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Episode 25 - Anna Ott, VP People at HV Capital
65 Plays11 months ago
Welcome back to Women Talk Tech and the very first episode of 2024. - It's a good one.
Sade is joined by Anna, VP of People at HV Capital. They discuss what her and her fund are doing to tackle the issue of diversity in early stage startups and what she thinks founders can do better to ensure teams are set up from the very beginning with diversity in mind.
They also discuss how diversity work can become a burden which seems to always be placed on HR teams. Supporting those in such roles is really key!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Women Talk Tech, and in fact, the first episode of 2024.
Diversity in Startups: Challenges and Burdens
00:00:22
Speaker
Today I'm joined by Anna, VP of People at HV Capital. Anna and I discuss what her and her fund are doing to tackle the issue of diversity in early safe startups, and what she thinks founders can do better to ensure teams are set up from the very beginning with diversity in mind. We also discuss how diversity work can in fact become a burden, which seems to always be placed on HR teams.
00:00:43
Speaker
Supporting those in such roles is really key as it can take a lot to uplift and energise yourself to take on systemic problems that appear impossible to solve. Honestly, it was such an insightful conversation. I know you're going to enjoy this. So Anna, tell me a little bit more about yourself.
00:01:00
Speaker
I'm very excited to be here, too. Thanks for having me. My name is Anna. Obviously, I work for a German venture capital fund, which is called H3 Capital. We have invested in mostly German startups for more than two decades. But this is probably the sufficient amount of information you need to have about my employer. We could probably go deeper into that and what it means to work for VC. A bit about me, I myself have been working in and around HR also for 24 years now, mostly in and around tech companies.
00:01:30
Speaker
And the tech companies in Germany started about the time that I started to work. So I've seen much of the last cycles and waves and everything that has happened there.
Influencing Diversity: Systems and Experiences
00:01:41
Speaker
And it has said, in and out at HR, currently supporting all the portfolio companies that we work with on anything HR and very, very much into DEI.
00:01:51
Speaker
Love that, love that. And what does it mean to you? I think, you know, like I said in every other episode as well, it means so much to so many different people and it's such a broad topic. We hear the buzzword all the time. What does it mean to you and why is it important to you?
00:02:04
Speaker
I think the obvious answer would be it's part of the impact that I can have. It's part of the responsibility that I embrace because HR is a function in any organization that can influence this, a function that can educate about this, it can build better processes and systems. So it's part of my professional career. On another level, I think it is also part of the responsibility that comes with working in a venture capital firm that supports mostly early stage companies.
00:02:32
Speaker
So we can also shape with our advice how they create and build out their businesses. We don't tell them how to do their stuff. We do help them with all the best practices, benchmarks and asset advice that we have picked up. And quite personally, obviously, when you have been working in this industry for more than 20 years as a woman, you have seen and probably experienced unfairness, inequality.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I think this is where it gets personal to someone like me because I feel it will help people advance who should deserve a bigger seat at the table and at the bigger table. So in a very catchy phrase, I think most of my thinking around diversity is informed by the fact that I can help open doors from inside.
00:03:24
Speaker
Love that. Yeah and you're so right if you can get a seat at the table and the big table as well, it's not about just getting a seat at any table, it's a table where the decisions have actually made. Yes. Amazing and I know you mentioned that you kind of work at the portfolio companies, tell me a little bit about your role and kind of how diversity comes into this.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yes. So I said, my role is that I'm an advisor to the portfolio companies. The portfolio companies that H.E. Capital is investing in. So I have a large team of investment professionals that I work with. They pick deals that are early all growth stage companies. They're mostly Germany, very sector agnostic. So given that scope and breadth of the portfolio, my counterpart in an organization would be either the founders or the HR professionals that I can advise with anything HR, but also diversity.
00:04:13
Speaker
So what does it mean? We tell them that there are some things that they should be more concerned about. So it means we've spot things or help them see things that might be on their radar when most of the time they're very much thinking about how they can just grow, find product, market fit and other things. So we add a bit of the extras to it that
00:04:34
Speaker
How you can do this more responsibly? How you can be a bit more conscious about what kind of employer do
Overlooking Diversity in Early Stages
00:04:40
Speaker
you want to be? What kind of leader do you want to be? What kind of entrepreneur do you want to be? So it's asking questions and also sharing how others are doing it so that they get sufficiently inspired or educated to think about those things that might be not the obvious ones that you read up on when you read any kind of book on scaling your company, blitz scaling your company, what have you.
