Host Martha Williams talks with speaker and inclusion innovator Jennifer Brown about creating cultures of belonging where all of us can thrive.
Martha Williams:
Thank you for joining us today at the Culture Shift Podcast where we work to shift the conversation to inspire a more balanced, peaceful and compassionate world. Here at Culture Shift podcast, we interview thinkers, activists, innovators, and artists who are shifting culture by defying the status quo. I'm Martha Williams, your host today, and I'm very excited to introduce you to our next guest, Jennifer Brown. Jennifer is a diversity and inclusion expert and the president and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting, a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches businesses advocating for social equality and helping businesses foster healthier, more productive workplaces. She's an award-winning entrepreneur, author and fellow podcaster with the mission of unleashing the power of human potential. And with that, we welcome Jennifer Brown.
Martha Williams:
Jennifer Brown. Thank you so much for being here.
Jennifer Brown:
Thanks for having me.
Martha Williams:
So Jennifer, you just wrote a new book. "How To be an Inclusive Leader." First of all, this is, this is, here it is.
Jennifer Brown:
Thank you. Thank you. Very excited about.
Martha Williams:
So one of the things I was really struck by is that everybody has a diversity story. And at first read I'm like, does really everybody have a diversity story? And so I just want you to clarify that a little bit. And then I want to hear a little bit about your diversity story.
Jennifer Brown:
So I came to that because I've discovered in myself and in others that…
…so many of our diversity dimensions are hidden.
They're not visible, or when we look at somebody, we may not perceive them and they may choose not to show them or talk about them too. So after a while of teaching this in so many classrooms with predominantly straight white men, for example, executive teams, boards of directors. I would hear stories over and over again really surprising me and kind of checking me on my assumptions about a group of people that I might be looking at and saying they know nothing about this based on what I see. There's so much more to us. And that's my story too because I identify as LGBTQ plus and I can pass as we say, in the community every day of my life if I chose to. And it's been a really important check on me in terms of how inclusive I am in my language and how I try to not make assumptions about knowing people's backstories. I would also say that exclusion is a common and universal experience exclusion because you have a kid with special needs, for example, exclusion because you feel you can't talk about loved ones or, or a caregiving situation that you're in or a mental health issue. So many more dimensions actually about us are invisible. They're under, if we think of ourselves as icebergs, they're under our waterline, right? 10% is above, 90% is below. And so I've just learned so many times that I have to really truly walk the talk when it comes to inclusion.
Martha Williams:
And what I am also struck by is, you know, it's diversity and inclusion. Yes. And diversity in a way can be measured even if it's not visible. You can dig in and get some dimensions of that and give numbers to it. But inclusion is less tangible.
Jennifer Brown:
Yeah.
Martha Williams:
So how do you get people to be more inclusive?
Jennifer Brown:
We specialize in helping our clients improve their diversity, their inclusiveness, so their workplace culture to generate a sense of belonging. So where we're kind of coming to in this conversation is that the longing, when we feel that we relax, we do our best work, we are our most creative, we are more likely to be retained, meaning we're more loyal to any kind of workplace. And this seems very intuitive, but, but belonging has so much to do with diversity and inclusion done well because we are all, we are all looking to have our voice and feel welcomed, valued, respected and heard. And many of us, I hate to say it, and I know this is not a newsflash, don't feel that we are welcomed, valued, respected and heard in our organizations because we are not reflected in people we see around us. And you might be the only and lonely as we say. And then inclusiveness is more, as you said, more difficult to measure because it's about behavior. And so in the future and even in some of the forward-thinking companies we work in managers are measured on inclusive behaviors and not just the self-report. Like, Oh, I'm inclusive. Of course I'm inclusive. I have daughters, you know, women feel great working for me and for this company. Often we will be in a position of going with data that we've collected to people that say that and saying, guess what? You have a pay gap. Guess what? People don't feel that they have equal opportunity here. You know, so your intentions are fine and great. It's great to be well-intended, but what really matters is impact. So we measure it from the outside in and we sort of show that. And that's a big aha moment for people. Yeah. And I've never met a company that doesn't have a problem.
Martha Williams:
I'm kind of curious, why is it so hard to move towards inclusion? Hmm? What is significant about it?
