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What Must Happen to Mitigate Bias in Your Organization
37 Plays2 years ago
This week, for episode 13 of “The 3D Podcast” Cedric Chambers sits down with a great diversity and inclusion leader, Cornell Verdeja-Woodson. During this interview, Cornell shared great insight about what you should do to Mitigate Bias in the organization that you work for. This is a great episode packed with a ton of gems, so get your notepads ready as we dive deep and “Discuss the Dimensions of Diversity”.
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Takeaway Sheet for the episode: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X4mQHpVjMq4pVJ_u_Mv3RR03LLxCyonL?usp=sharing
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Transcript
Introduction to 3D Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hey, I'm Cedric Chambers, and I would like to welcome you to another episode of the 3D Podcast, a masterclass where we share with you everything you need to know about how to transform diversity and inclusion in your organization as well as in your community. We're on a mission to amplify the voices of leaders that are making an impact in the world today so that we can have a better tomorrow.
00:00:34
Speaker
Our goal every episode is to keep it simple, honest, and transparent with you by uncovering the truths in diversity and inclusion with the hope of creating behavioral change all while presenting it from a unique perspective. So look, if you're ready, get your notepad out, pour you a drink, and let's dive deep as we discuss the dimensions of diversity.
Meet Cornell Verdeha Wilson
00:01:04
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the 3D Podcast. Look, I'm excited for our discussion today. Why? Because I know we have an amazing topic, but also because I know our guest will do only what he knows how to do, which is keep it real. And if you're from where I'm from, we say, keep it a hundred.
00:01:20
Speaker
So look, to provide a little insights on our guests, today we are speaking to and have the pleasure of connecting with Cornell Verdeha Wilson. Cornell is the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Headspace and the founder and CEO of a boutique consulting firm, Brave Trainings. Cornell has worked in the DNI space for 10 years, starting out in higher education and then transitioning into tech. Cornell lives in the Bay Area with his husband and their two dogs, London and Rome.
00:01:48
Speaker
So, without further ado, Cornell, welcome to the show. Hello. What's going on? I'm excited to be here. Oh, man. How are you doing today? I'm good. The sun is shining. Today is actually my dog's room's birthday, so we're going to have a little fun today. It's going to be good. We're getting him some doggy cakes, some doggy bongs. Yeah, exactly. No yelling at him. He can sit on the couch if he wants today. We all good.
00:02:11
Speaker
I get free, free range today. Look, I'm excited for the discussion. We have a great topic here. And, you know, look, to start things off, I gave a little bit of a background, but I know that, look, I didn't do it justice. And so just to kick things off, can you just provide, you know, overview of who you are, kind of your journey as you've progressed through your career, and then ultimately how you've gotten into the DNI space?
Cornell's Journey in DEI
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. It's a real honor to be on this podcast, this episode today. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't say and share that, you know, my journey started in Camden, New Jersey, right? You know, I'm a kid, you know, always a five kids, son of a single mother who did her thing to make sure that we had what we needed. And so I had to give honor to the space that I came from that made me and also the woman that raised me and gave me the foundation that I needed to sit here with you
00:03:03
Speaker
today as a quote unquote expert of DEI, right? You better say that. Right, exactly. With Ithaca College made in communications, then taught, we'll teach for America right after college in Atlanta, Georgia, taught 9th through 12th grade English. So my babies, my kids, my children, they're still my kids, no matter what, no matter how old they get. But I would argue that my journey into DEI really began in my high school years
00:03:30
Speaker
Going to what we call a friend school got a four-year scholarship for high school to go to this private Quaker school And they really talk a lot about diversity and identity and things that sort and that really began the journey But what really catapulted it was working with my kids in Atlanta and working with other teachers Talk about how we create spaces of belonging for people with different learning styles and also considering our children's
00:03:54
Speaker
you know, situation and how that impacts them. Trauma, hurt and pain and how that comes into the classroom and how they don't leave that behind them. Left the teachings. I just realized that wasn't where I needed to be. We ain't got a master's in higher education from University of Vermont and thought that higher ed was where I was going to really lay roots and really create that space for underrepresented populations, particularly black and brown students. And then just really
00:04:21
Speaker
didn't work out in higher ed, just didn't feel like I could make the impact that I wanted to make and make this transition into tech. Recognize that tech is not perfect by no means. However, they are putting a lot more resources and energy behind moving the needle around DEI. And I'll also be honest, as a Black person who grew up in a low-income background, it was also about building generational wealth and having access to what tech can provide for folks and being able to pass that down to my children or my godchildren
00:04:51
Speaker
and things that sort. But never thought I'd see myself in a DI space. I would never have thought, oh, I'm going to be a DI professional. Really fell into it based on the series of events that the universe brought my
Racial Challenges and Mentorship
00:05:01
Speaker
way. Got it. Got it. Vermont. Let's start there. Yeah.
