AMA: I Create Truly Inclusive Cultures That Make Change Happen with Joanne Lockwood

David Rice: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone. This is the latest in our Ask Me Anything series. So it's been, it's good to see these grow and we're getting more and more attendees all the time. So it's hopefully a valuable way for our members to engage with the experts who contribute to People Managing People. So thank you for your feedback on everything that we've done so far.

For those of you who don't know, my name is David Rice. I'm the Senior Editor of People Managing People and I'll be your host for today. Today's section, today's session is going to focus on how leaders can create truly inclusive workplace cultures, and we're going to be speaking with an inclusive culture expert and a member of our editorial advisory board, Joanne Lockwood.

So, before we get started, just kind of a few housekeeping items, you know, uh, First of all, please put in the chat where you're joining us from today. We always love to see where we're getting people [00:01:00] from and let us know, you know, what are the biggest challenges you're facing at work these days. We'd love to see the see those and see if we can kind of tie them into the conversation once in a while.

Um, so how this works, this session is being recorded. We may use clips from it on our website, but. Not guaranteed. So if you can keep your camera on or you can turn it off. It's totally up to you. Uh, I've kept your microphones off for now. So the rules are pretty simple. You post a question in the Q and a section and we'll get joined to answer as many as we can in the space of an hour.

Feel free to have a side conversation in the chat if you want. Um, and just. Please engage. This is literally ask me anything. So, um, we have, like, we have some new guests today. Like I said, at the beginning of some new faces. So I just want to let everybody know that this is just one of a series of monthly sessions like this with HR experts that we hold for our members.

And you can learn more about membership at people managing people dot com forward slash member slip [00:02:00] membership. Uh, to check out more and see if maybe you want to join our community. Um, so we'll just get things started with Joanne. Uh, Joanne, welcome, first of all. Thanks for joining us today. Hi,

Joanne Lockwood: David. Uh, good evening, because I'm in the UK.

It's, it's, uh, gin o'clock here. So, yeah, plenty of, uh, plenty of, uh, time zone difference from where I am. But, uh, that's great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

David Rice: That's my favorite time of the day. Um, so yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Why inclusivity is, is important to you and how you've helped organizations become more inclusive.

Joanne Lockwood: Thank you. Um, I suppose starting point is just to talk about the elephant in the room. I'm a transgender woman. I'm in my late fifties. I gender transitioned around about seven or eight years ago, having lived a life on the call of reasonable privilege as a perceived straight white man. And my life was very simple, [00:03:00] uncomplicated.

I'd never experienced any form of discrimination or disadvantage as a result of that. And with that The change of who I was as far as the world is concerned, I suddenly acquired not only a lack of privilege, but also I went back a further step. There was active discrimination against me for who I was.

So it wasn't just, I was being ignored or not liked. It was people actually briefing against me. So that made me realize that, uh, My passion at the time was to try and make the world a better place for people like me. I suddenly realized, hang on a minute, it's not just about people like me, it's about people.

The world has to be better for people. The world of work has to be better for people. So, at that point there, I kind of evolved my, my consultancy and my, my message around inclusion and belonging, rather than just diversity and equity. So, it's more about inclusion, belonging and inclusive cultures. That's why I'm passionate, because I think if we get the culture right, it's [00:04:00] We get inclusion, right?

We get belonging, right? Then diversity and equality will come out of that. If we're doing the right stuff. So that that's kind of where I came from on this.

David Rice: It's it's been an interesting couple of years. These last year, this last year, really, uh, for D. I know I still work in that space. And it's definitely been, uh, with a lot of the political rhetoric and some of the backlash towards it, just a difficult time to kind of get things done.

I'm curious, you know. Do you feel at all like inclusivity is kind of stagnating at a lot of places? Like what's something most organizations aren't doing today that you feel we need to start paying attention to in the future to keep the ball moving forward? Keep the progress that we've achieved since 2020, uh, in motion.

Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I, I think you're right there. There is a, a kind of a pushback, certainly from the US perspective, from what, what, what I see in the [00:05:00] news, what I see in the press around certain states, certain legisl, legisl shows, I can't say that word. Uh uh, bringing in kind of the anti DEI. Type rhetoric, you know the anti wokeness It's almost like the the people of privilege are saying oh, hang on a minute We're giving the people who are minorities and the voiceless people too much air time What about me as a as a as a privileged person?

I need to you're marginalizing me Now it's kind of the message we're kind of getting uh, and i'm seeing some of that in the uk a general election coming up in a couple weeks time. So that's heightening up. It's a real polarization between the right side of the parties and the left side of the parties where the right is trying to divide and conquer, stoic is anti voteless, as kind of overboard, we want to be more nationalistic, more kind of protection, control our borders.

So that's what's going on. So there is a, there is a lot of pushback and I'm seeing a lot of, uh, Budget's being cut, certainly in the government organizations. [00:06:00] Uh, which if you cut budgets in government, has a knock on effect to the entire supply chain. So we are seeing cash, if you like, being restricted from certain consultancies like myself.

But when you're out there engaging, With, I'll call it the real world, with commerce, with companies, with organizations, DEI and all that means is still top of the list. Well, next Ai, I think AI is the current offer for the list, if you like. Uh, but yeah, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing a seminar in a couple of weeks time in London.

And the, the organization putting it on, surveyed all their members and said, what you're burning bridges, what's your big, what's on fire at the moment. And DEI was right out there still. It's right up there, along, as I say, along with AI and a few other topics. Uh, so yes, the message is there. You can, you can try and pour water on us and try and make us go away with your negative rhetoric.

But. What I think what we see, what we are [00:07:00] seeing, though, is an evolution of message, you know, organizations may not have money for DEI because they don't understand it, but they still have money for well being. They have money for inclusive leadership or leadership development. Other, other programs, which I would say it's under the EDI banner.