Jennifer Brown:
Yeah, well it's that we were just talking about the…
I'm well-intended, I'm a good person piece is really a barrier because that is not, that is a belief about ourselves and it has nothing to do with the impact that we're having.
It's the difference between intent versus impact, which is one of our core teachings. And organizations take a lot of work to shift because they haven't been inclusive in the past. They have been honestly really homogeneous. People had been hiring their friends and their brother's friends and they're, you know, somebody who went to the same school as they went to. So it has sort of perpetuated this sameness demographically speaking in organizations. And it still happens so much today. It's the willingness to look at our own biases, which can, if we're not careful and make us feel a lot of shame and like we're bad people.
Martha Williams:
That shame is an indicator for where we need to be working because it's where we're hiding as a society and as individuals. And what kind of environments do you create so people can come out of hiding and confront their own biases?
Jennifer Brown:
Yeah, well, I think the workplace has an interesting Petri dish for this stuff in the workplace. We are forced to work across differences more and more. We're on global teams, we're on virtual teams. We're on. I mean we are literally having to get things done across difference every single day. And that is, if that's not true for people who are listening to this, it will be right. And in a world of coronavirus and other things like the virtual working now is something that is at our doorstep if it wasn't before. Yeah. So so it's a great place to pay attention to assumptions we make about each other to check that bias, to think about our language, to think about how we're being inclusive virtually, which is actually a sort of additional difficulty level. Yeah. I think in terms of skill because we're not given a lot of visual cues or auditory cues or you know, we'll have like an hour with somebody a day. We don't run into them or we don't. Right. We don't have the opportunity to invite somebody to something on a weekend. You know, there are things we have to do to check in with each other to enable the diversity stories to be shared so that we can learn about each other and we have to give feedback also. Hey, that was an ouch for me. Like when you, you know, misgendered me and we've had that discussion, you know, I just would like to give feedback on how that felt. You know, things like this, we've got to be really good with language.
Martha Williams:
If someone doesn't want to be called out on their bias, How are they going to, or me, going to move through this world of inclusion. I just don't see how people are going to really step up to that cause...
Jennifer Brown:
It's not a pleasant place.
Martha Williams:
It's not pleasant, it's hard enough in intimate relationships, to be honest about how you feel.
Jennifer Brown:
Very true.
Martha Williams:
Let alone inside of an organization where you're judged on your performance and your ability to produce. So how? How are we going to do that? Right? It's a really tall order.
Jennifer Brown:
Both sides have to be very gracious with each other.
It's about grace. What does that look like? What it looks like is, first of all, I prefer calling in versus calling out. So calling out on bias. What's like, let's not do that. Let's just not do it. It doesn't help, right? It's that energy. The call-out energy is a, I'm the shame. It's the, it's not a, Hey, this is an opportunity for us to learn about each other. I want to share something with you about how it impacts me and maybe even brings people deeper into the closet, right? Exact bias and their anger, their fear. So it's all about language.
Martha Williams:
It's how you approach it. It's how you approach it when you approach it, who's around when you talk about it. So the call-out culture is, I'm going to sort of hit you with how you made me feel and I'm going to do that maybe in public. Yeah. And I may do it in social media, God forbid, not helpful. When you have so many people who are, have no lived experience of what it feels like to walk in somebody's shoes and you think your role is to call out all the time. It's a recipe for shutting everything down. It just is. So if somebody says to me, no, tell me what your husband does. I have like 10 choices about how I should respond to that. What's the call out energy in that? What could I do to massively humiliate this person and literally scare them away from the conversation for a year? My ask would be, can we afford to lose anyone that could be learning? Yeah. I mean, to me, I don't think so.
I'm all about holistic change. That includes everyone moving forward.
I wrote this book, it was frustrating to write this book. I wrote it because I thought it was needed because I needed to go back and meet people where they're at. I need this whole cohort of people to come forward on this that are literally stuck in shame. Literally like taking their marbles and going home. Literally feeling like nobody's talking to me about how I can, I can influence this and it's just such a lost opportunity. The book is very much a call to action to like get involved, but, but P.S. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to be uncomfortable. You should feel shame for a minute. But what's most important is that to get, you know, get so into the that we literally get paralyzed and then you leave, you sort of opt-out. You say there's nothing I can do to change this. Like to me, that is the unacceptable answer.