00:05:09
Speaker
How do we get to Vermont? Let me tell you, my mentor, who's still a mentor of mine, she was the former president of my alma mater. It's at the college. Okay. Thank you, Williams. And she is just a strong advocate and has always been a strong advocate for diversity, but particularly racial diversity.
00:05:27
Speaker
belonging and inclusion. And so she always had this knack for lifting up professionals of color when I was a student and students of color. And she was my role model. She went to University of Vermont to get her master's in higher ed. So I followed my role model. It was a really hard trying experience, but it taught me a lot and gave me a lot of the foundation that I have today that I built my career on. You know, being in Vermont, you know, at the time, I don't know if it still is, it was the second white estate next to me.
00:05:54
Speaker
And so the black person, you know, being in that space, it was rough. I think my second week in like my second week in the city of Burlington, this white woman who was dating a black residential hall director on campus, she was down in the center of Burlington and these three skinhead white men circled her and called her a nigger lover and ran off. So I was like, oh, so that's how we doing this in Burlington.
00:06:20
Speaker
13, I believe, 2011, maybe. I was like, wow, okay, so that's how I've been doing this. And so it just reminded you that even in liberal spaces, right, that there is ugly everywhere, just really taught me that you can't slip, you can't let them catch you slipping either. Because don't make me think that because it's liberal, you're safe. And that wasn't the case.
00:06:38
Speaker
So living the world we live in today and to still see those things happen is still, I would say you really can't get used to it even though you kind of got to get past and then move forward, but to just hear it and to see it. And I've been in those spaces, right? I've lived in Wisconsin. I've lived in Ohio. Actually, we lived in Boston for three years, so we weren't far from Vermont. And in those spaces, you look around and you're just like, hmm.
00:07:05
Speaker
It's still chain. I'm from Georgia and I'm like, look, and I always say it's two different types, right? Because in Georgia, you know what's what, right? Look, I know where not to go. I know what to do. I know where to say who to say it to. I know when the flag is flying. Look, I'm about to take a left.
00:07:21
Speaker
about to stay in the house today. And so, you know, these things, as you learn, and then you go to another state in different areas where you may think that it's different. Like you said, liberal, you may think, you know, ideas are, are probably more progressive. And you're like, hmm, I don't know. I don't know. And hiding it.
00:07:37
Speaker
right yeah it's almost more insidious your heart is damn what you think you're safe and then it's you by surprise with some of their ignorance and yeah it's this is true it was rough so you went to Vermont you graduated then where did you go next
00:07:53
Speaker
I went to New York City, got my first job at NYU in the Center for Multicultural Affairs. I worked there for about two years and then went back to upstate New York and worked at Cornell University as the Associate Director for Diversity and Inclusion for the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
00:08:12
Speaker
And then that's when I really started getting the itch of like, higher ed's not for me. This is not the industry that I'm going to really make the impact and really started pivoting myself and making decisions that would help me pivot into tech. So I moved out of student affairs and then went into the HR side of the university.
00:08:28
Speaker
and was the diversity lead for the university. So doing training and diversity programming, working with senior leaders around goals and things of that sort. And then probably a year and a half, it took me to go through the hiring process and finally got a job, my first job in tech out in Santa Cruz, California, actually. Got it.
00:08:47
Speaker
So curious there. So working in higher ed, and we're understanding that, especially in tech, where the town is coming from, the places where they're coming from is very important. And so as you was in higher ed, was there anything... What specifically were you seeing? Was you experiencing certain things? What was it that said to you, like, yeah, this is in the space for me?
00:09:09
Speaker
I think that higher red is a moves at a snail's pace,
Bias and Its Impact
00:09:13
Speaker
right? Any higher red, because I will tell you that, right? It takes 10 years to see something come to fruition.
00:09:19
Speaker
because you gotta build a committee for the committee on the committee on the project. And then before the project gets greenlit, it needs to go through faculty senate, staff senate, student senate, the president, the alumni, it needs to go through all these chains of commands and it's like, what are we doing? Come on, this is a lot of red tape. And it just takes forever to get anything done. And ultimately, the commitment to DEI always feels inauthentic that we learn to say the right things
00:09:48
Speaker
But then when it comes time to put action to those things, they don't get done. Or they, like I said, take 10 years to see them come to anything. Hire Ranch still operates very much in a traditional way in which faculty run everything, particularly at an Ivy League institution, right? If faculty aren't with it, it's dead in the water. And that ends up hurting the most marginalized people within those campuses.