00:05:01
Speaker
So this is most of the work that I do and then obviously helping them to act on it when they say, okay, we understand we want to do better. We want to do more. We're going to want to go deeper. Tell us how. Interesting. Yeah. Because of course, I guess in your role, you can't tell people exactly you need to do this. Rather you need to ask the right questions and make them think about something which they never actually thought about in the first place.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yes, and also daring to probably ask uncomfortable questions. As I said, we're not shaming anyone for not having done better because I think that it's also about the capacity to think about these things when you're knee deep into building a business and have just been injected a fresh amount of capital. I get it that their heads are sometimes elsewhere. It's fair. At the same time, it's about guidance and advisory to the extent that they think about other stuff too.
00:05:49
Speaker
And I said, dare to go deeper and asking them, look, you have hired another major CTO. Have you considered that this could have also been a woman? Have you done the research? Have you worked with partners that can help you? How diverse really was your shortness? How inclusive really was your interview process, for example? So thinking about how they can do better, where they want to actually do better.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned your fun cares a lot about diversity, and I guess something you're talking to a lot of startups about is diversity. From your point of view, why do you think startups really struggle with diversity in the very early days? Because I see a lot of startups progressing and thinking about it a lot later. Why do you think in kind of day one, it's not a thought?
00:06:34
Speaker
I wouldn't even know if it's not a thought for none of them. I think it's unfortunately for most of them, it's not a thought. And we see that there's a shift also with a different breed of generation of founders that integrated diversity from day one. So I think though, when we look at the overall ecosystem and the probably more mature and advanced companies, they didn't think about it in the first one or two or three years. They're totally right with that assumption, I think, with specifically the older companies.
00:07:04
Speaker
I think sometimes, so there's a couple of reasons, sometimes HR just comes in too late. If you hire an HR person at like 70 or 80 FT only, it's really hard to then figure out how you can still change things when there's already so many people on the payroll of a probably very homogeneous client. And then the systems have to be in place then too. So you have to think about these things probably a bit too late, but it's still doable. It's just a bit later.
00:07:33
Speaker
The other thing is I guess it's not top of mind for most of the founders because most of the founders are not a diverse kind of founder type so we can measure this even and I don't want to go just about diversity is not about gender but it's the only thing that we can measure most of the founders we have backed and every other VC have backed are men and they're most of the time white men and they're most of the time European white men so I think that there is a
00:07:59
Speaker
a lack of understanding that they have privileges that they can share, a lack of understanding that it's the ones in power that can be
00:08:08
Speaker
Acting more as allies? Yeah. And that has not happened. It's not that they don't think it's important. It's not that they don't understand that it's a thing. I think they get it, but I don't think that they have the mindset to really understand it's on them. It's not hiring a diversity person when you can afford one at 100 FTE. It's how do you responsibly act when you build out a company in a workplace and how you can change things by having a different mindset.
Bias and Talent Recognition in Startups
00:08:39
Speaker
I'm not sure if this all makes sense, but I think this is vaguely the answer that I have to that question. But I think we all know there is a problem, but we haven't been able to pinpoint really where it sits. We all know all the things we could be doing to counteract it, but I think we all feel that it's really hard to get to the bottom of it because we don't know what else does it need.
00:09:02
Speaker
for them to change, whatever this means, whoever them is. Because in the societies, in the media, we have talked so much about it. We have educated, we have trained, we have collected data, we have done all the work. Yeah, it's all there. There's all the scientific proof, there's all the studies, all of this has happened, but it's still not done.
00:09:26
Speaker
I'm also a bit out of my depth to understand what it is so I could just make assumptions and that my assumption is there's not a strong allyship between those who found companies that are asset from this one archetype that we see too much of.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I couldn't agree more. I think you said two things. You know, they hire HR later on and say it's not too late, but the kind of foundations have already been set that are not with diversity in mind, unfortunately. And also, like you said, the founders that we see are not diverse in themselves. So also they hire people like themselves that are going to work like them and they build a company of many use almost or many them, which makes it really, really hard to then see how diversity can come into place. So later on, because I think, you know,
00:10:07
Speaker
if I was to join a company of 20 men, would I want to go into that company being the first woman going in, knowing that they've hired 20 men before me and they thought, oh, now we need a woman to come in board, you know? I know exactly what you mean. And I think that's one part of, and I don't think that's even a bad outcome. I think this is a great outcome that people want with their feet. I would say,
00:10:31
Speaker
I sometimes phrase it in the way that companies have to be worthy of diverse talent. Yeah. Right? So you have to make an effort. You have to make them understand that it's a safe space, that you create a company that centers are of belonging and parity and equity and all this. It's not the, oh, let's tick a box and hire a woman. Yeah. I think we are beyond this for sure.
00:10:58
Speaker
Because people ask questions, they want to know, is this a great place where I could thrive? Are there the same chances for me to advance as everyone else? And I think part of this conundrum of problem, why this is still a thing and why we haven't really solved it is, I feel that specifically in startups, and I don't know how you perceive this, but I think that we have a specific kind of perception of what performance looks like.