EDI for me is a, is a, is an acronym for what it really covers up is all these other things. It's about treating people fairly, giving people opportunities, understanding the needs, and then we're looking at a hiring process, we're looking at employing experience, whatever it may be. It's basic rights to allow people to succeed and thrive for who they are and making adjustments where their carers, whether their parents, whether they have a disability, whether they come from a marginalized background, low socioeconomic status, whatever it may be, putting those tools and support mechanisms in place in organizations.

So we've still got budget for all that because that's important. We just don't like the word DEI. The phrase, DEI. So let's talk about wellbeing, let's talk about those initiatives [00:08:00] and we'll take the budget from you for, you know, for for leadership development training, if that makes sense with an EDI lens on that leadership development training.

So yeah, there is a pushback and I think that's gonna exist while we were in election season for around the world. But fundamentally, organizations are still, it's still a challenge and we still gotta be there to do this.

David Rice: Absolutely. Now, one thing I think is interesting, you've got a scorecard on inclusivity.

I'm curious, can you tell us a little bit about it and how it can help organizations measure their DEI programs? How should they be measuring them? I guess would be my other question.

Joanne Lockwood: The scorecard I have live at the moment is one around transgender and non binary inclusion. Uh, so that, that's the specific scorecard I have live.

I have another couple on inclusive recruitment and inclusive leadership, which are in development, but the one around trans and non binary inclusion moment. It's really analyzing across 10, [00:09:00] 10, 5, 10, 10 different areas and then drilling down into each of those areas to say, how are you doing? And some of that is around your policies, your health care provision, uh, the recruitment side.

Whether you are visibly public around your allyship or programs you're running, so it's coming like a 10 point analysis and I'll give you a high, medium and low. But yeah, a lot of people are coming out on that scorecard and around about the 50 percent mark. just above halfway because there's so much in it, you know, no one's going to be perfect.

You know, if anyone gets a hundred percent, I go, well, hang on a minute. Where's that? You know, it's, there's always more to do. We know this and, and scorecards as we know, are there to nudge you into the right direction to give you some momentum and give you some ideas of things you could do better. So yeah, the scorecard really is looking at that.

Predominantly people are coming out 50 to 60 percent, could do better, doing a lot of good stuff already, [00:10:00] they're on their journey, they're thinking about stuff, they just need a bit of a help or a bit of a nudge to achieve it.

David Rice: Oh, one of the things I've heard, you know, people say is, feels like some diversity and inclusion training is a little bit out of date.

Um, how do folks make the case for updated training when the answer that they probably face is, well, we have diversity training? I

Joanne Lockwood: see a lot of diversity training being e learning online, um, self paced, multiple choice. Um, yes, maybe there's a few videos, maybe there's a few bits. I think some of the trouble with that kind of training is that it doesn't really.

Move the needle. It doesn't really embed, doesn't really engage. People are going, yeah, click, click, next, next, guess, guess, got it wrong, try again. So people really aren't embedding it. I think if we're doing that now, and I fully understand organizations where they've got large workforces and they've got compliance, they need to get people through [00:11:00] it.

They need to do these refreshers, they need to have this kind of training. So what we are finding is that Organizations now realize that a lot of the ROI, the return on investment, they were hoping to get from the DEI initiatives aren't being realized. Maybe that's because people were too busy trying to think about lived experience, not trying to really embed learning outcomes in some of the training.

Maybe some of the practitioners are embryonic, maybe they're not OD or L& D professionals. They're speaking from a lived experience perspective, and so organizations aren't necessarily seeing the ROI on this. I think what we're probably seeing now is Is the Alan D space working with the EDI space to make sure that the EDI initiatives in the terms of corporate training, corporate development are maturing in the same way we've evolved the leadership development and some of the other stuff we talk about in OD and HR, some of the more mature spaces.

So I think we are seeing a need to professionalize a need to bring that level of [00:12:00] ROI back to the DEI space and that's probably where the training is evolving. We're becoming more savvy because people want to see that return. I think that's some of the negative rhetoric we're getting from the government organizations at the moment where they're claiming this lack of ROI because they plowed with money and they're not seeing anything change.

So in some respects I think that's fair because we're not really generating the ROI. We're still doing too much of this sort of lip service performative stuff, but it's often about number counting targets, quotas, not around the inclusion, the belonging and really realizing because McKinsey and etc. have been banging on about.

diverse companies being this much more efficient and that much more profitable. And why aren't we all doing that? Because we know the stats. So clearly there's a, there's a gap between what we, what we know and what we're doing about it. And I think that's where the training has to evolve to start realizing those benefits.[00:13:00]

David Rice: Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I've been saying that for better part of a decade, right? Maybe more. And so it's, yeah, there's a disconnect there. Um, Galen put a question in the chat that one of our attendees who registered that couldn't attend today, wanted to ask this is my committee on diversity and inclusion is predominantly made up Made up of well meaning, heterosexual, Caucasian employees.

How can I draw up more participation from other groups within my organization so the conversations are richer and so the optics aren't quite so awkward?

Joanne Lockwood: That's a really good question. Yeah, well, I I do a lot of webinar type training sessions with clients and, uh, and the world in general. And it is remarkable that you look at the attendee list on the screen and predominantly on the EDI training, it's a more female based attendee list.

If you get engaged in a sales training or something that's sort of more practical workplace [00:14:00] skills, it tends to be a more male bias. And I, and I've called out some organizations on this before. I said, why is everyone on this call? Apparently female identifying based on the names I can see. And everyone went, Whoa.

Oh yeah. And it's almost like this wake up call. I did a session with smart recruiters. Yeah. Uh the ats provider about five years ago now in san francisco and i was on stage doing a panel around gender equality and i looked out to the audience of 600 people and i could barely count men in the room gender equality is seen as a women's problem a women a female problem it's not seen as a male problem and and so to answer the question here is that we have to engage people who hold the power and the privilege i don't mean that in a lecturing sort of way And I'm going to use an example here based on English history.

