Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Fletcher:
Welcome to The Hire Talent podcast, optimizing the hiring process for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And I have a really special guest today, Julie Kratz. She is a diversity equity and inclusion consultant and specialist. And I think this is obviously a timely topic, but a topic that is not going away, has been around for a long time. And I think it’s a really interesting one. I wanted to frame kind of the concept here around the misconceptions around diversity inclusion hiring that is going on. And some of those misconceptions that some of us as small business owners might be dealing with. We might think of this as a big business problem. And really it’s probably a small business opportunity, I think. I think as we-
Julie:
I like that.
Fletcher:
… get into this conversation, but also it’s a topic that I’m not personally extremely well versed in, but before we jump into it, so I’m looking forward to learning from you, Julie, and getting better at this and be able to share some of your great insights with our audience. But how do you get in, how do you become a diversity equity inclusion consultant? Tell us your background and how’d you end up here.
Julie:
Yeah, no, thanks much for that. I love this small business opportunity. Words matter and how you frame this as a problem. You think it’s a problem, you’re going to find a problem, but you think it’s an opportunity, you’ll find an opportunity. So I love that reframing. Yeah. Becoming a DEI educator and consultant has been a journey. So I spent 12 years in corporate America doing all the things, working on lots of different industries and was on that people leader path most of it, got my MBA, et cetera. And so I was like, checking the boxes, like I’m going to do this and then I’ll get this. And then I’ll play this game and the game didn’t make me happy. So I left and I didn’t know at the time, but it was because of a void of belonging. Severe like human element to the workplaces I was in that seven years ago, I was like, “Nope, you can’t do it anymore.” I just had a baby. And I think we’re seeing with a lot of women is like, enough’s enough. I’m not going to give up my soul to be crushed every day at work. Not that it was that bad, but it was bad.
And so, yeah, going on my seventh anniversary right now in business and starting the DEI conversation’s like white woman and I thought gender was the appropriate place to focus. And there were a lot of great gender women in leadership conversations happening back then. But I quickly realized women of color were having a very different experience. Men of color that I talked to in LGBTQ plus community is like, “No, we need broaden this and have a bigger conversation about allyship,” which I talk about a lot showing up for people different from yourself. And so that was when DEI wasn’t even an acronym people were familiar with. It was D plus I, or sometimes it was just chief officer for big, big global organizations. So I got curious, and you started connecting with these folks five, six years ago and started doing programming on anti-racism and just awareness and all the different lenses of diversity. So thankful when the summer of 2020 came that I’d been doing this work for some time before it was “cool” to do it.
Fletcher:
Remotely.
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. Now a lot of people have come into the conversation. There’s so many of us talking about this, which makes me happy. I’m really happy. You know, two years later we are still actively talking about this and I think we will continue to talk about this for so many reasons.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, when we talk about this as being an opportunity, not a challenge or a problem, I mean, I’ve seen a lot of stats around this in terms of the more diverse and equitable and inclusive your workplace is there have been a number of studies that show some pretty remarkable outputs from when you have fostered that kind of environment, but you would know the numbers better than I would. I mean, what are kind of some of the outcomes or when people get this right, right?
