. We damn sure know women will always find a way. Yep. Yeah. People will always find a way to evolve with whatever's happening. And so I think we are going to force societal change, corporate change, business change by simply not conforming to these systems. And I encourage anybody who's in a minority group or underrepresented group to look at ways in which you are conforming to these systems and ways that you don't have to. I mean, sometimes it's a reality we have to conform to survive. But in a lot of ways, you can look and say, I don't need to stay at this company where nobody at a director level or above looks like me. The likelihood of me making it higher in that company is slim to none. They show me every single day when I look at that group. And so I don't need to stay here and pretend that if I just follow their growth parameters and keep working hard and keep getting more certifications, that I'm going to find myself in that spot. It is evident that I'm not. And you move on. And when you do that, these companies have to start to realize wait, why are we losing? I think I saw a statistic that said it was from BetterUp research. 40% of employees from underrepresented groups will leave organizations due to a lack of belonging. That's half of your diverse group is going to leave because you lack inclusivity in your organization. And so you're going to keep recreating that problem. And if leaders don't start changing that, then I hope that 40% grows. Because that means that underrepresented groups are waking up and going, I don't need to be here anymore. I'm going to move on.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Well, and I think also, too, with just all of the layoffs and all of the unemployed people, people are reinventing themselves or honing in on their on their skills that they're really good at and taking them to market in a different way. And I think we're gonna we're gonna continue to see a large population of people become entrepreneurs and do what they need to do to survive because corporate America is not it anymore. It's just there there's no reason to try and yes, there are places for everyone, but there's no reason if you're not in it and you get laid off from it, there's no reason to try to fight to get back because you have more skills and probably a better opportunity to do something on your own than trying to find a job.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

You do there there is a disservice to everyone that I don't think corporate America as a whole, or if you look at the C-suite of people, are considering. You and I talk a lot of times about leaders being promoted because they're really good at their job, but they're not necessarily great at leadership, right? They're a great individual contributor, but they're not a great leader. And then they get promoted to leadership and you don't equip them with the necessary training to be an effective leader. And especially right now, with all of the negative connotations around DEI, you're definitely not training leaders to create inclusive environments. And it's happening under, you know, government direction in some cases and things like that. And what's happening is now you have leaders who are actually hurting themselves and hurting the business because they're being told that it's not valuable to have an inclusive and diverse environment. And now those leaders are gonna continue to grow in corporate America. And until someone says, wait a second, we need a different level of leadership responsibility, education, and training in order to create these inclusive environments and tie it back to your business outcomes. I mean, we highlighted earlier in the episode the financial impact of having a diverse workforce, the decision making that comes with that. It's beneficial to your company to do so. So you might want to take a pause now and start teaching your leaders and building the process and building the policies to improve your organization to make it more inclusive and organically more diverse.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

Yeah, I've seen some companies while they don't call it DEI anymore, they are still doing the initiatives and they've reworded it so they don't get penalized. Because I do think that in some areas or states, the government stepping in and taking action and finding people if they are advertising DEI and organizations are still doing it, they're just calling it other things.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Well, life finds a way. But then I also think there are some organizations who might have good intentions, but they'll create things like ERG groups. And ERG groups are great for a sense of belonging, but if you don't tie business outcomes also to the ERG group, what are we really doing?

SPEAKER_00 41:09

So an ERG group for our listeners just as an employee resource group for anybody who doesn't know. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Well, yes, thank you for that. Employee resource group. So I think about that if a company has a goal to diversify for I'm sure a litany of reasons, and you have these ERGs, why wouldn't you help them and empower them to have a role in recruitment, in leadership training, to recommend programs, to recommend training programs, because now you have an area of belonging and it's tied to business outcomes, which is mostly why everyone comes to work. You come to work to do a good job. I right I think most people do that. I firmly believe that everybody shows up wanting to do a good job and contribute and be a part of something and also feel that sense of belonging. You can create both and it benefits everyone, it benefits the employee, it benefits the organization, it benefits society. So what are we doing?

unknown 42:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

We're doing it because we have people stuck in their ways and they're the ones running the companies. And I think in closing, if we were to make one statement, Rebecca, it would be when you think of diversity, don't think of it as a hiring initiative. This is a leadership decision that is multifaceted and complex, and you are a fool if you are not working through your leadership program.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Yeah, I agree. And it is something that is continuous. We've said this before that progress doesn't happen overnight, and awareness is the first step. And so if you have lack of diversity within your organization, take a look in the mirror, especially if you're in a leadership role, and have some self-awareness and then have the conversations with the people around you, the other leaders, and see if they see the same things that you're seeing within the company.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

It only takes one person to start change, it does only take one person or a few people, and I think you and I always like to give people takeaways, right? So my takeaway to listeners who are not in a leadership position is to look for areas where you may be conforming to these outdated systems and look for opportunities to stop conforming there. And then if you want to lead from a position where you don't have authority, perhaps you're not in a leadership position, but you are a member of an ERG group or you are a member of a company that is open to this dialogue, then look for opportunities in your organization where you can say, hey, how are we looking at our labor supplies when we're hiring? How are our job descriptions written? Do they alienate populations of people with the terminology that we're using? There are ways that you can influence your organization without being a leader. That would be one. And then my takeaway for leaders would be to do an assessment of who gets promoted in your organization and why. How do they compare to the other people on your teams? Who is getting visibility in leadership meetings and why? Yep. And who is getting mentorship or sponsorship in your organization and why? And if you just answer those open-ended questions, you might end up diagnosing some blind spots that you have. And then from there, you decide what you're going to do and what kind of leader or company you're going to be.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Yeah. And I think in addition for the leaders, ensure that if you have talent on your team that wants to get into leadership, advocate for them too. Make sure that you're helping to sponsor and support those people on your team who are looking to get to the next step. And if you do advocate and sponsor for them and your organization doesn't see the value that they bring, maybe it's time for both you and that person to find another opportunity. Fellows and all your socials, NFNA Podcast. Until next time.