00:11:24
Speaker
Every founder that you talk to would probably tell you that they are looking for triple A plus players and like the hustler. And although we have our, yeah, we are very much frustrated with these kinds of phrases, but I think this is still around. It's part of the conversations. It's part of the briefings they give to recruiters or HR people when things about hiring, like, but I need like a super tough, tough performer. And when you ask them what this means, I think that you can then decipher that it means someone who works
00:11:51
Speaker
longer hours, all nightures, super responsive, is probably speaking the same language, is talking the same, is going for the same beer and then the same clubs running the same service. Like, as you said, it's a mini version of yourself. Because obviously, your self-perception is that you're a badass performer. And only people who resemble much of your traits can be equally performing as you are.
00:12:21
Speaker
There is no understanding that performance comes in so many different forms and shapes. Not everyone who's extroverted is a performer and not everyone who's not extroverted is a performer. Not everyone who dominates a room at a discussion in a meeting is a performer.
00:12:38
Speaker
And the shy person and the introvert person in the background might have the most amazing solution to a problem. But if we don't make space for them, we will never hear about it and we will overlook a lot of talent. So the other part that I'm driven by when it comes to diversity is that we are overlooking a lot of talent as this formal
00:12:56
Speaker
that there are so many great people that we could be hiring and engaging with and investing in even that we overlook because we have this preconception of performance and talent and whatever that makes us too narrow in our scopes. 100%, like honestly, what you said that I'm just literally seeing him nodding at every point because there's been so many times I've had a briefing with a founder and yeah, AAA candidate and I'm trying to understand, okay, what that actually means for each founder because it's very different.
00:13:25
Speaker
But equally, right, there's so many biases that, like you said, talent goes overlooked from that CV level. From when you see a CV, from when you see a name on a CV, there's a bias already there. So I think sometimes founders, without even knowing, they overlook some really, really great talent just from their perception, their mind of what a good performer looks like, you know.
Tech Innovation vs. Organizational Structures
00:13:46
Speaker
And I think the other part of this is the flip side of this coin is also
00:13:50
Speaker
As we are so narrowed into a specific kind of what a performing talent in a startup looks like, we might also not overlook other similarly talented people. We might also overlook people who are actually more creative, differently talented, better talented. And this is, what a talent is is quite subjective, obviously. But I think it's not only overlooking the other alternative hire that you could have done, because obviously they're also higher for meritocracy.
00:14:20
Speaker
But I think we should also have good debates about what meritocracy means, and it's an odd argument to make. But still, we want them to hire the perfect person with the skills and capacities and capabilities that they need to advance their business, 1%.
00:14:33
Speaker
But we also overlook people who could do it a bit differently and thereby a bit better because what I can't get my head around and couldn't for the last 20 something years and I can get a bit cynical about is this is innovation. This is tech. This is new frontiers. This is thinking differently about stuff and challenges that we have as a society, as businesses or whatever. This is where creation happens and ideation happens where we
00:14:57
Speaker
advance by doing things differently. But the only other thing that we have not done differently is hiring and building organizations. We build the most advanced technologies. We invent things quite literally, but we don't reinvent the way that we do these things. There's only a few companies who try to rethink how they can run organizations, how they can do leadership and all those things. But most of the ways that these companies are run is quite traditional and outdated.
00:15:27
Speaker
and not even questioned. At the same time, they put the most amazing outlandish things, but then they act internally like someone who's fallen out of time.
AI's Role in Reducing Bias
00:15:40
Speaker
Do you know what I mean? I think this is a conundrum that I find really interesting.
00:15:43
Speaker
Yeah and I probably would argue especially in Germany, not just of course my I guess assumption is because we only mainly work with German companies right so that's all I really know but I do find when I am kind of in and around London I do see a difference in mindset as opposed to say in Germany or kind of other European cities so yeah I do find like you said we change or we kind of progress in every other aspect of life but we still hire in the exact same way that we were hiring back in the 1900s you know it's still
00:16:14
Speaker
We are using tech more and I think we're finding different ways to find more talent but the hiring process and so many other assets are still very much the same.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yes, and I'm not, I don't want to be sounding naively optimistic here, but I've looked into a lot of HR tech in the last months because of the advancement of AI. And now obviously every software tool that we ever be using will be having some kind of AI feature in it. Whether this is bonkers or really helpful, we don't know, the jury's out on many of those things. But it's an interesting trend that we see that, for example, with performance reviews, the tool that we're actually using, but many of our startups are using,
00:16:52
Speaker
is using AI to help managers prepare for performance review conversations. It is also a tool that helps you figure out how you reassess yourself from the last cycle to this cycle with more clarity and more contextualized and probably better phrased copy and text that can help you think about this stuff better.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah. Because we are very much biased with ourselves as much as we are biased with other people, right? And I think, ironically, when we say AI is mostly biased because of the data it has been fed, I think AI will help us be less biased at the workplace, to some extent, because it gives you a bit of a different spin to
00:17:36
Speaker
how you should think about the performance of someone objectively, because you might have fed the AAI with them just making things up like, ideally, you would feed an AI with, I need someone who does this, that and the other thing, as in refine the output. And the AI would build you the scorecard, the job description, the section process, the interview questions, the assessments and everything else, and help you select
00:18:01
Speaker
better talent, less biased. Ideally, we're not there yet. I'm still skeptical about most of the applications. Well, maybe this is the breakthrough that we need. And maybe it will also help people rethink the outdated structures that we have too much of in HR still. We don't question really.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely,
HR's Diversity Responsibilities and Challenges
00:18:26
Speaker
definitely. I guess on to the topic of HR, because I think it's really, really important to speak about HR when it comes to diversity. Unfortunately, right, the burden of diversity work does fall a lot on HR teams, whether you mean it or not. I think ultimately it does fall on them. So I think why do you think, why is this the case firstly? Why do you think this happens?