So we have castles in England. So if you think about the traditional castle, English castle, the [00:15:00] people who hold the power and the privilege, they hide in their castle. They step away from the real world that you could see them on the ramparts around the towers looking down and the people who are marginized, people who have less privilege.

The voiceless, the unheard are seen as the peasants on the outside of the castle with their pitchforks, and they're trying to storm the castle to get access to support, training, to development, to careers, to opportunity. And what people are privileged is they pull the drawbridge up and then they just pour hot oil and boiling and throw rocks at you from over the top of the castle.

So the people below. All they're doing is having a battle all the time with people who hold this power. And what I want to try and do is find a way where we can get people to lower that drawbridge down. We move the table out from inside the castle, put it on the drawbridge, and we all gather around that and have these conversations from the center ground.

So the challenge here, when we're finding that we need to include people who are [00:16:00] heterosexual, Caucasian, privileged people, We have to engage them in a way that inspires them to make change. Because another analogy I use is the, in the UK, women were given the vote. Women were allowed to vote in our elections in around 1918, I think it was, to 1920 something.

And how did that happen? It happened by women protesting, but actually what changed the law? was men. Men changed the law to allow women to vote. And that sounds really crass. Men allowed women to vote, but that was the law. Men had to do the vote. So we've got to try and find a way of persuading the people who hold those privileges.

To make the difference men can influence sexism. White people influence racism. Able bodied people impact ableism, cis people impact transphobia, heterosexual people influence homophobia, biphobia, etc. So we need to [00:17:00] engage those people and how we turn them on is the challenge. Because when we advertise these EDI sessions, these, uh, menopause awareness sessions, whatever it may be, the people who we want in the room aren't there.

We're in the echo chamber all the time. So all I say to people sometimes is you maybe need to package them differently. Look at allyship programs, look at how we engage people because that, otherwise what we're doing is turning people off going, well, that's not for me. It's all that's woke stuff. I'm not interested.

And that's, that's, it's a real challenge. If I had the answer, I'd be selling it to you today. I don't have the answer. Other than I've, I've talked, I can talk about the problem.

David Rice: We got another question here. It says I've heard it. Many orgs conversations about DNI still get a bit of an eye roll. Not because people don't care about the concept, but because it always seems like a box ticking exercise.

What can we be doing to make it more part of the fabric of our organization rather than a required bolt on? [00:18:00]

Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I hear, I hear that as well. And I think it's coming back to the basic principles. We, we get caught up in this EDI language becomes the language of, we're seen as an activist. You're seen as someone who's got, who's got a t shirt or a banner or a poster of them on a protest.

And the image of the people in the castle and the people, you know, with the pitchforks. EDI was always seen a bit feudalistic and a bit head to head engaging. So if we could boil it back, and the phrase I use is positive people experiences. So what we're trying to do here is create positive experiences as a, as a candidate, as an employee, as a customer, as a stakeholder, and organizations recognize customer experience.

We talk about customer experience, we talk about that, that, that need to get the service right. That's what we're trying to do here is we want to get our employee experience. Right. We want to make sure our candidates in our tenant acquisition pipeline have a fantastic experience. That's what we're trying to do really.

That's what EDI is all about. And as an employee, I have [00:19:00] a positive experience because I'm looking after elderly parents. I'm looking after, I'm a wheelchair user. I have neurodiversity. I've got a sight impairment, hearing impairment, whatever it may be. The company cares enough about me to make a workplace adjustment or to give me the tools I need to be able to succeed.

So those are the kind of things we start talking about that. Everyone's going to go. Yeah, of course we should do that. Of course we should do that. But when we, when we call it DEI, it seems to be a turnoff. So that I think it's what we need to do is repackage the language around wellbeing initiatives.

It's a bit like we did with COVID. We're all working from home. Everybody's really hyper focused on wellbeing and keeping in touch and having conversations. And we've Lost that habit of a sudden we got bored with it. Whatever it may be. So let's just try and put that back on the table and refocus around well being equity support and not go head to head all the time.

Let's bring the conversation. So they round the table, not not shouting each other from the other side of the corridor. [00:20:00] Um, so it's culture, evolved culture. Leadership. Talk about having challenging conversations. Talk about how we can build our EQ, our emotional intelligence, our cultural intelligence. Talk, don't talk, you know, talk about privilege in a positive way, how it can enable change, not seeing it as a threaten.

So all of these things are kind of an evolution of the culture of organizations having better conversations with each other.

David Rice: I think a key part of it is really, you know, like everything in business now is data, right? We talk about data no matter what you're doing. And there's a lot of data that we can use to inform efforts and to create tangible, clear goals that people can say, well, this is what changed, you know, they can, they can get a better sense of it that way.

Um, what sort of are your thoughts on that? And kind of what, what are some of the, uh, You know, key data practices in your mind and your view that every company should be doing to sort of support their [00:21:00] efforts and to give it that credibility and business impact.

Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think you're so right. Data metrics, collecting it, know what you're collecting, why you're collecting it.

Um, for me, it's all around deltas, not absolute. It's trends. Where are we heading? What's our trajectory? Is it, is it, is it quick enough, fast enough, too fast, too slow, whatever it may be. So we need the data to influence that. Examples I use again around talent acquisition is if I'm looking to change the ratio of women to men in our organization, let's just take that very simple equation where we're overpopulated by men, underpopulated by women at certain levels in the organization.

We want to try and bring that ratio closer. Closer. I'm not saying we want 50 50. I'm not saying we want this element. We want to narrow that ratio. That's a target and a trajectory without it being an absolute. So how do we track that? Well, we need to know where we are. We need to [00:22:00] understand the demographic of our locale, the demographic of our organization, the demographic of the people we serve, our customers, the people we support and our stakeholders and partners.