Martha Williams:
So you start your book out with a story about being in front of a group of white men giving a presentation about diversity and inclusion and you talk about your fear and what you're covering and how you're experiencing this. So just speak to that a little bit more.
Jennifer Brown:
There are so many things in that story because I'm, I'm at the same time in that room because I have certain levels of privilege to even get in that room because of the way I look the way, I mean, what my ethnicity is, for example, perhaps my education, a lot of things. And at the same time, I feel in rooms like that, sort of like my pulses quickening, you know, I'm very much on high alert and I'm not feeling safe. Right. And so that's due to being a woman in a male-dominated environment, right. That, that experience of being anything in, in an environment where you're the only, and you're there too, you're there to talk about something that's pretty sensitive and then also being LGBTQ and, and feeling, you know if I bring this up, is it going to make to compromise my message? Is it going to damage my credibility? Is it going to distract people from what I really need them to be paying attention to? Yeah. And so, and those are just two diversity dimensions. But what I'm so empathetic about based on what I've learned is this is the experience of so many people that don't have the privileges that I have. Although everybody has a level of privilege, right? I would argue anyone that is employed right now in a job with benefits or the privilege of working for a company that is trying to do diversity and inclusion versus all the people that aren't working for, I mean there are so many privileges. Being able to physically walk into a room from an abled perspective, perhaps being cisgender. We know our gender identity gives us certain sort of a level of like ease perhaps like around like, I don't have to think about like, how do I transition in this workplace? Then they don't have any benefits that protect me. I mean, it just goes on and on. So we all have a level of privilege that gets us in some room, right? So for me, I'm just acutely aware of the ones that enable me to get into a room. And that's where I think diversity storytelling is so important and for me to be very as overt as I can about what this feels like for me to be in this room and then as a microcosm of what people are feeling in that organization. So I try to generate empathy and understanding and create that aha moment for rooms that look like that in whatever way I can. If I can get in there, I'm going to try to do that. But I have to be tremendously creative and also careful that I'm not too strident or I'm not too opinionated. I have to use my power in these really interesting ways. To not repel people from the conversation because they are repelling from this conversation. Now I might argue if you're a straight white guy and you're an executive leadership, how big is the risk? Really? I think the person that's taking the risk in that room is me that day in terms of bringing my full self. Yeah. And then I will speak for alongside all of my friends and people that I love who really, really, really have so many diversity dimensions that they can't downplay or hide. They walk in the room and if you are a queer woman of color, you've got a lot of decisions to make because there are all kinds of biases and stereotypes that may or may not be happening that you may or may not know about that may be impacting how you're heard. And if there is one thing you can hide that day, you may hide it because it's just so much. It's just so much. How do you navigate that? And then for women of color in particular people of color there is, there are things we all need to be aware of in terms of how strong you are in terms of a communicator, in terms of your passion, your passion can be like immediately misinterpreted as anger immediately or your gestures can be interpreted as too strong and sort of in your face. So these are the kinds of things I wish people on the other end would be aware of. All these dynamics that are swirling around. And can you imagine, what does it like then to be present, be creative, be productive, be focused, all the things that we need to be in business when all of this noise is going on in terms of whether I'm going to be believed in this room, whether I'm going to be given a fair shot like it's completely, I mean when you talk about the importance of productivity, every business leader should be obsessed with this. Like who's not bringing their full self to work? Why? What is getting in their way? How am I contributing to that?
Martha Williams:
One of the things we talk about at the Culture Shift Agency is this idea of a process economy versus a production economy. So we...historically we live in a production economy. It's based on the assembly line. It's based on efficiency. We're looking at more of a process economy where we have to have a sense of the person inside the cog in the wheel is not just a cog. The cog in the wheel is a person. To me, I think you're speaking to where we're going in our economy, which is we are going to have robots running that assembly line soon. So we might want to learn how to deal with humans. What's the experience of these men in that, in that room?
Jennifer Brown:
Honestly, I mean the stories they share with me after, they don't speak up in the meeting.