00:10:13
Speaker
Black and brown people, trans people, queer people, women, things of that sort. And that was something I just could not continue to deal with. Again, like I said, tech ain't no better. It's not great. I can spin up a program and try something out and fail fast and keep moving. And I had to go through 10 different levels of bureaucracy in order to get something done.
00:10:34
Speaker
No, that makes sense. You hear that a lot. Like you said, it's slow. And in a lot of cases, right, what you find is that, especially when you get into tenure, Chip and Matt Pinks and who's been there and the ideas they're still holding on to, you know, they wrote the book for the book. And so you're still teaching out of something that was 45 years ago and you're like, you know, the world has changed. Right. So, no, I completely get that. And so, you know, and this is interesting when it kind of leads into our topic is that today we want to talk about bias, right? We want to understand it. We want to understand
00:11:03
Speaker
You know, when it's showing up, you know, an organization is huge, right? We understand that there's an element that, you know, we all have some type of bias. We all have biases and things of that nature. But the question then becomes is, you know, how do we recognize it? You know, how do we then go in and address the bias in the context and the situation and the environments that we're in? And so when we think about this, it kind of set the groundwork and understand kind of what we can build off of. Just kind of share, like, what is bias when we're thinking about it kind of in this context?
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think in like the quick and dirty way, it's the shortcuts that our brain takes to make decisions, right? You know, to prehistoric times, you know, we didn't have time to make a decision about whether that pterodactyl was a friendly one.
00:11:46
Speaker
and whether it was going to come down here to eat me or play cards, right? Like I had to haul my ass, I had to run, I had to move, right? At that time, in a sense, the situation would have happened, though. As we evolved, we didn't recognize that. I no longer had to make snap quick judgments like that anymore, right? And I actually can, in some cases, take my time to really investigate and make sure that my gut feeling, my gut reaction is actually real or not.
00:12:10
Speaker
Right. And so in a longer form, it is the simplified or narrow understanding of other people or other groups based on common cultural stereotypes. So I saw that movie. I saw that film where I see these images where my momma said, my daddy said years ago, I never met a black person in my life. But now I meet one. And I think of all the stories that people told me about what it means to be black. And that's what comes up. Right. Because that's all I've ever been told. Right. And then it becomes even more difficult to
00:12:40
Speaker
I'm gonna say the word erase those narrow images of and see groups for not in this monolithic way, but in the very complex way, which particularly black people show up in this world, right? None of them in every other identity. So very simplified, narrow views of a person or group of people based on common cultural stereotypes. Got it. Got it. As people listen to this, look up and if you see a pterodacty, you better haul.
00:13:08
Speaker
I love that example where you just got to go. And so understanding this framework, understanding the definitions you provided, when we think about this in a corporate setting, in corporate sense, as leaders, what are the signs or those common themes that show themselves to make that leader realize that, hey, I'm seeing this bias and that it may be a problem within the organization.
00:13:37
Speaker
When they're going through and they're looking, they're analyzing, they're getting those kind of feelings. What are those themes that kind of show up to make you think, hmm, that might be something I need to address here?
00:13:48
Speaker
So great question. One of the things that I do with organizations when I am running what we call a DEI audit is I'm asking about themes within their feedback. What kind of feedback are you giving women? What kind of feedback are you giving people of color, right? So we usually do focus groups to understand from those particular perspectives, what kind of feedback have you been getting? And then we do a control group, which are usually white men. What kind of feedback are you getting? And are there drastic differences in the type and the language
00:14:15
Speaker
that is used when we provide feedback. I'm looking at the makeup of the teams, right? That if you keep hiring the same people and we see similarities between the same people that you keep hiring, there's some bias happening there, right? So it's also who's getting promoted, right? So it's a whole chain of effects, right? It's a whole, I would call it a domino effect. Who are we hiring? Who are we promoting? What kind of feedback are we providing? Who's getting paid what? So a day study also shows
00:14:44
Speaker
There's some bias, right? Because what you're saying is that her contribution to this team isn't the same as, or worth or value the same as his. That's bias right there. So those are some common ways that when I start seeing those things, I start going, okay, there's the work we got to do here because these things would not be happening if bias wasn't a factor.
00:15:04
Speaker
Got it. Got it. No, that makes a lot of sense. And so as a leader, I'm now seeing these situations pop up. I'm understanding that, hey, there is something here that I need to address or I need to figure out a way to move forward. So when it comes to seeing these signs, how do you start to solve for mitigating the bias in the organization? What's that path and that journey that you take to start to address it?
00:15:28
Speaker
One is to own the fact that it happens, right? There are so many people in denial that this is even a real thing. So that's actually a piece of it, Cedric, right? That's one piece of it. Then you got people who recognize that it's real, but it ain't me though.