Then we could build a picture and say, well, actually, We're in a demographic where there are lots of black women we're not even attracting right now. So then we can start looking at our employer branding, employee value proposition, our recruitment marketing, all of the stuff. When you stand outside the front of the organization, look back up and go, what do we look like to an outsider?

Who are we? How do we come across? What's our brand value? Not just our products we sell, but the brand of us as an employer as well. And then we look back and say, okay, where do we want that to be? Does it align with where we are? Then we can embark on projects such as training initiatives, uh, DEI initiatives, recruitment changes.

When we know where we are, we've snapshot it, we've baselined it, then we can look, look and review about what changed. And then, if you're [00:23:00] trying to get gender equity in our organizations by 2030, what are we doing this year, next year, the year after, the year after, the year after that, to get to that 2030 time frame?

And if we're not achieving it this year, we've got to double it next year. Are the initiatives working? So we're not going back and doing that review cycle. Just as we've been doing any other project. You know, we think about project management. We're doing that all the time. We're collecting data. We're doing the work.

Post project review. Did it work? No. Let's go back. Let's refine the project. Do it again. Does it work? No. Try and refine it. So we want to treat DEI and initiatives around people in the same sort of way. We've got the data. We understand where we're going. We've got our big vision of where we're trying to head.

We've got the micro steps on how to get there. Now we're tracking and measuring that and employee engagement surveys, post surveys. I've done work in the past with people like CultureAmp. There are many other engagement platforms out there. So we're getting real insights. Around people combined with the demographic, because I think if you don't know who [00:24:00] said you didn't need to know who specifically says, but you need to know the feeling of a demographic.

Otherwise, what we're doing is we're listening to the majority demographic all the time and not hearing the people who don't have a voice. So if you tell me data, I want to know, well, tell me who says that is it? Is it people who are between 50 and 60? Is it people? Those people who are black working in marketing?

Are they having a really lousy time in the organization? Compared with people who are work in product development, who are white, who've been with the company five years and unlikely to be in their early thirties. So you can tell me, I can quite clearly see the differential of experience between two different demographics.

And then I can look at insights and benchmark that against other organizations. So, yeah, the data is really key on these things. And be able to drill down and do that comparison between between organizations, between between managers in a company and see where the best experiences are.

David Rice: Okay, kind of keep on the story because we got a couple of nice follow up [00:25:00] questions here in the chat.

Galen was wondering, uh, you kind of related to that last point. In your opinion, how much of the stigma or resistance to DEI is because people think that it's just tokenism to hit a data point?

Joanne Lockwood: Um, I think, I think there is, and nobody wants to be tokenized either. You know, we're who wants to be the diversity hire who wants to be there just because.

But it's it's also a challenge if you're the first At some point someone's got to be the first and sometimes if you're looking for your first woman of color on the board You've you've got to be that person and sometimes being honest and say well, you know This is you you are you up for this being that person as well?

And you will find people who are up for it and you will find people who most certainly now I don't want to I don't Really walk into I don't want to be an icebreaker here. I want to be the I want to be someone who's really in a moving ship. So Yeah, I think sometimes the pushback is on this is tokenized and the belief in that whether it's true or not, and we did a, we did a recording [00:26:00] the other week, didn't we David, around this myth and BS of meritocracy, where there's this perceived notion that if you are a diversity hire, horrible saying that is diversity hire, whatever that means to you, not typical hire, then you must have been hired because of that characteristic, not because you were good.

So this is myth that hiring for diversity means hiring for second best, because if it wasn't, the white man would have got it, obviously, because it's the logic. So we've got to try and break that myth, we've got to try and break that stereotype that diversity hires our second best, and we've got to nurture it, because We know there are many skills.

I don't even like the term soft skills because they're not soft skills. They're just other skills. We have different skills where we are valuing the whole of a person for what they are, not just how they look, how they sound or what their lived experience is. They're bringing other things to them. And some of it may be [00:27:00] optics.

Some of it may be who they are by how they look, because that is also important. You don't want to don't have a whole white board, a whole white company that's servicing and supporting people who are of a broader demographic. So optics matters, but we've got to also recognize that we're not just hiring because of that optic, they've got to be good at the job as well.

David Rice: And then, uh, so Faye wanted to ask, she says, I have another question. We all know that HR professionals rely heavily on tools and software to succeed in their work. And we're having this conversation where we're talking about data and I'm thinking about the, you know, where the data comes from. It's always our tools and our software, right?

So beyond blind hiring in talent acquisition. What are some other features or technologies that your clients use to enhance DEI efforts? And how can these innovations help create a more inclusive and equitable experience for employees?

Joanne Lockwood: Um, yeah, blind hiring, anonymous hiring is one use of, uh, Yeah, ATS and software tools on [00:28:00] that on that process.

I think we can also use them to have a diversity of experience on how you engage with an organization. So we know that some people engage better in written communication. Some people engage better when they're able to speak. So we've got to recognize a different different skill sets, different personality types, different ways of thinking, will engage in different ways.

So we could use tools that allow us to do video interviews, maybe record questions, maybe help people, uh, engage in different ways when they have a disability or a neurodiversity that maybe means they can't, uh, engage in the same way as other people. So there's ways there. We can use AI now to do some, some sifting.

You know, I, I'm not saying I'm a complete AI advocate in a human process, but we could do some of the heavy sort, heavy lift on that. We can, we can, uh, process huge sums of CVs and build trends and build patterns from that, uh, provided we still have a human [00:29:00] touch. I might, I might actually trust AI more than some humans.