For men, there's a ton of pressure to conform.
I mean this shouldn't be a newsflash, but like there's tons of diversity issues that going on amongst men that they don't know how to talk about. Mark Green calls it and Tony Porter also gave a great Ted Talk on the Man Box. Yeah. So once I learned about that, that helped me also be inclusive of all dimensions of diversity, particularly ones that are invisible for a group of people that might look like straight, cisgender white guys. I've got to check myself, you know, but the man box prevents any kind of man who doesn't conform to a certain behavioral expectation. And this is very predominant and executive suites, right? There is this lack of vulnerability. There is this not understanding or caring about diversity or hiding diversity stories that are happening to people, but they don't talk about, because that man box is such a straight jacket.
Martha Williams:
So you in your keynotes say, Hey, diversity looks like a lot of things. There's a lot of dimensions. And so you start to speak to the dimensionality of the straight white man because that's what people see. They see the straight white man. You've got it all. There's all what's happening under the water lines.
Jennifer Brown:
So I would argue a workplace that was built by and for one group certainly isn't good for the rest of us. We often say yeah, as women and others, you know, the workplace wasn't built by and for me. So this is fundamentally what we're struggling with from benefits to pay gap to all of it. But I would argue the, that it's not good for the men either in terms of their own ability to flourish. I mean whether they realize that or not. You know, we struggle to communicate the business case for this. We just struggle to convince. I mean we, I spent so much time sort of arguing 15 different ways from empathy to the data to the, you don't want to be called out in social media too. There's a brand risk here, reputational risk, right? Like I have to like twist myself up into a pretzel to try to get people to care. I also say, you know, by the way, your kid could come home tomorrow and come out to you as transgender. Are you going to be ready? Yeah. One in five people under the age of 35 identifies as not straight and not SIS one in five. So any parent who sort of in LA LA land and saying, oh, the diversity team will take care of that. That's not my job. Or I send my people to unconscious bias training once a year and I can check that box. It is not, it's not your, you may not realize it. This has to be a competency for you. It is in the top five leadership competencies of the future. Inclusive leadership is you've got to know, understand at least be on a journey and if you don't have all the answers cause you're not going to cause by the way, I don't even have all the answers like, and I study this all that all day long and I still make mistakes. I still have to apologize. I still have to make sure my language is up to date. Get on the journey and talk about the fact that you're on the journey. Be transparent.
Martha Williams:
It seems to me that the very first step in any of this is vulnerability. And I think that that is the antithesis of the corporate environment.
Jennifer Brown:
Because the women have been conforming to workplace and executive suite, not built by and for them. Yeah. And we have the battle scars to prove that. Yeah. You know, I mean when I young women say, why are all the senior women like not making time for me? Or what are they so hard on me? I love that that conversation is so interesting because women of a certain generation just crawled through glass if they're even still in the workplace because there was not a place at the table and there was so many sacrifices and so much demands for assimilation that were placed and beyond women of a certain generation that blaze the trail. You know? So it's just, I have just a lot of compassion for that. And I stand on those shoulders. I mean the fact that I can bring my full self and be an entrepreneur. I mean I'm a corporate refugee. I could not be heard. And actually it wasn't because of not being out. Actually it was, I had, I think I had too much creativity for the corporate world and I'm an artist. And I'm all about expressing ourselves and bringing our full selves. And I looked at the cog in the wheel model. I looked at the production economy and I said, there is no way I can flourish in this. Like I will die.
Martha Williams:
In the section of your book where you talk about the diversity dimension. You talk about this thing called the iceberg. So want to hear a little bit about that. And I also want to hear about covering because covering as well, ways that you feel with the iceberg, what's underneath the waterline.
Jennifer Brown:
That's right.
So covering is downplaying a known stigmatized identity.