00:15:47
Speaker
I'm one of the good people, right? I got five black friends and I got three of my siblings or sisters, right? I'm good. And so I also recognize that you two, even though well-intentioned, also have bias. Even though you come from marginalized identities,
00:16:06
Speaker
You also have bias that perpetuates against other people and sometimes against your own people, right? So I think that's like the you know, what we call in our community the coming to jesus moment, right? That people have to come to recognize that yeah, like i'm a good person I was raised when I mean when I do good in the world But I also do things that that sort of pick up on my unconscious bias that i've been socialized to believe my entire life So it's starting there
00:16:30
Speaker
Then it's learning about the experiences of women, trans people, people of color, Asian people, Latinx people, people with disabilities, learning that information. And then it's doing something with it, right? So how are you questioning what we do and how we do it and why we do it? Why is it that the last five, four senior level hires were all men? Why is that?
00:16:51
Speaker
Where did that come from? And then if I'm the one hiring, how am I looking at my hiring pattern and my notes that I'm writing about each candidate and am I assessing it and checking it and checking in with other people to go, am I missing something? And really having that checks and balances that allows for us to make sure that bias isn't impacting us and our decisions that we make every single day the way it always has.
00:17:15
Speaker
But it takes intentionality. It takes owning it, and it takes really being mindful about every single step of the way to mitigate its impact.
00:17:24
Speaker
Got it. So let me ask you this. So coming into an organization, you're starting, you're seeing yourself that, hey, these things are happening. And then now you have to put that foot forward and either have the discussion with the leader or go down this path. Can you provide an example or a situation to where, hey, you've encountered it and kind of how you handled it?
00:17:45
Speaker
as you move forward, specifically with leaders. I know it starts from the top down and understanding and getting everybody on the same page. So when it comes to addressing it at the leadership level to say, hey, this is what you're seeing and this is the path that you need to go down. One, do you have an example of what you've seen before? Then two, how did you handle or how did you have those discussions with the leadership
Navigating Workplace Dynamics
00:18:06
Speaker
team?
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah, prime example of it is I had a leadership team that we were talking about the use of their company, PTO, you know, and this particular company has unlimited PTO. So you can really just like, why don't you tell your supervisor, you're good, right? Yeah.
00:18:24
Speaker
What we found was that their black and brown and female employees were not using it. They were not taking time off. And so the senior leadership team was like, well, but we have unlimited, why aren't they just doing it? And I said, well, let's talk about the experience of being a black and brown person and a woman in a corporate environment.
00:18:43
Speaker
So let's lay out those experiences when I'm not in the room where it's happening. Not the whole Hamilton, right? But when I'm not in a room where it happens, that's missing out on promotion. That's missing out on being a part of the work, right? And the visibility that brings individuals. And also what does it say about my colleagues? What do my colleagues think of me when I take that time off?
00:19:04
Speaker
Right now you're seeing a lot of companies make Fridays off day for everybody. So now it's not that, oh, the black people or the women are taking time off. You know, everybody's getting time away, right? And so it's just sharing that narrative, sharing that perspective that none of those people in that room know, right? In that group, they were all men, right? And all white men, they don't understand that. So providing that narrative, providing that real life context made them go, whoa,
00:19:34
Speaker
Okay, all right, right. And they weren't ready to go to the next, you know, Women's March and Black Lives Matter round, right? They just took that moment and that was a door into the conversation. So for me, it's really about breaking it down and answering the why. One of the characters that are in place right now.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, we've seen very similar situations when we rolled out unlimited vacation as well. And it's like when people have three, four, five weeks, however, they know like, okay, by the plan out my year, this is what I'm taking my time. And as soon as unlimited PTO rolled out, you saw that decrease in time taken. It was almost like people felt bad.
00:20:11
Speaker
right, to actually go take that time, right? It's like, well, you know, I don't know, right? And so when you had that discussion and you kind of got to that realization to help those leaders understand, what was the reception like?
00:20:25
Speaker
I think there was a sense of, I mean, shock and awe. Like, wait, what? It's just like, why not? Like, I'll be happy. Right. They're like, no, we didn't know that that was it. Like, yeah, I know you didn't know because that's not the lived experiences. Right. Prior to me sharing that information, they just like, I don't get it. That was my own aha moment. I remember, you know, I always throw myself under the bus because I'm not perfect either. I was in grad school and I always there, there, uh,
00:20:51
Speaker
navigated the world to my black and gay lens, right? And back then, being broke, right? And so the whole thing I did is I'm broke, I'm black, and I'm gay, right? And I was in a cohort getting my master's, so it was like 15 of us for two years. But I'm not talking to a person, I'm a big extrovert, so I give me a chance to speak, I'm gonna speak.