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 87% better decisions. And this has been studied by Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Pure Research Center, McKenzie and Company. So lots of reputable resources, the business case state has been around a while, but yeah. Better decisions, higher rates of innovation, higher profitability rates. You get anywhere from like a 21% to 36% left in profits baseline against your industry peers, when you have diverse leadership teams. So keyword there, leadership teams, not just front lines which a lot of companies focus on and there’s just better business results. And when you have employees engaged and we’re seeing this with, of course, the great resignation and folks not being able to find enough qualified or top talent, you have access to a much broader array of folks. You’re just going to have more engagement, more retention. And that’s really costly for companies right now that can’t literally don’t have enough people to do the job they need to get done.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m in the entrepreneurs group and one of the topics there, especially around diversity and is that it’s all about diverse ideas. If I were in an industry group and I was only talking about selling cars, I’m just going to learn about what everybody else’s best practice. We’re all going to end up doing the same thing. Right. So that stifles innovation, creativity and new ideas. And I think this concept really plays into that. We find ourselves, if you’re just surrounded around middle aged white men, making all the decisions, they’re looking at decision making from their background. We all make biased judgments based on our background. Now, the question is if we’re doing that in a vacuum with other people who have the same exact background experience or life experience. Then you tend to all agree on same things and-
Julie:
Group think.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Group think. Right? And that, yeah. I can definitely see how that stifles innovation and creativity and that’s interesting that the numbers really back it up and …
Julie:
It does, and Fletcher, I mean, so many teams despite what they think they’re doing for DEI are made up of that demographic. And there’s nothing wrong inherently with that, but you’re losing its perspective. So especially when for a consumer facing companies 80% of most industries are the consumers are women. So like that’s a huge disconnect, right? If you’re not mirroring-
Fletcher:
If I got to write an ad to sell something to a woman, that’s going to be a problem.
Julie:
Yeah. Well, one of the famous stories about this was like Tampax. [inaudible 00:06:49] product. For a long time, that brand is managed by men. I mean, can you imagine?
Fletcher:
Yeah. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to talk about that product.
Julie:
Empathize or maybe if you’ve had a different experience, like I’m not saying you couldn’t, but you’re probably going to have a disconnect, I’m just guessing, with the experience of the product.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Big time. Just a little bit. So yeah, I mean, the question was what does it really mean to have a diversity equity inclusion program in your company and you were beginning to talk about equity. And I thought that was interesting. It’s not necessarily handicapping somebody and giving them somebody who is less capable, a particular advantage. It’s about getting meeting people where they’re at and giving them the tools so that they can be successful. They can use the skills experiences, the background they have to be successful, but then helping them fill in any areas of development with the appropriate tools. Right? It’s not a one size fits all development program, I guess. Right?
Julie:
Yeah. It’s meeting people where they’re at and really finding ways to bring people into the conversation. And for folks that might be underrepresented, that’s going to look a lot different. So when we talk about DEI, I think it’s really important that we talk about things across those terms, right? So diversity’s representation, equity is equitable treatment. I mean, people where they’re at and I is including them because people don’t stay places they don’t feel connected to. It’s a human primal need. So I think for listeners, it’s really having that defined up front, what do these terms mean? Why does this matter to our organization? And then how are we going to support it? And the how piece about 80% of that’s education and awareness. So people don’t know what they don’t know, especially if you’re in the majority group, which I say predominantly white, straight, cisgender male any of those identities, but able bodied or non-disabled actually a better word to use.
So these words are changing in a diversity dictionary. I’m constantly updating our version. Although, I don’t own that. People are always going to take issue with something. And I think that’s part of the dance of this conversation is we don’t all have to agree, but we all do have to commit that this is something important. If we want to be relevant, I mean, bottom line, we talked about business case, but do you want to be relevant to the future generation of consumers and communities, like if so, diversity is going to be a part of that and having diverse perspectives important.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Well, I mean, as a country, I mean, we’re only becoming more and more diverse and so it’s … You know? Yeah. So the conversation and the definition and how your organization defines it, obviously in hopefully in some reflection of what the broader contexts what we mean by diversity, equity and inclusion, but being more specific about what that means for our organization is really important. So it’s like any other exercise of writing your mission, vision, or core values. It’s all about-
Julie:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:09:52].
Fletcher:
… in the definition, it’s all in the definition, not necessarily the word. We all define integrity a different way potentially. So it’s defining what we mean by that and in this case here with the DEI stuff, we want to define what that means for our organization. Interesting.
Julie:
Yep. Yeah. Personalize and live it like don’t just put the statement up like a lot of opportunistic companies did in the summer of 2020. Don’t do that. Have a statement.
Fletcher:
So how do you live it? I mean, that’s an interesting one. I mean, I just see that even with core values where our culture in general, so companies say, “We’ve got this great culture, or we have these core values. But are we really living these things?” And I think this is the hardest thing, whether it’s in the context of values, mission, or your VI initiatives or perspective or statements. I mean, whatever it is, how do we get better at actually living these things?