So when we were even talking about the workplace and how many parts of us we don't bring, when we say bring your full self to work and that would enable us, I think to feel more seen and heard and therefore more relaxed and feel a sense of belonging, right? I think we put so much effort to downplaying these things that it's a distraction, but it also impacts our morale, I believe. Because it leads to that I think a shame about covering identities that are very important to us. But that we don't feel will be accepted. Right. So I maybe am struggling with mental illness in myself or in a loved one. Maybe my kid just came out to me and I don't feel that any other parents in this organization are having my experience, which is not true. Yes, you're never alone, but we feel alone. And so the organization needs to get smart about and I helped them do this, get smart about naming these things because naming things is the first step to normalizing them. Interesting. And when if senior person particularly names things and therefore maybe shares a diversity story that's personal or it takes a risk and is a little bit vulnerable or a lot vulnerable, that is how normalization occurs because that is leadership behavior and is so critical. It can impact thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. When a CEO tells a diversity story, it's enormous. I mean that one thing could take the rest of us 10 years to accomplish because we have so much less power and we're dealing with so much more stereotypes in terms of bringing our full self to work. So we may be telling our story all the time and it's not being heard and we may not have the organizational power or influence to truly change things, right? So it's just this tremendous imbalance of power. And I think that's another reason I really need leadership to do something even small because it has this sort of outsized ripple effect. So the iceberg is, we all know 10% is about the waterline. That's what's acceptable. Right? And people follow other people, we mimic other people. We, we look ahead and up to say, are there any out executives? And if we don't see any out executives or we know that somebody is out, but they're covering in the workplace and on talking about it, all of us on the, in the sort of general population of the, of the company read that and say, well clearly it's not safe. Yeah. Right? So that causes covering behavior on our part. Right? Right. And so we mimic, men mimic other men. Men watch other men for behavior cues, and they particularly watch senior men, which dominate the workplace today. So if we've got a whole cohort of people that are not talking about this in a meaningful way and personalizing it, well, how are we going to interpret that? So the iceberg, it's really fascinating because there's so many dimensions under that waterline. Am I then adding to the interventions? Cause every time I keynote people give me new ones. So recently I've added sober and in recovery, right? So much of the workplace is predicated on alcohol. So I think that interestingly, each one of these dimensions, I think if we addressed them they would actually benefit many more people than just that one dimension, right? If we sort of, if we focus on who's one population that might be uncomfortable, it actually encourages others to speak up and say, well, actually I've never really been comfortable with that. Right? So you're giving language to the things that make people feel uncomfortable and nobody has questioned before. It's literally just the orthodoxy of how business is done and it's sort of bringing to light that businesses done by keeping a really narrow view on what is acceptable or what's comfortable for some that they don't question. I mean, I had a Jewish executive, a man on a Christian management team say, I'll share Jennifer. Like when I was new here, we scheduled a meeting over my high holidays and I didn't say, I went home to my wife and I said, should I say anything? And we decided that I wouldn't say anything. And so I flew across the world over my holiday and I didn't say anything like I don't make it a big because like that's just, but the bias to me, the responsibility for that is, is amongst his Christian led management team to say, are we being inclusive of all faiths? Like the, just the lack of awareness is so it causes the covering behaviors because those of us who would bring our differences to the table feel that we're taking such a risk to do so.
Martha Williams:
What kind of qualities do we need to be bringing to the table so that we can move forward and be creative in the way that we create inclusivity?
Jennifer Brown:
Yeah, I mean it's a two-way street like we were talking about earlier. I think those of us who are sort of sprinted ahead and far along in this conversation need to rewind and meet learners where they're at and not be judgmental about people who don't have the answers yet.
Martha Williams:
I mean you talked a little bit about this in our phone call wherein the diversity community, there's a lot of contention and division. Ironically, can you speak to that?
Jennifer Brown:
There's not a lot of patience and when you have the bully pulpit of Twitter, when there are Slack channels at the company and people can just pile on. But the hard part is that there's really good data and there's really important information being shared in those Slack channels too.
Martha Williams:
Right. So there's, it's a double edge.
Jennifer Brown:
Yeah. So if I have a client who says like, wow, that's just complaining and you know, it's, it's caught fire and it's spreading and like I got to bring it under control and I'm, there's not a lot of listening that I hear in that. And I think the, it's sort of these choices of shut it down, right? Or it's inappropriate or people are out of hand or if we build this as a forum, is it going to get out of control? And then do we have to build forums for everyone? I mean literally these are the sorts of questions we get. I mean, I had a CEO, we recommended employee resource groups, so affinity groups that they create them so that they get better at this. And the CEO thought about it and we tried to convince him that they're important and he just came back at the end and said, I just think, I believe that they are forums for complaints and I don't believe that they will be productive for us.