00:21:11
Speaker
And one day, one of my classmates, actually one of my really good friends in the cohort comes up to me and says, you know, your male privilege takes up a lot of space. And I was like, male privilege? What do you mean male privilege? I ain't got no damn male privilege. Let's speak, speak.
00:21:26
Speaker
My hand isn't up against your mouth, you know, preventing you from speaking. And she's just sitting there like, you don't get it. And she had to break it down to me and say, like, one, just from an introvert extrovert standpoint, you always filling up all the silence. I haven't got a chance to think about what I want to say yet. By the time you get up in there and take up all the space, then you go from a gender perspective.
00:21:48
Speaker
Men have been socialized to take up space, to advocate for themselves, to use their voice. Women, not all women, but a lot of women haven't been taught to do that, right? And so they question what they have to say is even a value to this conversation. But when you go and take up all the space, you create less time and opportunity for those introverts or women to be able to get in there. So I've had to deal with that myself and be sort of met with my own bias.
00:22:15
Speaker
No, one, thanks for sharing the story. I think that looking at that and then even thinking about some of the leadership decisions that we make is that we have to have those different perspectives in the room to understand what's about to happen. It's almost like the using the if and then method. So if I do this, then what will happen?
00:22:37
Speaker
asking ourselves those questions as we go through this, because everybody don't see the situation the way that we see it. And what we think is great might be something to where, you know, others might say, you know, I might be getting set up for the okeydoke or something. Like, I feel like something's about to happen.
00:22:54
Speaker
And so you try to navigate through that space, which ultimately for the receiver, for the entire employee population, that now gives them one extra thing to think about to where they don't want to take the vacation, burnout can happen. They're not taking that self-care aspect. All these other aspects come up to where they've focused less and less on just the work that has to get done and the things that are happening within the organization.
00:23:21
Speaker
So let me ask you this. So taking this PTO. And so when you rolled it out, what was the reception with the broader organization? Did you see those various different feelings around it? Were you listening to people, what they were saying? Did they feel kind of the same way? Yeah. So I mean, this was an organization that I had already had it rolled out before I got there, right? So I was kind of coming in and kind of assessing
00:23:47
Speaker
what has happened since you've rolled it out, right? And so for my own listening sessions and really getting to know the employees at large, you start hearing these different experiences with paid time off and burnout and why people aren't taking time away. But because I was asking those questions, we got that narrative. Most of us are not going to complain because even complaining about it means we're fearful of the message that that sends.
00:24:15
Speaker
right? That you become the troublemaker. Problem child. Complainer. There you go. Yeah. It's almost, you know, if I don't ask about it, then I'm, then I never learn about it. So it's me. And that's really why it's higher heads of DEI or two diversity officers, because they want us hopefully to unearth the thing that they're not thinking about because we think about them because it's our job to. So I came in after that was already done and really just had to kind of shed light on and look at what are our current processes and systems
00:24:44
Speaker
and culture that's in place, and how is it impacting different people who exist at this company, particularly if you're looking to hire more Black people, more Latinx people, more women, et cetera. We got to get this place ready and understand that before we welcome them into this space or in tandem, right? Yeah. That makes sense. So when it comes to, you know, you recognize it and now you're going out and you're approaching and you're addressing the situation,
00:25:13
Speaker
What happens or how do you approach it when you get the resistance? We get to the place to hate, we won't own it. We won't recognize that it's real. And so it's almost like a non-starter to, we can't even get to the next step. So how do we approach it when that happens as DNI leaders? Yeah, it's so hard. I mean, the biggest thing that I tend to do is really think about who are my allies in this space? Who are my allies with this positional power, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
at the director level, the VP level, and with Tennessee suite. Who does get it? And how can I really get with them to help use their positional power to influence their colleagues into getting it? And then also, I must admit, I also work from the bottom up, too. How am I getting the employees to understand what's happening
00:26:01
Speaker
and what's not moving forward and why we're not moving forward. Because what we're seeing is that when the power of the employees start going, hey, what's going on? Now everybody's like, oh crap, okay, we don't want to revolt. We got to do something. I must admit, and I'm pretty sure some of our other colleagues do this too. We started going, yeah, we can't get that done because we don't have X, Y, and Z, or we're not ready to do this. And when they hear it collectively,
00:26:23
Speaker
All of a sudden, they start doing something that worked for you to help push it up, but we can actually move forward and start getting it done. And another thing I do too is also present research. Benchmarks. There you go. What are other companies doing? What does the research tell us and how we benefit from this if we make this decision to step into this body of work? And also really depends on the leader. Some leaders are very
00:26:43
Speaker
data-driven. They want to see the data, right? So I know I got to approach them with that. Some leaders are very much connected to the heart. Storytelling is really impactful for them. They want to hear the story. So I might put on a panel of employees and talk about their experiences in this particular body of work that I'm trying to get done. And when they hear that, they go, OK, I get it, right? So it's really just understanding my leaders really well and understanding what makes them tick, what do they respond to, and using that to actually get what needs to get done.