Julie:
Yeah. No, that’s the big question and lots of different ways you can do this. So I think first and foremost, do what’s consistent with your organization’s culture, right? Please don’t create some ad hoc, check the box, one and done thing that lives over here. Do something consistent with who you already are, but stretches you to be better because that’s all people are asking. They’re not asking for equal representation. They’re not asking for this huge shift overnight, they’re asking for just like, “Can you get better? Can you do little things every day?” And it’s often the subtle and intentional acts of allyship that really signal to folks that are underrepresented like this is a place where I belong. This is a place where I can see myself. Maybe I’m not fully reflected today, but someday I might be, I have hope.
And so for listeners, I think distilling that everyday behaviors, how can I show up for somebody that’s different for me? Maybe I know somebody that has a disability. How could I not put the burden on them to educate me about their disability, because that’s not fair, but maybe I’ve noticed something and I want to know how I could be more supportive of you. Maybe someone of a different gender identity or an LGBTQ+ person or a person of color, whatever dimension of diversity is important to you, but we see differences and that’s okay.
Kids, we all have kids or have been around kids, you know they see different [inaudible 00:12:13] and recognize them. We all do as human beings. We’re not colorblind. We can see color, shades of color. And so I’ll have to say really being curious to learn from people that are different than you, simple things they can do as an individual, especially if you’re a people leader. If you’re in any sort of management position, you’re modeling what that looks like every day. And so putting out the vibe of like, “I want to be more inclusive or I’m learning how to be more inclusive. I’m curious about this. I want to understand this. Hey, I watched this video. Could we talk about it as a team?” There’s so many great resources and we’ve actually curated a full list of resources.
Fletcher:
Well, one of the, I think, million dollar questions. I mean middle-aged white men like myself sometimes feel uncomfortable having these conversations. And feel like sometimes it could be a double edged sword. Say the wrong thing or approach it the wrong way, whether it’s meant to be intentionally disrespectful or not, or many times I think people are … they feel like they’re trying, but then they make a misstep in the dialogue. And then it sort of comes back and works against them. Or they feel like they’ve had that experience. How do you deal with that?
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. We call that the [inaudible 00:13:34]. And so if you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not doing this-
Fletcher:
Doing it right.
Julie:
… fully. So anytime we’re learning something new, riding a bike-
Fletcher:
Yeah. I don’t-
Julie:
… learn to ski, whatever it is.
Fletcher:
… have the right language to talk about these things. I don’t even know what to say or how to say it.
Julie:
I don’t know what I don’t know. That’s the first step. If you do identify with the majority group demographic, no one’s expecting you to know what it’s like to be somebody else. I’m never going to expect you to be like, “You know what it’s like to be a woman.” Not going to shame and blame you into that either. That’s not helpful. But I think having a curiosity to want to learn about the lived experiences of other folks and there’s great podcast books, et cetera. There’s tons of free resources out there. So don’t put that burden again on folks that are underrepresented to have to educate you.
Do some education up front. But I would say, be intentional with like who do you mentor? Who do you sponsor? Who do you advocate for? Who are you coaching? Who are your coaches? Who are your challengers? How are you challenging others? Because almost always, if you take an inventory of those folks, they’re probably people like you. And so, again, back to what you’re talking about with ideation, same thing works for your network. You just get insular network because as human beings, we all have some level of affinity bias.