Martha Williams:
For me, the base issue here is that as a society and as a people, we have no understanding of how to deal with our anger and our sadness in a productive way.
Jennifer Brown:
True.
Martha Williams:
And because of that, when the lid gets, gets, gets messy, just nobody knows how to deal with it. So to me, there's needs to be a revolution in vulnerability and a revolution in how we handle anger and how we handle our sadness.
Jennifer Brown:
And how we hold space for each other.
Martha Williams:
Absolutely.
Jennifer Brown:
Because so where does my anger belong? I have anger, but the question to me is to feel for sure. We've got to like, we got to feel it. The question is where and when. And I know sometimes you can't control when it comes out. Yeah. And that's understandable. And those of us on the receiving end of that have to just hold it. So if we could counterbalance that with allyship, which is what I talk about so much. And also another word for that is advocacy and other word is accomplicing – the accomplicing behavior mindset. Space holding is, thank you so much for entrusting me with what it feels like to be you and let me carry that forward and I will take my cue from people who are not being heard and I will bring that with me and I will bring that into places that I can. I will speak up, I will offer support, I will give support without even being asked to give it. I mean my favorite allies as an LGBTQ person, straight allies are the ones that when I'm on a not in the room, they are confronting a joke in a comment right there. The one they don't need to be asked by me for help. They are literally like monitoring for inclusion and saying, Hey, that's not right. I need to, I need to have a conversation with that leader who looks like me or maybe shares my identity to say like, by the way, like these are the words we use now and again, it's not even, it's not the calling out in public either among even in that group. I would argue a private conversation is always better. Give a leader a chance to adjust when somebody says like a big thing in my community is sexual preference versus sexual orientation. It's not a preference. It is something that is innate. We all have a sexual orientation. It's on a continuum. Just like our gender identities also on a continuum. Yeah. I mean there is like trigger warnings and all kinds of things that are happening around generation Z , what the new generations are bringing into the workplace is this sort of like all parts of me are great. I mean this is not going to be the generation that feels the shame that like you and I might have felt in trying to bring our full selves to work and having no role models and feeling that we needed to conform. Like that's changed and changing. And so we're not going to have a generation that is willing to compromise. And I think that the leaders that don't look like this generation and don't share those values of inclusion is table stakes are really going to be behind the eight ball in terms of like, I don't know what this means and yet we're getting all this like employee activism. Like how am I, how am I being an inclusive leader when I don't have the lived experience that the younger generation in my own workplace has.
We can only get work done by and for and with each other.
That's our currency. It's the process economy, it's how we work together. It's how we feel working together. It's not just what we produce. Right. And it hasn't been very long that what one feels even, I know it's so early days for that whole conversation and I, I sit here and hold both sides and I'm like, this is a disaster because we're so in our infancy in terms of a certain generation, even understanding what this means. And then we've got this whole new generation who expects to like talk about their pronouns at work. This group doesn't even know a pronouns means they got to come together and understand how to teach each other and learn from each other and influence each other and be heard by each other.
Martha Williams:
So our producer, one of our producers, Aaron, just took the, there you go.
Jennifer Brown:
Real-time feedback. My assessment. Yes.
Martha Williams:
Yes. What was his observation was like, Hmm, I don't know how well I fit into this test because I'm not so in a regular corporate environment. Yeah. I wonder if people who don't fit into the box step out of the corporate environment. And you spoke to that a little bit for herself, why you started your company, right. I'm just curious about the assessment.