So I'm not saying AI is a bad thing here because if it, if it is, if it is objective and it does, it's well trained algorithm, then it may well do a better job. So I don't think we should shy away from AI, but use it with the human input as well. Other things we can do, I guess, are use big data type numbers, you know, look at a trend, look at the analysis, look at what's going on in the world, where these are, how we use that to benchmark.

where we're going. We've got to start looking at workforce planning now for, if we're not looking at 2030, 2035, 2040, even our workforce planning for Gen Z and Gen Alpha coming along. Then I get things like AI and trend analysis, big data can really help us see where the market's going to go. Is it the phrase you skate to where the puck's going, not to where the puck is now.

So we're going to start looking at where we're going in the future and using software data metrics is all [00:30:00] going to help influence, uh, supply a shortage of talent. Yeah, there's lots of losses. I've seen some brilliant, uh, um, SAS platforms that can, if you're looking to open an office somewhere. It will tell you the demographic of that region.

You can look at workforce planning and even predict how long it will take to hire people at different grades based on that, based on that zip code. So there's a lot of stuff we can use out there to solve in your talent intelligence, if you like. All

David Rice: right. Or about the halfway Mark folks do please take a sec.

If you have any questions for Joanne, pop them in the chat. I'm happy to ask them, uh, just to break things up a little bit. We're just going to ask you a random question. Are you a dog or a cat person? That's a, that's a

Joanne Lockwood: good one. I like that. Um, I, as with everything with me, I, there's no one straight answer.

I've got to, let me give you the story. So when my wife and I first got married, we had two cats and, uh, we had this cat for several years and unfortunately, you know, that [00:31:00] was about 30 years ago. They have passed away. Um, but we started looking at, uh, potentially getting a dog, uh, a cockapoo or something similar.

So it's hairless, cute, not too yappy, but it's going to get its alpha walk. Um, so I think we, we started off a cat people, our son's got cats, but we're probably morphing into dog people. So that's, that's, that's the answer.

David Rice: You can't go wrong with a dog, you know, I, I do love cats though. I grew into a cat person as well. I was always a dog person. And then my ex wife started bringing cats into the house. And at first I didn't like it, but, you know, Eventually, they sort of just grew on me.

Joanne Lockwood: I think I was that age where I actually want some companionship, not to be a servant to an animal.

Cats tend to be very transactional, you know, feeding, you know, whatever, as a dog wants to love you and [00:32:00] be with you. And I think I'm looking for that kind of interactiveness that a dog gives you.

David Rice: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I will continue with a question that we got. Uh, through our newsletter recently, um, a manager was asking for advice about an individual on their team who continuously disregards other team members, gender pronoun preferences.

It seems their intent is genuinely not malicious, but they aren't sure how to call it out in a way that isn't abrupt. So what advice would you have in that sort of situation?

Joanne Lockwood: Um, yeah, I do a lot of training on leaning into uncomfortable conversations and this is, Uncomfortable conversation, because generally, if you have the conversation, it's not uncomfortable because you can lean in.

You're not worried about. So this situation, I think it's key to remember that if you have perceptions, this person isn't being malicious, then it's likely to be. [00:33:00] Misunderstanding about the impact they're having. So I was talking about the difference between intent and impact. This person may not have negative intent, but the impact itself is problematic.

So it's about having a structured conversation, sit down, plan, say, look, can we grab 20 minutes in a room? Embrace the fact that the person has good intent, embrace the fact that this person is not being malicious, but then explain how the impact is landing on people, how it's making people feel, speak from the eye, offer some suggestions and coaching.

It may well be that that simple having a conversation allows them to go, Oh, wow, I never realized. Or maybe they just it's so difficult. I find it hard to do that. Then you can look at how you can coach that person if there, if they want to learn, if they want to develop a coaching technique around that every time you get it wrong, recognize you've said it and correct yourself immediately or [00:34:00] think about that person in a different way.

I recognize that there are certain people who accidentally misgender me often, and there are people who never accidentally misgender me, and there are people who do it deliberately. So it's kind of people fit into this. So I work with the people who get it wrong, who have the good intent, to just to encourage them, because you use the phrase call out, I would use the phrase call in.

The call out is a public shaming, sort of stop, no, don't do that. Call in is, can we have a conversation, or did you realize that what you said has an impact? This would be better words, this is how you could say it differently. If it's still difficult for you, let's work together on this to try and change it.

So, use the call in technique, don't embarrass somebody, give them tools, give them support, help them, and Also support the people who are being misgendered in this case and provide them support in, in [00:35:00] that, that as well and make sure they've got psychological safety. So it's not about creating a battle and I'm right.

You're wrong. I would always use the coaching and mentoring models for both sides, recognizing that both need to learn and grow and, uh, and work together. But no, no one answer

David Rice: whenever we talk about D I leadership accountability has to come into it at some point. Right. And I'm curious, you know, what sort of advice have you had been kind of coaching your clients around in terms of getting leadership, you know, measuring that essentially, and making sure that they are looking at it as sort of a barometer of success for the DEI efforts.

I think,

Joanne Lockwood: I think it comes down to a lack of brain development for leadership roles and Often people are promoted for being great technicians or time served or they need to hit a different pay band. The only way to get a different pay band is to become a leader. So we're [00:36:00] promoting people without necessarily giving them the right support, the right encouragement, the right, the right development.

And we all know that some leaders are born, but most leaders are nurtured and developed and grow. And it's a skill you can learn over time. So I think we've got to invest in our leaders. As much as we do in technical training, we've got to build proper digital development training, set good KPIs, set, set, set great growth targets, monitor and track and give people the support they need.

Within that would be inclusion, belonging, metric type satisfaction training so that they are then personally accountable for the success of their team. If you're doing pulse surveys, you're doing engagement surveys, being a drill down to a team and say, well, actually, your team is a 3. 9. The average is 5.

2. We need to, we need to Not, not, not have a bad conversation. We have a coaching conversations. What's going wrong? How can we help? How can we, how can we leverage this? How can we get from 3. 9 to 4. 2 by in the next six [00:37:00] months. So by having the data around those engagement scores about how people are feeling, um, psychological safety levels, then we can start working with leaders to nurture, nurture them and nudge their scores up.