Fletcher:
Put you in a situation where you can begin to build relationships with people that aren’t like yourself, that will kind of naturally help you understand and learn more about people from different cultures or backgrounds or ability or genders-
Julie:
Yeah. Well, take an inventory of every network. I oftentimes a very practical exercise, I lead people through my workshops, my leadership sessions is open your phone wherever you can document your social time, your meeting time, wherever, it’s on your calendar, it’s on your text, phone log, wherever you spend time, just take an inventory like top five to 10 people you spend time with, that you choose to spend time with. Not direct work reports and that kind of thing. I know that’s forced or structured. But where do you choose to spend time? And if you’re like me, I mean, this is early on in my business, I had my friend of color challenge me on that. She’s like, “You need to do better.” Like you’re right. Yeah. Because my network was white women, business owners, mothers, just like me and I was learning just what I knew and nothing else.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m sure many of us have that experience. I’m pretty sure that’s what my phone book looks like. So yeah. So it’s being more intentional to put yourself in those scenarios and to build those relationships outside of your … Yeah. Pretty big one. Interesting. I don’t think that just targeting non-white middle aged men is the way to build a recruiting and hiring process. That’s going to solve your diversity equity, inclusion problems or initiatives. I mean, it seems almost like counterintuitive that, I mean, it seems like a logical decision somebody might make as a business leader, let’s just do that. And I’ve actually had people ask me this to do these types of things, but I feel like that that approach is a bit fraught with pitfall. So what’s a better way of creating the DEI hiring process or recruiting strategy for your organization?
Julie:
Yeah. No, I get that and I get the temptation to do that because what is that, that’s usually coming from, is from a good place of, “Hey, we’re not very diverse now. So we got to get more diverse quickly and we can’t do that overnight. So I’m just going to hit the hiring button.” I get where people are coming from but just like you said, that’s riddled with a lot of problems because it’s signaling like, “We just care about this for checking the box.” And when you work on the D side, the representation side, without the inclusion side, the behaviors that keep people there, then you’re just going to lose the person. And then it’s going to fulfill the self fulfilling prophecy of, “See? We tried and it’s so hard to keep these people.” And it’s like, “Okay, what are you doing? Look in the mirror first versus pointing the finger.”
But a couple pitfalls, what people do is they go to their same network, expecting diversity to magically appear. It’s like if you are fishing in the same pond, didn’t catch fish, would you keep blaming the fish for not showing up? No, you’d move ponds, like move recruiting sources. Don’t just go to Indeed in LinkedIn or wherever you normally do, get creative with the places you go. And I think white people woke up to this a few years ago. There’s historically black colleges and universities, HBCUs but you can’t just show up on campus expect everyone to … You got to build a relationship.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Want to talk to you.
Julie:
Yeah. So be careful with that. I mean, show up again, consistency and intentionality. That’s when people start to believe you. So this isn;’t a switch, this is a long term. So diversify where you recruit, I think is one of the pitfalls that people fall into. They don’t do that. And the other thing is scrub your job descriptions. Job descriptions are, you know this, it just riddled with gendered terms-
Fletcher:
Gender pronouns and …
Julie:
War references, sports analogies. I mean, a client recently that shared with me that they had quarterback of the team. It’s so unlikely that a woman’s going to apply for that position, for example. Or someone that’s not American, even understands the American vernacular around that. So you’re just signaling already in your job descriptions a whole bunch of challenges. So really scrub them, I mean, take it through other’s technology that can scrub them for you. But I think take an intentional look through your job descriptions and just make sure that there’s not gendered or racialized language or idioms or American centered language. If you’re a global company, make sure it reflects the global base that you want to attract.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. So be very careful with the language that you’re using. And I mean, I imagine many times it’s unintentional, it’s the language that you use an everyday basis, but taking a second look or having somebody else take a second look to evaluate whether you’re speaking a language that is going to be more inclusive of a wider network of folks. Yeah. I mean, we talked about this, I think a little bit before, but even just having really performance based job descriptions and having clear training and onboarding programs where, and milestones and just really performance based outcomes and keeping focused on those as well as that, how do you build relationships and integrate people into your culture within your organization, if the more structure that is, and it’s done in more of an objective, measurable manner, right?
You’re going to hopefully more naturally, you’re going to find yourself not thinking about where people are coming from and their backgrounds. You’re going to be thinking about people more in terms of the outcomes and how do you just include anybody? I mean, I think even if despite the diverse diversity of your workforce, I mean, getting people included into the culture of your organization is difficult no matter what, I think. Right? And if you are more intentionality and that was what I was mentioning earlier, I just think a lot of organizations, they say we have this culture, but is it real, right? Are they really living it and executing it? Or is it just kind of, “This is what we wish it was”?