00:18:47
Speaker
I think it's something that I can relate to because of my personal journey. Diversity was sometimes a topic that was naturally falling into Asia, as I said, because of the impact that Asia could have. There is a natural relationship between Asia and diversity. I don't think that
00:19:04
Speaker
necessarily, the HR role should have a diversity scope in it. I don't think that it doesn't mean that diversity roads cannot be standalone roads. All those things can be true, but I think that there is an overlap when it comes to the topics and the things that they can change, because most of the things about how humans get selected and interviewed and hired, but also advanced in our organization. So the actual human touch and the human resources. But at the same time, I feel it's also
00:19:34
Speaker
very much too narrow and probably a bit of a lazy move to think we should be dumping diversity on HR because they're the only ones who probably care and a bit more empathetic and all the other stereotypes that come with HR. So this is the point that I get really angry about because
00:19:49
Speaker
If an HR leader chooses to also work on diversity initiatives, that's amazing. But if they get just tasked to do it, although they maybe not have the resources, the scope, the mandate, the power even to change things,
00:20:06
Speaker
then it is just a burden. And it's a very tedious task then. And then people get really frustrated about the fact that they see all the things that should be done differently, but they can't act on the change that they want to create. Yeah. And then it is mental load to the people who are pointed at for being in charge, but not unable to actually do it, not empowered to actually do it. And then this is often, that's the other part of it. 80% of the HR leaders are now portfolio women.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah. It is also the ones that are personally feeling the pain, the unfairness and the inequality. Yeah. Because their careers have been shaped by these things. They have been probably not walking through life with all the privileges and all the doors open to them.
00:20:55
Speaker
So it takes a personal toll on top of this. So you can feel like a toothless tiger, but at the same time you feel that it's personally triggering you because you really want others to have better chances and more equal opportunities because maybe you did not have them too because you know all the moments when someone was harassing you or there was misconduct and whatever things. Because I think this is true for every woman that has ever worked in whatever kind of context.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I'm not even daring to think about how it might be differently relating to the people who are underrepresented minorities, all those things, right? If you pile them up, it's just getting really frustrating. I don't think that's a discussion we are having. I think we should have more of this discussion that who do we task to do diversity? Why do we do this? Do we enable them? Do we support them? Do we equip them? And do we give them resources to also cope with the mental load that we add on their jobs?
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, totally. And like you said, right, HR naturally is a predominantly, a kind of female dominated space. And they are given the task to, I guess, fight a hell of a lot of, you know, fights are years and years worth of kind of trauma almost. Like, is really that the perfect fit? Is it really the perfect fit to kind of give? Of course, I don't want to say it isn't, but it's,
00:22:15
Speaker
You're right, you're giving women the task to fight a fight when maybe they don't even have the power to change these things. It's crazy when you think of it like that. How do you even fight against that? And I think additionally, it is also a misconception, for example, because just because I'm a woman, it doesn't mean I'm an expert in diversity. Yeah. I'm an expert in the experiences that I have had.
00:22:39
Speaker
much of this was shaped because of my gender and my gender identity, but I think this is probably very limited when it comes to
00:22:47
Speaker
people with other different identities. So I can't speak for the whole of underrepresented minorities that we are probably have overlooked historically. I can't speak to their experiences. I could probably figure out where systems might be not helpful and even hurtful for people who are different to the homogeneous type of people who are empowered. I get this.
00:23:11
Speaker
But for example, I get really frustrated when people ask me about, can you tell me more about how it is for people to be part of the LGBT argument? She said, I don't know. I mean, I have friends. I can build on anecdotal evidence, but I'm not an expert. And neither are most of the female leaders in Asia. They do much of the work by reading up on it. I have personally read probably, I don't know, two dozens of books of diversity, feminism. We even bought a book about the history of patriarchy, which is quite interesting.