Jennifer Brown:
And who it speaks to. And then my thoughts perhaps on what the message is for entrepreneurs and self-employed. I mean if we're really going towards a gig economy, which I think is true, perhaps hastened by global pandemics and lots of other things, and also hastened by the fact that we don't feel, our organizations just don't see us and hear us. Right? So I think there's that level of frustration and feeling literally blocked too. We make lemonade out of lemons. We either hang in there or we leave. And we started our own thing. And this is why the fastest number of entrepreneurs, fastest-growing populations is women and people of color. So those are the fastest-growing number of businesses being created, right? And the amount of wealth that's being generated, like we're in the midst of a huge sea change where I think people can say, you know, I don't want to be that cog. And if we're moving to a process-based organization, the process feels yucky. So what I would say is the assessment it's the inclusive leader assessment. You can find out more on JenniferBrownSpeaks.com. You can take it for free. It's 10 minutes. And what I would say is that think about all the aspects of your life. Think about how you can use your voice as a freelancer, for example, with your clients. So we can always be influencing. So if I'm a freelancer and I'm, I'm a consultant, I mean I'm serving companies, right? They hire me to do something. I can always be, I think witnessing this conversation in every interaction, you know, I can point out who's missing from the table in a creative process. I can elevate and choose to, you know underscore a point that somebody made. Meetings are a great place to kind of practice inclusive leadership. But I think we could say, you know, Hey, did we consider, we're in this creative process where we're building products, right? We're building a campaign do we, are we, are we sure we're including all voices in this? Who are we selling to? What's our market? What's the diversity of that market? Whatever you're bringing to, it's going to suffer. If a homogeneous group is building it, period. Like that's a fact. You, there's a ton of research on it. So if you're educated around that, even though that's perhaps not your job per se, to be that in the room, we can make comments and give feedback on this all the time, regardless of what our role is. I would also argue, are you in a church group or are you on a board for your school? Are you in a parenting network or are you part of the PTA? How are you? I can guarantee if your school hasn't had a diversity issue, you know it's happening.
Martha Williams:
So what if there's one person who's different? Maybe it's a one, one person or person of color, you know, is there something that the group can do?
Jennifer Brown:
Don't always make the person of color or the only woman in the room be the educator, right? Super important. We call it, in my world, we call this emotional labor. Oh, okay. So I'm always, all eyes will turn to me if I'm the only LGBTQ person in the room to sort of explain everything. You've got to understand that we are always explaining, we're always having to come out and we're always, it feels very much like people are being lazy about their own learning. Don't turn to the one person to say, well what do you think about this? You know, as the only woman that, my vision of what happens is, is we've got a lot of allyship and a lot of allies and people who've actually done the reading and educated themselves and said, you know, let me try to answer that based on what I understand. And, and this is a balance too because you, by the way, you don't want to speak for yeah, but you don't want to overly rely on. Yeah. So there is a balance here. Know enough to be dangerous. Know enough about no three points about different identities than yours. Just like try to research. Know a couple of stats about disabilities, like people with disabilities and for example, the fact that they are knocked out of the resume pool often because there's a gap in their resume. You know how we don't like gaps in resumes. That's like a big thing. It's a big derailer for people with disabilities and it's completely a bias. Another bias would be criminal background. There is a massive talent pool that could be working right now and we have a giant talent shortage does, I mean pay attention to who you're hiring. I mean, if you're not careful, you're going to end up, if you're a straight white guy or white cisgender woman, you're going to end up with an entire team that looks like you because your network is going to literally come to you and they're all going to look like you. And if you don't put some gates around that, you're going to end up creating a founding team. And then what becomes more difficult as you grow...
Martha Williams:
That founding team multiples.
Jennifer Brown:
They multiply, they get their own networks in which look like them. And new recruits are going to look at your founding team and say, there's no place for me there.
Martha Williams:
You have this incredibly successful company, Jennifer Brown consulting. You go into companies, you help them. You've written this new book and now you're speaking all over the country. So what is next for you?
Jennifer Brown:
There are so many books that I want to write. There's like, we were just talking about the whole question of being self-employed, small business owner inclusion, right. How do I do this when I'm the chief cook and bottle washer and everything in between when I'm trying to just stay alive. Right. when you have to be fast. Yeah. And you're, I don't have time. I don't have time. Oh yeah. We're just, we're growing so fast. I just needed to hire my friend and my brother's friend and it's just, yeah. I think I need to probably do another keynote and Ted talk on some of the emerging concepts that I'm playing with around allyship and accomplicing and privilege. And really be a lot more overt about that I think. Because I'm frustrated with how slow I have to go on this stuff honestly. It's hard for me and I think that's why a lot of people don't have the patience for it and they would rather, you know, have the three, a 3.0 conversation, but the 1.0, conversation has to happen.