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s okay to have an aspirational culture, as long as you’re doing the work to get there. One of the questions I love to ask-
Fletcher:
There’s some intentionality behind it. There’s actually like something happening that gets you there.
Julie:
Yeah, because you’re at point A right now. No one’s at point B yet. My definition, so like what does point B look like? And then what are the baby steps? Let’s break this thing down. And it’s the baby steps. Just like we would any business problem. We wouldn’t expect to miraculously solve this overnight. And that’s one of the mistakes that people make. And then it comes off very disingenuous and it’s very frustrating. We’ve seen this Exodus in the workforce. So the great resignation again with women and people of color over indexing.
Fletcher:
300,000 women are leaving the workforce every month over the last many months. It’s crazy. Yeah.
Julie:
I mean, we’re back to 1980s level of employment of women and instead organizations are like, “Well, they chose to leave.” It’s like, “Well, why did they choose to leave? What can we be doing to attract this amazing part of our workforce?”
Fletcher:
Well, one thing I’ve noticed, I mean, I’ve interviewed over 10,000 people and we assess many, many, many others more, but one thing I’ve noticed is women and people from diverse backgrounds, non male whites often are some of the most highly educated people out there. And I think that for a couple of reasons, one, I mean, they tend to be more driven to educational success because they’re like many Americans are trying to level up their quality of life and where they’re coming from, their backgrounds, but also they’re doing it, I think because they feel like they need to in order to get to that next level. And I think it’s often overlooked. I mean, some of these folks are the very, very talented, some of the smartest, most well educated workers out there and we’re just ignoring them.
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. I mean, we’ve seen undergrad and depending on the professional grad school rates increase extremely over the last 30 years for women and for people of color. So I think that’s another excuse people make up is somehow they’re not qualified enough. And you really got to unpack that. Like what does qualified mean? And this goes back to again, one of the techniques is make sure your job descriptions don’t have qualifications on there that are unrealistic. If you would hire somebody that doesn’t meet one of these bullet points, take that bullet point out. That’s not a requirement. That’s just a nice to have.
Fletcher:
I’d be interested to see if people actually measure that. They put their requirements or must have qualifications in their job descriptions. And I’d be curious how many people actually hire folks that check all those boxes.
Julie:
Yeah. There’s a really good study. I believe Harvard did this. You’re probably aware of like, it’s called the Potential versus Performance Bias. So this happens, especially with men versus women, but really with majority group versus underrepresented groups. It’s we judge white men often on potential to perform versus performance, so you have to prove yourself, so there’s a longer time period built into that.
Fletcher:
They’ll give a white male opportunity to take on a job that they don’t have any proven performance experience with, where in a more diverse groups and they’re more reluctant to do that, I guess. Right?
Julie:
Yeah. And underrepresented folks again are less likely to have a chance be taken on them. So as a result of that, it’s like a chicken and egg problem. They look at a job description like, “I don’t meet all of those criteria. I’m not going to apply.” Whereas somebody in the majority groups like, “Yeah, I need 60%. I’m going to go for it.”
Fletcher:
I’ll throw my hat in the ring.
Julie:
What’s the worst that could happen? Some of these experience the adversity of diversity is like, “That feels bad. I don’t want to put myself out there again.” And so you just have these self-fulfilling prophecies that start kicking around and this is why inclusion is a very, very deep problem. There’s so many systemic issues at hand here. And a lot of it has to do with bias. Yeah. I mean, we are just naturally biased as human beings.
Fletcher:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we always found, it’s quite interesting and I think the more structure you put into your process, and again, I think the focus on narrowing those requirements and looking at the quality skills and experiences and keeping that list as short as possible. And we call it a candidate scorecard which should be a reflection of the job description, those requirements. Because if most organizations looked at their requirements, many of them would be unmet when they’re actually hiring.