Because everybody wants to succeed fundamentally, we don't come, we don't start the day not wanting to succeed. So I'd like to think Leaves will embrace that humility and say, well, I know I'm not perfect, I need to grow. So investing that time in them, helping them grow will, will therefore mean that we're more likely to have productive and included teams.

That's an ethos right from the top. We can't have a disconnect somewhere that the C suite are not thinking about this. They're just being. Detached. They've got to be bold, like the top down.

David Rice: Oh, uh, you know, one of the things I'm curious about, you know, you, you do a lot of training. Are there any sort of like, you know, publicly available training materials or books that you tend, you tend to [00:38:00] recommend, uh, that are just some of your favorites that.

Joanne Lockwood: Um, I've, I've got a, uh, an Amazon book list, which I keep every time I buy a book. Or think I'm going to buy a book, or someone tells me about a book, I put it on this, I'm happy to share that with you, which you can pass on. And I've also got an Audible list as well, which of all the Audible, um, books I've, I've, I've, I've bought, but not yet listened to most of them, but I have dived in.

Um, yeah, none, none of my particular favorites as such. I've got to confess, I'm not a book reader. I don't consume much of my information via books. I'm more an experiential type person, so I'm in it, listening, part of something. But I do listen to Audible, um, when I'm on trains and long journeys. But, uh, yeah, I've got a whole collection I can send you, but most of my list is around EDI.

But if I had to pick out one author who is one of these people that I think is kind of a Speaks [00:39:00] to me. Yeah, I can feel this. I can feel the words resonating. There's a person called Rutger Bregman, and he's written two books. One is Humankind, that's the latest one, and the first one is Utopia for Realists.

I think he's a Dutchman, uh, and he's kind of a, a thinker. Uh, and I, I find his, his view of the world extremely resonating with my view of the world, certainly humankind, and it's a bit for realist, it really puts perspectives on things like universal basic income. Uh, even, even talks about warfare strategies around how you're trying to moralize a country, but carpet bombing it, and all it actually does is reinforce the morale of people pulling together.

So. Yeah, we see that, we see that in Ukraine right now, how cutting people's gas electric off, bombing them, making them, make them starve, just distracts the resolve. But it's the old playbook about war. So he talks about that and how the human psyche works in that sort of situation in your reality TV [00:40:00] shows.

Reality TV shows only work if you introduce conflict. If you don't artificially put conflict into the reality TV show, people just get on, they figure it out. But you have to create conflict. You have to remove food, or you have to create a love triangle. You have to do something in there, create tension, artificially inflate tension.

And that, that means you're going to create this reality TV. But he says that humans, humans naturally are more likely to hug each other and fight each other.

David Rice: Yeah. I mean, can you imagine if it wasn't naked and afraid, if people were just afraid, you know, it would just be really kind of a boring show. Yeah.

I mean, he

Joanne Lockwood: hypothesizes that, uh, the reason for the NFL's died out. Allegedly the Neanderthals were stronger, fitter, larger species of human. The reason they died out, not, it's not for any of those being stronger, anything like this. It's because the homo sapiens us, that survived are better collaborators, but more likely to work [00:41:00] as a team.

Whereas the Neanderthals were more likely to be individual and not work as a team 'cause they're bigger and stronger. So it, it's the, the power of the team. We, we can see that in the workplace, we can see it in society. When you work together, you get better results. Yeah, Rooker Bregman, Humankind, or Utopia of the Realist, I find that quite fascinating in his insights.

Yeah, it speaks to me.

David Rice: Excellent. I'm glad I asked that question. Um, Conrad asked Ds, DEI aside for a moment, what is the key principle slash approach to create a general culture of inclusion and belonging in an organization? Um,

Joanne Lockwood: I often ask this question around, you know, I, I challenge people to find there why a DNI?

Why does it matter to you as a person and as an organization? So I think that's kind of the crux of the, of the first point is you, you have to understand why it matters. I think we go back to first principles, positive people experiences, creating cultures where people get on, people listen to, they have equity in the process, they're [00:42:00] responsive to different needs, the diversity of thought.

But I think what we first need to do is help everybody in our organization to find that why, that one thing that matters to them. And they're going, okay, I get it now. I see what it is. And then giving them the tools to help. Create that change themselves. You know, there's a great video by a century called inclusion starts with I and one of the core messages of that at the end of that is be the one you can't change the world on your own.

You can't, you can't influence everything around you, but what you do have, you have the power of changing yourself. I can, I can wake up this morning. I think I'm going to make a difference in the way I show up, the way I interact, the way I care about things. So I could take responsibility for that. And then I could be the influencer, the cooler, you know, helping other people have that approach.

So we can. Spread that be the one message to each other. That's I think is the core of culture. And I think if you look at organizations that are doing really, [00:43:00] really well with their culture, everybody is taking personal responsibility for being the one and spreading that positive culture. That's where we want to be.

You can't give people culture. You can't give people rules and instructions. They have to feel it. So I think building that feeling of inclusion and belonging and helping people understand what that is and being the one is probably what I would say to answer that question.

Inclusion starts with I, I think, to answer Conrad there. It's, it's Accenture, A C C E N T U R E, Accenture is the organization. Inclusion starts with I, and it's a well known, you'll have millions of views on it. It's often rolled out, but it's, it's, it's a very simple video, but a basic powerful message.

David Rice: Oh, Galen had another question.

It's a bit of a personal question. And it says, um, from understanding this correctly, you started your professional career as someone who was viewed [00:44:00] externally as a man, how did your professional network react when you became your true self? What was something really disappointing or challenging to navigate?