00:27:11
Speaker
We're one way in the workplace. And then when we leave, the community that we go back to, we're always doing. It's a whole different situation. So are you doing anything to help extend those learnings? Because there's an aspect to where, in my mind and how I look at biases, it's a behavioral thing. We have to make this shift. And the only way really to make that shift
00:27:39
Speaker
The way that I look at it is we have to create these new habits,
Beyond Workplace DEI
00:27:44
Speaker
right? That's going to replace the way that we thought, the way that we act, the way that we do certain things, right? To make sure that either the habit could be, I might need to stop for a second, think about what I'm about to say before I say it, or I might need to go, like you said, talk to some allies, talk to some people who I think can give me some different perspectives. But there's different habits that have to take hold here. But those habits are
00:28:06
Speaker
tough to create when you spend eight hours at work doing something and then the other... Don't hurt me on my math here. 16 hours, I got it. I got it. The other 16 hours, you go back to the place that you were at. Is there anything that you do as far as helping employees, helping leaders from a self-education perspective? Because there has to be an ownership here to where
00:28:30
Speaker
It's not just happening at work. It has to happen in the way that you interact with everyone, right? Because you may come to work and you say, hey, I'm fixing this. I'm working on this. But then when you go home, you got Jim, you got every, you know, Teresa, everybody else who, you know, is like, man, shut up. Come on.
00:28:49
Speaker
How do you help employees and leaders? It's so real. I mean, I do it by saying just that, right? Like, this can't just be a workplace behavior, right? This is something we need to be doing no matter where we are, right? Whether you're at a grocery store, whether you're at the gym, whether you're in the airport, right? Traveling. How are we witnessing and acknowledging, looking at, not looking forward, but just open to seeing that, wow, bias happens everywhere around us. And I have an opportunity to be an ally no matter where I am.
00:29:18
Speaker
Any training that i do any fires i check it out so that i do it when i'm working with these providing examples and contextualizing it i'm giving the examples of how it looks in the real world right now i'm not just a workplace but in the real world and providing strategies.
00:29:35
Speaker
Work in the workplace but also in the real world as well and so giving them those examples makes it so much bigger than just the workplace right i think it's really really critical but also providing i hate that this is still a conversation we have to have but it's also what is that business case right when is the title business case in my opinion right because those people out there to run into our potential.
00:29:57
Speaker
Employees their potential business partner their potential, you know, whatever the commitment may be They are human beings that in some way we all impact from a societal level that ultimately impacts the business Right. And so for some leaders who need to understand and make the connection to the business, let me give it to you, right? Conversation but like if that's where you are, let's start from there But it's just helping them make the connection through real-world contextual experiences and not just the theoretical I think make it humanizes the content
00:30:27
Speaker
No, it makes sense. That makes sense. And so, look, I'm loving the discussion here. And so, look, as we get closer and closer to rapping, if you could help sum up the discussion and kind of, you know, get to this place here is that what do you think are the biggest hurdles that others face in D&R roles?
Empowering DEI Roles
00:30:46
Speaker
And if you could give them two to three actions that after listening to this podcast, after viewing this, they can start to really go in and work on in their organization to get them down the right path. What two or three actions can they take immediately after this to kind of move that needle forward in their organization? I've been toying with this question a lot personally, even before this. I wonder how much of what gets changed is actually up to the DEI professional.
00:31:12
Speaker
Right? Because I can come in and the assessment, I can do the DEI audit. I can tell you everything that you hired me to tell you. I can bring in the experts. I can bring in the research. At the end of the day, what I'm seeing and what I think my colleagues are also seeing, it don't mean nothing unless people are actually ready to de-center themselves from the work.
00:31:37
Speaker
and really do what's right for the masses, right? And so I really struggled with the idea of like, what can DI professionals be doing to actually, you know, so for example, one of the main issues is lack of resources. How many DI professionals have, are a team of one, or what was a team of one for probably the first two or three years in their role, right? And had to really push and fight for headcount in order to get the work done. That's to me, because that leads to burnout so fast.
00:32:06
Speaker
So, so fast. I think the other thing is also in regards to who we report to. DEI is still sitting in human resources. In my opinion, DEI is not a people, right? It's not a people operations, people service, right? It is a business imperative. Therefore, it should be its own function within a company reporting directly to the CEO.