And then they’re probably making that less, that more biased hiring decision, because they’re kind of going with what they’re most comfortable with, I guess, or they’re most familiar with. And you could be a lot more inclusive by narrowing that list and focusing in on the qualities and aspects. Because I think one of the things that’s interesting and at least in the assessment world, I mean behavioral attributes, A, can be very predictive and, B, tend to create the least, if not no impact on, the adverse impact in terms of individuals, because it’s less focused on the skills and experience side of things, which again, probably no matter which pool you’re fishing in, those are probably missing some of those skills and experiences.
Julie:
Exactly. And you can teach that stuff. That’s not as important.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Julie:
And to your point about structure, when you have structure and you don’t have to treat people like robots, but you can put some structure around it, meaning here are the criteria, objective criteria, like your scorecard-
Fletcher:
The outcome. Yeah.
Julie:
Yeah. Focus on that. And so when people are like, “I don’t know, I just like this person better,” because when you don’t have structure, when you don’t have objective criteria, people go back to their default comfort level, which is immersed and biased because of their experiences they’ve had with people or not had with people that are different, that caused discomfort. And so we are very likely, I mean, myself included like my corporate career, I was a hiring manager. I hired a ton more women, a ton more people from Ohio state because that was my-
Fletcher:
Alma mater.
Julie:
Yeah, yeah. Right. So I’m like, “They’re great. They’re from Ohio state.” And they usually were, but that’s beside the point. We just look at people that are like us because we think we’ve made it. So therefore somebody like us … And that is so untrue. For so much data that support this, actually quite the opposite.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a really interesting point. I mean, having that objective set of qualities or things that you’re looking for and defining it really well, but also forcing hiring managers to defend why they believe that person actually meets those criteria. I call it this is where we get into this fact driven hiring kind of system. And we see so often, I mean, hiring managers say, “Well I like that person. Or I didn’t like this person.” And then when you go ask them, “Well, why did you like them?” Then it gets really fuzzy. I mean, you’ll see people struggle to defend the reason why they like that person.
Julie:
They’re like me.
Fletcher:
Yeah, exactly. And I think it gives pause. I mean, if I’m managing a hiring manager, if you just stop and you ask them that one question, so they come to you and they say, “I want to hire Bob.” And you say, “Great. Why you want to hire Bob?” And they say, “Well, he’s really great. I love this energy, this and that. So you, “Well, great. Well, tell me more. Why did you like … Tell me more about what you or why you like Bob so much.” Get them to really defend that with facts that they uncovered from the conversation that actually tie back to the scorecard qualities or the measurable outcomes associated with the job description. I think you’ll find many people struggle to do that and so …
Julie:
Really good intervention questions I would add to that is, I mean digging in into why, why do you like them? Because people are mostly unclear and then don’t have objective stuff to say, but then the second thing would be like flip it a little bit is like, “Well, what perspective could this person add? If they’re different, what perspective are they bringing that we don’t already have?” And that’s a great way to look at diversity as a positive thing, as an opportunity, like you said, [inaudible 00:29:06] problems, or what are they bringing that we don’t have? Because that’s what we want. We want people are bringing new things to our team.
Fletcher:
Yeah. We’re currently struggling to solve this problem and that person, are they going to bring a different perspective that’s going to help us solve it?
Julie:
Yeah. And the other like pitfall I see a lot is this whole like cultural fit, right? And that’s usually code language for like me or like people that are already here because we have a tendency to want to hire people that we want to spend our social time with. And this isn’t social time. This is work time. So instead like what’s a cultural ad, right. We already have folks like this, so who’s going to add to our culture versus fit in with our culture. So just simple language tweaks can bring people into the conversation instead of shying them away.
Fletcher:
Yeah. I love those two questions. Yeah. How’s this person going to add to our culture and then what kind of different, or what perspective is this person going to bring towards our objectives or helping us achieve our company mission?
Julie:
Yeah.
Fletcher:
That’s really going to force people to think about that. And to seek to uncover it too, right? If you are forced to defend that, I mean maybe the answer’s, “Well, I don’t know, but now I go onto the next phase of the hiring process. I need to try to figure that out,” right?