And where did you get support from? Maybe from some surprising people? Um, that's a good question. I,

Joanne Lockwood: it's a game of two halves, really. Uh, I largely. I've stepped away from my old network mentally for me. That was just so much easier because I'm not having to be around people who look at me confused. Um, I didn't have the mental strength at the time.

So I ran my own small business. I ran an it company. Uh, we had 20 odd staff. We supported people around the South of the UK. I couldn't face my staff, my customers, everything. I was, I wasn't mentally strong enough at the time. So I solved that business. And then I embarked on this new career with like a break.

So my network now is completely different people. It's, it's, it's, I don't, I [00:45:00] don't hang out in it crowds anymore. I'm completely kind of in the EDI space. I went from something like 600 linkedin connections when I left my IT career to 23 and a half, 24, 000 linkedin connections. Now I've flown around the world, spoken at conferences.

The people who only know me as Joanne, who people only know me as a, as a, an EDI speaker, people now mansplain me IT when I'm, when I'm setting up my laptops and things, I'll leave that with me, I'll, how you get it to go to the external monitor, you press these two keys, it's like, Oh, really? I never knew. So you just sort of step back.

Um, So yeah, I, I try and I use the IT now for myself. So I have a hobby of videography and photography and IT, which means that all this remote tech and cameras and lights and video editing, I kind of, I'm kind of quite cool with, so I can do all my own support. But no, it's the people who still know me. I just find it harder to be around [00:46:00] them because They know both sides of me and I just find that it's not their fault.

It's not their fault at all. It is completely mine. And I've got some friends I've known for most of my life since we were in the Cub Scouts together at the age of six or seven. And one of my friends actually said to me once, he said, it's really difficult because we don't have any shared experiences anymore.

We grew up together with 40 years worth of history. We can talk about this, we can talk about that, but I don't know who you are today. I'm not friends with the new you, I'm friends with the old you. And of course they respected the fact that I didn't necessarily want to be dragged into my old life all the time.

So it's a fair observation and we agree what we had to do is we had to create new memories based on who I am now. That's awkward because the things they want to do are not the things I want to do. So it's hard to build new memories. Going to a bar and watching the football or something. I'm not really interested in that.

So I actually build more girlfriends [00:47:00] now. My environment is more, more female orientated because that's where I gravitate. So it's, I think it's just, and the way I explain it is when you leave, when you leave school, And the odds of college, you keep in touch with a few of your friends, but you don't keep in touch with everybody and you change jobs.

You keep in touch with the one or two here and there. So I've kept in touch for the one or two here and there for the various points of my life and other people have drifted off. And that's fine. My friends who are my friends are still my friends

David Rice: kind of another question that was there in that last one. It was, uh, What is an appropriate way to react positively if you want to be supportive? If someone from your professional network announces their change, how would you advise folks go about that?

Joanne Lockwood: One of the things I also, I talk to organizations is that, you know, if someone says, comes into office, sits in front of a chair and says, Hey, I'm pregnant.

We kind of know how to respond or Hey, I'm getting married. Hey, I'm engaged. [00:48:00] It's kind of like, yeah, I'm getting married. Yeah. Well, fantastic. Hey, party. Let's do this. It's obviously sat in front of you and says, I've, uh, I've been diagnosed with a serious disease. You go, Oh, what do I do now? How do I respond to that?

Um, uh, my wife's been injured in a car crash. Oh, how do I deal with that? And so I'm saying I'm trans or non binary. People can't latch on to the, I'm having a baby sort of feeling, they latch on to the, oh, wow, that's a car crash, that's sad. So I think if I could encourage you to think about the celebratory reaction without being overboard, but also recognize the trauma that person's likely to be going through at the same time, you know.

It's not a walk in the park, so they would need support. Avoid terms like, you're so brave, that really, it can be quite patronizing. I know what you mean. I know that. You're reflecting a wall. That's a big, big ask. You must be brave to get through that. But telling me I'm brave doesn't really help. It just makes me go.

Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm just I [00:49:00] don't necessary. So I think the reaction should be, you can get to the point where it's the same as I'm having a baby. Wow, that's amazing. Oh, I'm pleased for you. Wow. How can I help? What can I do? What did it wasn't what's going on? And not I've just been in the car crash. So try and move it somewhere in the middle there, recognizing the trauma, recognizing support.

Ask me if I need help. Um, et cetera, et cetera. And if you're my wife and she says my partner, my husband's trans don't. Yeah, what happened to my wife because people were saying, well, you're still quite young, you can leave, you can get another husband, you can go out and do something else. So she got very negative reinforcement.

So again, what you need to try to provide support to the partners and children, siblings, et cetera, in a very positive light as well, help them through that. So Yeah, try and lean into it, smile, engage and, and create a happy experience and I kind of I'm with you. What can I do to answer the question? [00:50:00]

David Rice: Yeah, yeah.

One of the things that, uh, I've heard organizations ask before is, you know, are there resources and for people when they come in and they tell you this, are there certain resources that we can provide or are there, uh, you know, what should be the organizational approach to supporting that person essentially is the question.

It's got to

Joanne Lockwood: be person centric, you know, in HR and leadership, we recognize we've got to deal with the person that's in front of you, not the stereotype, not the belief, not the way you want to deal with it. So a person centric approach. Well, I work with a lot of organizations around, and I call it, bringing your trans and non binary inclusion policies to life.

Because often we have the transition at work manual, we have the language manual, we have this manual, we have the glossary of terms, and it just sits on the PDF bookshelf somewhere and people go, it's only when someone will look into your office and sit down in front of you, then you get the, you pick up the, you pick up the phone and go, ah, ah, what [00:51:00] am I doing now?

This kind of approach. What I'm trying to do is bring this to life. The training I give to organizations is around having those workshops and we do what scenarios and breakouts and have conversations. Um, so I work, I work with a UK high street retailer recently who has, um, who have, who sell clothing. And one of the things they do as part of the service is to do bra fitting for women.