00:32:32
Speaker
but we're still in HR because they only see us as people. So when I come in and go, hey, content, hey, product, hey, right? All these other, you know, marketing. Let me know. I'm coming over here. What you doing, right? You over there in HR. It's like, nah, I'm everywhere because y'all all need to be thinking about it. So I think it really, we really have an honest conversation and this is not anything against HR, right? But it has to, it has to be removed out of it because it waters it down. And so those two big things,
00:33:02
Speaker
outside of advocating for ourselves, what can we actually be doing? We have to continue pushing, providing the understanding around why this needs to change. But at the end of the day, to really get it done, these leaders and these companies have to recognize the importance of it and give it the resources that it's needed. It's just as important as your product development. I'll say it, it's just as important as your product development.
00:33:26
Speaker
right and that it needs to be its own thing sitting at C-suite in order for it to have the impact that it needs to have. Man if I had a DJ cool bomb I'd drop it right now.
00:33:40
Speaker
That's a whole other podcast. I am passionate about that one. No, look, I love it too. And real quick, I know it's going to sum it up, but look, that is so important when it comes to, you know, resource, first of all, where the money lies, right? Everything is going to reside. It's going to go, look, where the money resides, look. Exactly.
00:34:03
Speaker
And so as we look at this, it becomes, and this is something that we got to understand is that if the organization is really putting, walking the walk in this situation, then it doesn't even have to be forever. But for a period of time, you have to have that
00:34:22
Speaker
chief diversity officer, whoever's leading that function report directly to either the CEO or someone who we know when the decisions come down, they have the ear of the person at that level. They know that when it comes from this leader, hey, this is what we need to do because it's already been discussed. You ain't got to go back and screen to the CEO about anything. You don't have to say why me, why my organization, we're diverse, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff you know is coming from the place directly from the source. And then also, as you mentioned,
00:34:52
Speaker
The way that we market, who we market to needs to get a look at. The way money is handled, who we're supporting, supply diversity needs to get looked at. When we think about technology and who's building the technology, we think about the facial recognition and who faces are we using and have we thought about all these different perspectives when it comes to diversity that's not necessarily, hey, this is an engagement fund, food and fellowship type of situation that goes up under
00:35:18
Speaker
you know HR or something to where it's specifically about people because like I said technology is where we're going and where we're at and so how we look at that technology and who's being accounted for in a way that is being built is important right and that that's huge for true inclusion across the board right to make sure that everything that we do as an organization is equitable.
00:35:40
Speaker
You hit on something that word accountability will be my third issue. There's no accountability. That one's big. Dr. Gassam, she's on LinkedIn and writes a lot in Forbes and just recently wrote an article on accountability. And I'm like, yeah, like your speak. I love her first of all. So she's listening. Shout out to Dr. Gassam. I know I got the pink elephant book over there. I know exactly what you're talking about. Like she talks about accountability and it is absolutely right. We set these goals around DEI.
00:36:09
Speaker
When they're not met year over year, nothing happens, right? But let a salesperson not meet their goals year over year. What's going to happen to them? They out. After the first year of not meeting your sales goal, I'm putting you on a PDP. You're going to have a conversation. What's going on? After the second year, you're done.
00:36:27
Speaker
Right? Why is it that you continue to keep elevating, but you haven't met your DEI goals, but they're so important to the company, but we're not holding people accountable. They're not a part of our performance evaluations. They're not tied to our bonuses and our salary and things of that sort. Nothing. So what you're telling us is that you don't actually care, you're performative.
00:36:48
Speaker
Clear things that really show we mean business when I was a teacher one of the first things they told us is that if you are Inconsistent with how you hold your students accountable for the rules that you set out in your classroom They will they will know right away. You don't really mean that
00:37:04
Speaker
You don't mean that. And it's the same thing with grown people in the corporate world. It's the same thing. And this is, oh man, hold on the podcast. When it comes to accountability, when it comes to accountability, if you don't have
00:37:21
Speaker
leaders holding others accountable. Then at the end of the day, you can't expect the broader organization to hold each other accountable because in their minds, it's like, well, why am I going to do your job? If I know that if I hold them accountable and it comes to you, you're just going to let them off the hook anyway. So why should I go in and be that person?
00:37:41
Speaker
Right. Look, I'm going to create my, I'm going to mess up my, my, my Genesee choir, whatever the case is. Cause I'm trying to figure out, you know, how to do your job. And so that is a huge piece around accountability, right? And it also comes to this, this aspect of when we're creating change, when we're mitigating bias, all of this, the question is this, are we really trying to change behaviors or are we trying to make people more comfortable? Right.
Driving Behavioral Change
00:38:10
Speaker
And that is something that we got to get clear is that everything that we're going to be doing moving forward, if this is the path we're going to go down, it's going to get uncomfortable. It's going to be some situations that we're trying not to disrupt certain people's comfort. And that's not how you say certain people, white people's comfort, right? We, we, we center white people in DEI, white men in particular, but also white women. We got a whole white women accountable as well.