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Fletcher:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this I think is very interesting and I think it’s more aligned with the way I think of the hiring process in general than I probably thought it was coming into this conversation. It fits like if you’re following the true best practices and you’re worried about outcomes, not about how much you’d like somebody and creating, adding evidence to why this person’s going to add value, not whether, again, just dealing with that rose colored glasses or that bias that we come to the table with, I think, and forcing ourselves to really ask those hard questions, like what perspectives this person’s going to bring or how they’re going to add to our culture, I think are really interesting. A couple of things, if there were two or three things that people you could do tomorrow to begin to improve your DEI efforts within your organization, what would you start with?
Julie:
Yeah. I mean, for individuals and wherever you are in your organization, I think model the way, but so much of it it’s education. So I would suggest reading a book by an author that’s different from you, has a different racial identity, gender identity. We know white men usually read books by … I did too. I was like, I looked at my bookshelf. I was like, “This is a problem.” If you’re a parent or caregiver or educator children’s books are same problem.
I thought I was different. I looked at my kids bookshelf. I’m like, “Holy smokes.” We’ve gotten really intentional with getting better at that. So I think your media consumption too, like what kind of shows do you watch and with your family or with your … I mean, the power of watching a film or a documentary and having a shared experience with someone you care about is very profound. I mean, I think work appropriate too to have people watch that as a part of their education experience and come back and share. There’s great podcasts out there too. And my personal fave that I recommend to folks is called Scene on Radio.
Fletcher:
Scene on Radio?
Julie:
S-C-E-N-E. And it’s a white male host. He brings in all sorts of diverse perspectives every season. They just did all season on climate change, for example, but they have one on gender. They have one on race. It is a crash course. That’s 12 hours each season. So it’s a commitment, but you can easily listen a part of it. And he’s just a fascinating human that’s come into this conversation. Lots of different dimensions that he covers in each season. So I love that one, but we’ve actually got a free, full resources list on our website too, Fletcher. So just nextpivotpoint.com. Check that out. Resources right there. We’ve vetted like 10 pages.
Fletcher:
We’ll add that to this podcast page and some of our kind of social promotion here for you and where else can we find you?
Julie:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So nextpivotpoint.com. Lots of great resources. We have our own podcast, The Diversity Pivot podcast. We recently rebranded because we realized diversity wasn’t in the title probably needed to do that, but we written some books. Our new book Allyship at Action is just out on Amazon too.
Fletcher:
Nice.
Julie:
Check that out. And for listeners reviews matter. So that’s one where you can really help us find other people, but it’s really-
Fletcher:
Read the book and leave a review please.
Julie:
Yeah. Honest review, honest review, but 10 Practices to Live Inclusively. A lot of the stuff we’ve talked about today, like how do you practice real empathy? How do you show up with vulnerability in this conversation? How do you tell your story and craft your why? So I tried to get super granular with people through my own experience in the seven plus years of doing this work. It doesn’t have to be so daunting and hard. That’s how we started out today’s conversation. It feels so overwhelming. What do I do? Just follow these practices and do them consistently and intentionally, and you’ll be a better human for it.
Fletcher:
I just take the first step, right?
Julie:
Yes.
Fletcher:
Always is sometimes the hardest part and once you start going down that path, it gets a little easier usually, right? Just like anything that seems like a mountain to climb.
Julie:
Just keep your mind open. I mean, if we all just kept our minds open and thought of different perspectives, it’s like that’s something new and interesting versus like I don’t believe that. I don’t want to rewrite that script in my brain. That’s harder. So I’m going to like judge it. Just keep your mind open. Worst case scenario, you learn something or experience something new. Unlikely that harm will come to you.
Fletcher:
Awesome. Well, we’ll make sure that we’ll put a link to your site and those resources and your new book on the page. And as we share this with our audience, we’ll make sure that you guys all have links to that material, if you want to check it out. And Julie, it’s been a really great pleasure of speaking with you today. And I really thank you for taking the time to help us just take that first step in becoming more aware, at least for me helping me take that first step and hopefully others listening to this too.
Julie:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