So we explored the scenario. What would you do if your, your bra fitter is a transgender woman and the person who comes in the store is a cis woman and she objects to the transgender woman being her bra fitter. What do you do in that scenario? So I won't ruin the surprise. I'll let you answer that question in your own head, what you should do.

But this organization said, well, this is our policy. This is our red line. This is, this is our belief. This, if this person who comes into the shop, Um, doesn't meet our values and beliefs as a customer, [00:52:00] then they're perfectly liberty to go and shop in another shop. That's up to them. This is how we provide service.

So again, it's depending on how your organization sees that. And that may vary by, by location, where you are in the U S different states and different people have different attitudes to that, that, that belief. But in this, in this particular case, this, this input, this retailer said, this is our belief. We will defend our employee.

The customer isn't happy. Well, we're sorry to lose you. And they were very strong on that. So helping people have those conversations and explore those scenarios really important. So yeah, have the policies, have the guides. Actually sit there and test them so that people feel confident. Otherwise, if you're a store manager, you're working on the shop floor and someone challenges you, you need to know with some authority what the company's view is and how you should respond on behalf of the company rather than using your own opinion.

Okay, it's too difficult [00:53:00] for me. So that's why it's why the policies have to be brought to life, not to sit on the shelf. So that's why I do it. I work HR teams, leadership and management. Across different sectors. So to bring that out,

David Rice: one of the words you hear a lot these days is, you know, intersectionality.

And I'm curious about how do you feel like organizations have done or their understanding of it is like, how would you assess their sort of understanding of it and ability to sort of account for the different experiences that people have within different demographics?

Joanne Lockwood: I hear a lot of people misunderstanding it.

The term, I think when Kimberly Crenshaw first coined it, it was more of a metaphor. than a verb or an adjective. And I hear people using it in a way that probably doesn't reflect the true origins. You know, people, you want to intersectionality theory, if you want, is all about recognizing [00:54:00] distant systems of oppression and how people are marginalized by various layers of their identity.

So that using intersectionality in the wrong way, actually, it doesn't make any sense. You can say intersectional recognizing the cross section and the intersection people have. But intersectionality is a word, as a metaphor is often misunderstood. And the way I, I use it is I, I, I see in the U. S. and Canada, you have a similar children's game called Kaplunk, which is like a tube.

In that tube, you put straws. And then, and then you drop a ball in the top and you take it in turns to pull the straws out, and the one who, where the ball comes out first wins the game, sort of thing, or loses, whichever way around it is. So I always describe intersexuality and intersectional conversations as this plunk tube, and each of those straws is a different facet of your identity.

You're black, you're a woman, you have a disability, low socioeconomic status, and then when you try and drop the ball through, you get stuck by these straws. [00:55:00] So the theory is it's not that you can't succeed. It's just you're less likely to drop straight through because of those things in your way. And yes, you can shake the tube if you're quite resilient, you got the, you got your network, you can shake the tube and your ball might work its way through quite happily.

But as organizations and society, we have to start removing these barriers of disability of race or gender, whatever it may be. So the path becomes clearer for each individual person. So then there's often a lack of understanding around the nature of these layered identities and that the, a queer black woman has a completely different experience to a queer white woman.

When we, when we intersect faith into that, because many religions have a different view and culturally around queerness. And we think about the support they'll get in their communities as well. So we saw that in COVID. And we find, we found that many people from the black community were disadvantaged [00:56:00] health wise in a bigger way.

Because of the nature of the work they were doing. They're often doing lower skilled, lower paid work. Less protected from the virus and less, more contact. Whereas people who are white tends to work. at distance from each other. I'm generalizing. This is certainly a UK finding to explain why more black people died of COVID than white people.

And it was thought it was genetics, but it's not. It's socioeconomic environment. So by looking at intersectionality and intersectional makeups of people, and we start to allow, lay that on top of the data, we can start to see different patterns and avoid those assumptions or stereotypes. Based on things, the other thing is crash test dummies in cars.

I mean, all the dummies were tested by men and they wondered why women were having a poor experience in crashes because the seatbelt design was designed for the upper body mass of a man, whereas women have a lower body mass center of gravity. And there were there was submarine out the bottom of seatbelts, whereas men were [00:57:00] being caught by the belt.

So the date is really, really important to understand the demographic and the body shape that can differ by your different lived experience or different characteristics. So intersectionality and intersectional analysis is really important. Laid on the data you have to try and understand what you're trying to develop.

David Rice: That's a really interesting story I never knew that about the seatbelt design. So that's I've learned something today, too We are coming up against time. So I wanted to give you a chance to you know, kind of sign off was there anything you want to probe maybe a Recent episode of your podcast or something like that

Joanne Lockwood: Everybody.

It's been a pleasure to be here today. I have a podcast. I'm up to episode 130 that I've recorded. It's called inclusion bites. You'll find it on all the usual platforms. I'm sure Kayla and the team will signpost that in the show notes. I'm always looking for guests. So don't just listen. You can always be a guest as well.

Um, check me out on linkedin [00:58:00] Joanne Lockwood, uh, check my website out. I've got a plethora of resources I'm building up check sheets and flashcards and and score cards and playbooks. I'm laying on the website all the time So lots of resources free come and come and come and consume them and and uh, and let me know how you get on but yeah I'd love to have a dm me love a chat Excellent.

David Rice: All right, everyone. Well, thank you for joining us today. This was a good chat. I hope you all got a lot out of it. Do keep an eye out for our next one. And Galen's going to kill me, but I cannot remember the date. We do have another one of these coming up next month. Of course, come on out and check out the topic that we're going to have.

It's going to be a really good one. Head on over the website if you haven't already. Subscribe to the newsletter. Check out the podcast. Just a lot of cool things going on here with people managing people. Um, so until next time inclusion starts with I be the one.[00:59:00]