00:38:37
Speaker
Right. We, we center white people in every DEI thing we do in a minute. They're uncomfortable. Everything's over. The minute I've set you off, like, Oh, no, no, no. I don't like this. The program's gone. The money's gone. We stopped the initiative because the white people were upset. And so we, and they've always been comfortable and we don't want to disrupt that. And that is a big part of the problem until we are okay with people being uncomfortable, white people being uncomfortable. We're not going to make a change that we actually want to make.
00:39:03
Speaker
So just to sum that up, look, one, we need resources. We need the ability to be able to have the people, the funds to do this work. Two, we need to make sure that the reporting structure is set up so that success can happen. When technology is important to the organization, it reports to the CEO. When money is important to the CFO, it reports to the CEO. So make sure that that's lined up.
00:39:26
Speaker
and go start to have conversations about that. And then the third piece is accountability, right? We have to be able to hold accountable from the top down because if leaders aren't holding themselves accountable, if we're not doing it at that level, then we can't expect anyone else to go in and hold each other accountable.
00:39:42
Speaker
at the end of the day. I would say that when it comes to job titles, whether it's finance, whether it's HR, whether it's marketing, it should be slash D-E-N-I, because we all at some point have to be able to account for each other in this process. And when we see it in those small three, four, five people meetings,
00:40:01
Speaker
we have to say something, we have to address it, and we have to make sure that we're doing our part to move this forward. So to cap it off, and I love to end this off, is that I'm big on leadership statements. I'm big on how we leave situations.
Authentic Leadership in DEI
00:40:15
Speaker
And so I would like to know, and I typically say this in 25 words or less, what your leadership statement is. And
00:40:21
Speaker
And this is something to where I always say this, whether I meet someone 10 times or whether I meet someone just one time, I want them to say the same thing about me. And what that means is that, especially when we're thinking about bias, it means that every interaction that I have has to be intentional.
00:40:37
Speaker
I have to be active in the situation, the relationship. I have to be intentional about how I'm coming off, what I'm saying. I have to make sure that I'm leaving this situation the way that I want to leave it. And so when it comes to your leadership legacy, what will other people say about you when you leave that environment, when you leave these organizations, however it may be, what would they say about you or what would you want them to say about you?
00:41:00
Speaker
I think the biggest thing I always want people to say about me is that when they engaged with me, whether one on one or in a group, that they always felt that I authentically listened and heard them. That in a world where people oftentimes feel silenced and disregarded and
00:41:19
Speaker
unheard that there was one person in that moment that made them feel like their voice mattered and what they were experiencing was real. So I want people to know, I want people to leave going, wow, Cornell made me feel validated. He made me feel heard. No, did he fix my problem necessarily? No, it's so much bigger than just this individual. But I felt like somebody had my back and someone was authentic with me. That's what I want people to say about me.
00:41:46
Speaker
Awesome. There it goes. There it goes. Well look, this has been an amazing conversation. Before we go, do you have any shout outs, any parting words? Where can people find you if they want to connect with you, pick your brain, understand kind of a little bit more. Absolutely. If you want to connect with me, LinkedIn, it's always a good place. You can also visit my website at www.braintrainings.com. I'm on Instagram at It's Me Cornell. I know real creative, but those are the places where I am most of the time.
00:42:10
Speaker
So feel free to connect with me there. I mean, just a big, again, another shout out to Dr. Gassam, who I just love and adore. She, her, her mind is just, she teaches me so much. So I really adore her. And really shout out to all my DEI professionals out there who are doing their part to change the world.
00:42:27
Speaker
And really, you know, my hope for all of us is that we're taking time for ourselves and that we're setting up boundaries to rely that this work will always be here and that we are just as important as this work. And then we got to take care of ourselves. So shout out to all my fellow professionals who are really on the front lines doing the work. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, look, that does it for us. Thanks for joining everyone. Another episode of the 3D podcast. This has been Cedric and you've been listening to Cornell Verdeha Woodson, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Headspace. We out.
00:42:57
Speaker
Awesome, well that does it for us. Thank you for joining us on another episode of the 3D Podcast. If you would like to connect on social media, follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook at Cedric and Powers. And if you have any questions you'd like me to read or answer on the show, or just want to know more about my thoughts around diversity and inclusion, entrepreneurship, or just overall business, you can text me. Yes, I said text me at 770-285-0404.
00:43:26
Speaker
You'll receive content straight to your phone on a regular basis and you can message back and forth with me. Not a bot or an assistant. All responses come directly from me. But look, this has been a great episode. Until next week, this has been Cedric Chambers and you've been listening to the 3D Podcast. We out.