Jennifer Brown:
Like, we are ready to have the conversation but our clients aren't.
Martha Williams:
But you need to just have that conversation with Bob by the water cooler first.
Jennifer Brown:
I know, kind of warm up the engine a little bit. Let's take a little walk. Right. So a little bit.
Martha Williams:
So what does overt mean to you?
Jennifer Brown:
Well, I'm taking more risks. I mean I think that somebody like me that looks like me that has my particular stance towards this problem is really important. We need a lot more, I think we need more folks in the center, in the middle that are sort of, you know I always feel like I'm on a bridge, and there's like two sides and nobody wants to cross and I'm trying to ensure safe passage. Right. But I feel some of us feel very much like we're being torn asunder and it's both sides. It is for sure. Both sides – because there are some people who don't want to know anything about other people on the other side of the bridge. Like, no, like they're dehumanized. Like, I do not, we need to build a new world that doesn't include anyone that doesn't understand this. Like we are going full steam ahead. Right. And I think just super dangerous.
Martha Williams:
It's sort of like I'm taking it down. Yeah. And yeah, it's also not the spirit of vulnerability that's really necessary for real change to happen. It's just the, it's just the, the other side of the coin.
Jennifer Brown:
It is, it's the same behaviors that got us here but applied differently. It's sort of when we tear ourselves apart amongst sort of a community of advocates if I can just refer to it that way, we are just hurting ourselves. We are. So we need more teaching.
Jennifer Brown:
We need more patience and grace. We need more space holding. We've got to find a way forward that includes everyone. And that's going to require some really like tough sort of soul searching. I think for some of us who, who feel a ton of anger and frustration with the pace of change. I struggle with the discomfort too. And this is why I think I can stand on the bridge because I, I hesitate. I'm uncomfortable. So I know cause I'm living this and if I'm living this and I'm somebody that sort of has the stamp of approval to be in those rooms, theoretically because of the work I do it. I know the discomfort is like 10 times, right? And so I'm sitting here with that thinking about how am I solving my own problem and then how am I going back and getting everybody else who's like much less equipped to do what they need to do, right? This work is the hardest thing you will ever do and the most amazing thing you'll ever do because you're staring into people's hearts like literally. And, and if you do what I do every day, you're looking at organizations as systems, you know, of any size. And you're saying.
Martha Williams:
Where is the heart?
Jennifer Brown:
That is the hardest question? And it's in individuals cause I know there otherwise I wouldn't have the hope I have to do this work.
Martha Williams:
Well, thank you so much. Thank for coming and sharing all that insight with us. Yeah. So welcome for your fierce heart and all the work that you do in this, your two books.
Jennifer Brown:
Thank you for seeing me. Yeah, my intentions and hopefully impact.
Martha Williams:
Yes, I think so. I think you're doing okay. And where can people find you?
Jennifer Brown:
Oh yes. I'm big in social media, so look for me on Twitter at Jennifer Brown. Instagram is an at Jennifer Brown speaks. Okay. Jennifer Brown speaks.com is also my speaker website. So you can see footage of my keynotes there. You can take the assessment we've been talking about. You can download the first chapter of the new book for free. So please do that. Join our mailing list if this is a topic that you know you need to get on a journey about or further your journey. And then I'm of course on LinkedIn and Facebook all the places. So, I also have a podcast called the will to change and I would recommend really, it's such an educational podcast. It's honestly something that a lot of clients listen to sort of learn about that. Some of the topics we talked about today, right? And, and hear people's diversity stories that you don't expect. And so it really, I think, challenges you as a listener to say, wow, this person's that and that and that, and they've done this. And you know, just seeing that example, you often say, it just takes knowing and hearing about one person's story and it really just shifts everything. So that's my goal on the podcast. Well, thank you very much and we will next time.
Jennifer Brown:
I love the next time. I love the next time.
Martha Williams:
Thank you so much for joining us today with Jennifer Brown. The transcripts and links related to this podcast as well as other episodes are available at Culture ShiftAgency.com. See you next time.