00:23:42
Speaker
I am spending time in my leisure time, my going to bed wind down time with my husband as me reading books of feminism. How sexy is that, please? Imagine the dinner conversation as in, did she know? And he's like, no.
00:23:57
Speaker
I don't want to know. I just want to do Netflix and chill. And I was like, but I'm reading a book in patriarchy. And then I think about it and then I sleep and dream about it and all those things. So a lot of the female HRDSI speaker and also the male, by the way, do these things. They read up, they educate themselves. Yeah.
00:24:15
Speaker
But it is probably more helpful if the people who can definitely make change, because it's at their finger points, if they were to read at least one of those books, that would be so much more helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, right, you know, you give the task to a woman in the team, but again, that woman may not have been through the life experiences that
00:24:37
Speaker
you know many other people have been through right or other women that are also from a diverse background so it makes it like you said really really hard to actually understand and also fight for something which you also have no experience of and even myself I am from an underrepresented group but I still recognise my privilege as opposed to say other people who are also from a minority group as well just from you know maybe say the school I went to or the background I have it's still so different and it's still so broad
00:25:01
Speaker
And it's still very hard, like you said, to fight against something which you may not have experience of, but you're still trying to kind of help other people.
Balancing Personal and Professional Diversity Perspectives
00:25:11
Speaker
And I said, and you don't even have the power to do so. Yeah, that's it as well. So I said, I can police anyone in our team. And I'm glad that I don't have to do it anymore. At some point, I probably did. And maybe I overdid it even. But I think this is also something that I have to
00:25:29
Speaker
recess all the time as in, do I want to wear this head of the feminist police in the organization? And is this actually what I, Anna, want to do? Or is this the responsibilities that someone thinks I should be having? Is it the role that the VP people of an organization should be having? Or is it just a role that I, as a person, have acquired? This is actually helpful. All those things, right? Which actually makes the whole part of this mental load even more complex because you have to think about
00:25:58
Speaker
to any time I have conversations about diversity with whoever, I have to clarify this is whether this is my personal opinion, or this is something that I have picked up from all the reading and conversations I had with experts. This is not my personal opinion. This is
00:26:16
Speaker
advice that is profound, scientifically proven, yada, yada, yada. There's a difference, but people don't see the difference because they're talking to the woman about diversity and they always think that my advice is informed by me being a feminist, which is not even something that I would subscribe to. I do care about feminism, but I would not say that I am a feminist because that word is also very much loaded with a lot of stigma.
00:26:40
Speaker
So I have a high time understanding if I want to be a feminist or not. If I want to be the feminist in the room, if I want people to stop conversations and also look at me when there's like a joke on bed, if I want to be that person. I don't want to be policing people on stuff. I just want them to read up on things to educate themselves. Yeah. And this is where it's getting really hard for the people who are trying to do the work because are they giving their personal opinion based on their personal experiences, which is limited?
00:27:10
Speaker
Or do we know that they're actually speaking from the research that they have done? And sometimes this is just bundled up in one thing, but we don't ask even for the differences. We don't clarify this. Other people don't ask me unless it's your opinion, or is it something you've read?
00:27:28
Speaker
And also I find that even as the ones talking about it, it does sometimes become very hard to actually separate the two. Even when you are speaking so passionate about a topic, as a woman, I'm speaking about something which am I passionate about? Yes. Am I talking about...
00:27:43
Speaker
every other woman in the world I can't because that's not my job but it becomes very hard to separate like you said my own opinion versus what is fact or what I've read or what other people have told me to kind of fight for and ultimately this comes with just having many many many uncomfortable conversations and I think there's lots we kind of task with someone when given this this kind of diversity job um like there's how do you say certain things the right way of saying things the wrong way of saying things it's it becomes such a
00:28:11
Speaker
um hard conversation to have because I mean I had a podcast recently where we were speaking about neurodiversity and I had I must admit very little knowledge about this topic and I learned a lot from the conversation but I spent my entire time speaking with this person thinking like am I saying it the right way like am I offending other people like you know it's so so hard to know what the right way is and I think you know how can we actually support people with this task
00:28:34
Speaker
knowing that it is kind of filled with so many uncomfortable conversations that you may not even want to have, but you have to because it's your job. And I think you've touched on something that I can also relate to, which is that everyone assumes that we are very much perfect in the way that we deal with things. I mix up pronouns all the times. I'm probably also using not the right language at times. I have for sure in the past,
00:29:01
Speaker
that regrettable things that hurt people. I've done all these things. I'm a human. Am I trying to be better every day? Yes. Am I trying to figure out and speak to people who can educate me and help me to ask for feedback more? Or do I speak more consciously? You could totally tell with someone like me because I tend to speak really fast. But when I slow down speaking, it's because I think about the work that I'm trying to find. So you can see that she's making an effort, right?
00:29:30
Speaker
Is it always perfect? No, for sure not. It's progression over perfection, 100%. But again, if I probably fail to use the right term in a conversation,
00:29:43
Speaker
being the diversity expert in the room, people look at me, it's like, ah, haha, but yeah, Anna, this is something that you just said, you should, do you know what I mean? It's like, they look at me, it's like, but you're not perfect, so why do you think we should be perfect? But this is, there's a lot of shaming going on in diversity work, which is unfortunate, because it should not be about someone knows better and educates others for them to do better.
00:30:03
Speaker
I think it's more about can we actually educate ourselves every day with everything that we learn about the differences and the nuances of society and can we help each other here better so we all advance as a group and maybe someone is taking the lead and maybe that person has the privilege to do more work and more research and spend more time on it
00:30:24
Speaker
but I can merely offer the things that I have researched to other people. Whether they act on it or not is totally their choice. This is true with everyone in the VC industry. This is true with everyone in the portfolio of all the VCs that I'm working with, but also this is true for all the peers of mine who work in different funds and do the same kind of work and also try to support portfolio companies on these things. It's merely an offer.
00:30:52
Speaker
is never more than that. And it should be taken as one. It shouldn't be taken as an enforced change of behavior, as a policing of language and all those things. It's an offer to be a better human. But if they choose not to, it's their loss.
Allyship and Peer Support in Diversity Efforts
00:31:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it's hard enough having to fight the fight. It's even harder when you're being ashamed for fighting the fight and making a mistake. And I think that's why it's so important that diversity drivers shouldn't just be those from the minority group. It shouldn't just be women who are fighting for other women. It shouldn't just be those that have a say neurodiversity that are fighting for those with others. It shouldn't be the case. And how do you think we can change that? Because why, I mean, we know why it's the issue, but
00:31:37
Speaker
How do you think we can get more people to fight the fight and drive diversity knowing they're not from that group, you know?
00:31:46
Speaker
Yes, this is why I'm slightly obsessed with allyship, but maybe also because it's the last resort. We tried everything else. Every time this enough, maybe not. That's true this then. Because sometimes you get a bit desperate in this whole thing and you also get frustrated maybe. But generally I feel that from my own personal experience and the team that I'm fortunate to be part of,
00:32:09
Speaker
I'm surrounded by so many allies who are understanding that they have privileges and responsibilities in the careers that they have acquired that they can give back, they can share, they can open doors from inside and all those things. They can do the right things. They have
00:32:27
Speaker
acquired a mindset totally unrelated to my work sometimes, even where I know that I can rely on them to do the things they can do when I'm not even in the room, when they do the things that I don't even see, because obviously I don't see all of the things. And I can't be the one where everyone is pointing to as in, oh, Anna is doing that diversity thing, so I don't have to. That's not how it works in none of the organizations. It's not a one person task.
00:32:56
Speaker
So it becomes a team effort when it becomes a team mindset and a single team mindset can be that of allies, male allies, white male allies, one after you. But I think it's the ones that have understood that, okay, I hold a privileged person, a position of power.
00:33:12
Speaker
I can do change. What we refer to earlier was the ones who are in charge, if they have understood it, if they're role modding it, if they are trying to do better, if they are able to speak about it in public. The other day, one of our leaders gave a talk about this or was part of a panel conversation about this. And I know that he did an amazing job doing it. And I don't even have to listen in. I'm not even anxious that he's not doing it. I know that he would deliver all the messages that we want him to deliver on behalf of the organization that we represent.
00:33:43
Speaker
So this itself is soothing because it says that we act as a group with one voice that is a strong commitment. So it's no longer just me. I'm doing much of the work on the portfolio side, but I think that as a team, we have achieved so much that I'm very, very grateful for.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, I think allyship is something which we overlook so much. And I think definitely it should be, it should kind of be, well, I definitely think it should be a leadership quality, right? Because you in a position of power should be, you know, being able to help others that need that and that need allies. And you should be a voice not when I'm in the room, but when I'm not in the room. And I think that's what's really important. You should be helping the fight when people are not there.
00:34:25
Speaker
not just because, you know, there's a group of women behind you that have asked you to kind of talk about maternity cover or have asked you to kind of speak about, you know, the issues which women may go through at work. Do that when we're not there and do that when we're not listening, because I think that's what's more powerful. I'm so with you there, but because one of the things that I've read in the last research that is the difference between mentorship and sponsorship and what is more helpful. Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker
We have, specifically in the tech industry, there is this obsession that there should be more female founders and we should just mentor them better so that we actually give them more confidence to start their entrepreneurial career, which I think is bonkers. Because I think if you want to be a founder of whatever gender, you will probably have
00:35:06
Speaker
You will find the resources to do it, whether there is still a stigma and a bias in the way that capital is granted to specific types of debt. That's true. But if you choose to want to be a founder, you don't need all the mentoring programs. You don't need all the networking events. We're just surrounded by other females. What you want to is be part of a conversation where there is the people who can write the checks. So mentorships,
00:35:33
Speaker
Mentoring itself is a very limited scope of change here. Instead, what you just said is sponsorship and by definition, sponsorship is when you speak on someone else's behalf when they're not in the room. Sponsorship is probably very much invisible to the person who is actually getting sponsored.
00:35:52
Speaker
Because it's the leader in the leadership conversation where it's probably the conversations about who should progress in our firm. When someone is saying that person should be getting their job because they are badass and they are so great and I want to push for that person, not the other person. And if that sponsor has understood that they should also help people advance who are not the obvious pick because they don't
00:36:17
Speaker
They're not falling into the pattern of the historical pics because they are probably of a different background, of a different makeup or whatever. This is really powerful, way more powerful than anything else. And this is why allyship and sponsorship.
00:36:33
Speaker
is kind of the same, because if leaders become allies, they will become sponsors. Totally, like 100%, 110%. And I guess, you know, it's a massive problem, it's a massive task. How do you think we can actually uplift and energize people when struggling to take on this? What do you, I mean, from your experience, I'm sure you've kind of been through it yourself. What did you do in kind of how do you think we can really help people going through this?
00:37:02
Speaker
What works for me, and it does not work for everyone, but I'm a person that I get energy from making connections and being amongst people. I'm a very social animal. So my goal to resources would be to speak to others that are also doing this kind of work for two reasons. One is just ventilate and have a round. The other one is
00:37:24
Speaker
to be normalised so that everyone is struggling, it's just not me. Because that's a thought you might easily have. Everyone is doing so great, but I can't. No, everyone is struggling. It's normal to struggle and everyone has been through the same struggles. That's normalising it. That's really helpful. The other part is
00:37:42
Speaker
Everyone is really maybe because we're all in the same boat here. We all want to help each other. So I get much of the advice and the ideas and the inspiration and solutions to how I could do these things when I speak to peers. So this is where my peers are my resources. At the same time, I think we should also be very much cognizant that it has a mental toll and it is mental load and you need to find ways to
00:38:09
Speaker
help you offload these things in whatever way that you choose to. For example, people who want to look for coaching or any kind of supervision and maybe even therapy, whatever have you, but I think we should not forget that.
00:38:25
Speaker
I don't stop thinking about diversity when I leave the office. I see it everywhere. I see it in my personal life, in my circle of friends, in everyone's life. Yeah. It's a lens that once you have started to use it, to look through it for whatever
00:38:44
Speaker
world you walk through, you can never take it off. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And I think this is where in most of the other functions you can stop thinking about, like if you were to be an accountant, you'd probably think about, stop thinking about accounting once you're on the tube, hopefully maybe.
00:39:02
Speaker
I though, every show that I watch on Netflix, every book that I pick up, everything, it's just kind of, it takes me extra energy to force myself to stop thinking about those things and also find joy in things and not look at the news, the geopolitical things from that lens too, as in there's another source of frustration, another source of inequality and unfairness and this really takes up.
00:39:28
Speaker
And I think this is also what we have to be aware of. And I think this is what people doing the job have to be aware of, that they need to find resources to offload this, and to decompress. And it's totally fine to do things differently, to not think about it all the time. It's totally fine to take time off from diversity work. Yeah. No, 100. You need this Sunday off to go back on Monday. Yeah, whatever you do on a Sunday has not to be informed. It's not a day wasted. It's a day for you to recharge.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, I can really relate to that because when I kind of dug my head into, that's the right saying, but when I kind of got really interested in diversity work, I then, you're right, I couldn't unsee certain things I would have definitely overlooked before. Like I wouldn't have noticed certain aspects in movies, in a conversation, in really small interactions in a coffee shop. I would have so overlooked and I would never have second guessed anything.
00:40:21
Speaker
Now I am like literally nitpicking at everything. Like I'd see things now from a different point of view. Like my mum told me about a situation she had at work and I was like, but mum, did you? And I was like, oh my gosh. Like if I kind of tell her about this and she'll, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to slow down. I can just be there as a daughter and be like, yeah, you know, it's fine. But I couldn't agree more. Now I'm in it. I feel like I can't get out. And I get that when you are in it and when other people are kind of doing more in their role on diversity, it's one really hard to turn
Focusing on Small Achievements in Diversity
00:40:50
Speaker
off.
00:40:50
Speaker
And two, you can get so kind of caught up in trying your best, not achieving too much and kind of just being a bit kind of demotivated by your work and not knowing where to turn to if it's not working out. And like you said, right, telling to other people and having a bit of a rant, having a conversation, learning from others and seeing that, hey, it's not just me that's going through this, but equally turning off when you need to because it's a massive fight and it's a massive issue and you can't do it just on your own.
00:41:18
Speaker
Exactly. And I think it's much of like coping mechanisms that I needed to think about. I said, my mantra is progression over perfection. And I think my colleagues hate me for saying this over and over and over again, but it's really true. It's my, it's also my happy place when I think about, okay, I've made some progress today with the work that I've done. It is worth something. I celebrate the small wins because it's the multitude of small wins that help us advance. There's no big wins because there's also a lot of fights that I can't even fight. I need to be very conscious about what the buttons are that I want to be fighting. And
00:41:48
Speaker
There is, at the same time, a lot of things that I can't even impact. People always misbehave. There's always something that is going wrong. There's always workplaces that are unsafe. There's all those things happening that I can't influence. I feel, though, that it is a burden that sometimes we think that we should be influencing all those things and we should be doing all the good things for everyone else. But it's impossible. It's an impossible task. What is not impossible and should have a bit more
00:42:14
Speaker
limelight is the small wins. It's the multitude of small things. We ask ourselves what is there that is the solution to finally solve all the diversity. There is no one thing, it's not one level that we need to pull. It's like the little things that are all intertwined that we have to push for every day.
00:42:31
Speaker
And as said, it's also okay to choose a day where you say, I'm just going to do very mundane work, nothing else. I'm not thinking about it for a day because I need to recharge, do something else. I can go back on the diversity track tomorrow. It's just something we're doing.
00:42:47
Speaker
And I think this is also fair, as some of the conversations I think are fair to have with the people that we have tasked, as there are so many people who are getting tasked to do it, in equipped, in non-supported, non-empowered enough to do it. Because of all the conversation around it in this society,
00:43:06
Speaker
I think every company is trying to do something. It's like the same with, in our word, it's ESG. In other words, it's probably something sustainable or impact and purpose. Everyone wants to do better. Everyone wants to have a more of an edge when it comes to the profile that they create as organizations. So we always find someone who's doing something. At the same time, we also have to be conscious that we give them an extra target. It's an extra job. Yeah. And that transgresses into their personal lives.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, totally. And I guess just to kind of end on a bit of tangible advice, what advice would you give to someone in a role whereby they have a voice and they want to use it and they've tried and it's just not working? What advice would you give to someone who is in that situation where they kind of feel a bit stuck with the whole diversity work? Because we've all been there, we've all been there where we think, this is not working, should I just stop? What advice would you give to someone who's in that situation where they feeling a bit stuck, it's not working?
00:44:03
Speaker
but they know it's important. What would you do? I think I would try many things. I said there's no silver bullet, but I think one thing is next to the persistence is needed figuring out who else can speak to this because sometimes they don't listen to the messenger. I said because the messenger is
00:44:23
Speaker
part of the targeted group of people that they want to include, but they kind of mix up the whole thing of this, right? Do I believe it or is it just her personal thing? Is there like her personal power push for more women in leadership roles because she might want to be the next female leader and all those? I said, there's a whole thing that you can't unpack really, because I think that this is something we just need to be wary about. So I would think, is there someone in the organization
00:44:49
Speaker
who can technically share the same messages, push for the same initiatives, but with a different voice.
00:44:56
Speaker
Yeah, you get stronger, louder voice, whatever have you. So maybe find that ally or maybe find that person that you can help become an ally. Maybe that's someone who has the intent to become an ally and you can support and then make it a team thing. Because then also there's already two people blowing the same horn, which itself is also helpful. So this is something that I would probably do. The other thing is obviously you have to be aware that you might not find that person because no one is really pushing for it. It's just lip service.
00:45:26
Speaker
This tells you something else and you will be running into a different problem then, if you can't find someone in the leadership team who's probably really subscribed to it, right? That's a different problem. And the other part I said is, find peers outside. The good thing about diversity is such a universal problem. It's literally everywhere, in every society, in every land, in every country, it's everywhere, in every organization. So you're not alone.
00:45:51
Speaker
So find people, I've found all the people that are, for whatever reasons, becoming experts in this field, so helpful. Because they understand there's no privilege in knowing better. There is no proprietary wisdom that they shouldn't be sharing. If we share, if we make it open source knowledge,
00:46:09
Speaker
It will help every one of us. So I found the community of people doing the work so helpful. So reach out. You will get all their secrets. You will get all their advice. You will get all their support. Because why wouldn't they? It's not a trade secret. It is something that should transpire across organizations and teams and people.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, wow. Honestly, I've loved having you on here and I sit and speak with you for hours and hours. I know that you've got other work to do. So thank you so much for joining me. And yeah, thanks so much for kind of sharing your insights. Like I said, I've learned a lot and I'm sure everyone else will. I'm very grateful to have been here and thank you so much for all your inspiring questions.