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#87: What You Need to Know About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
77 Plays2 years ago
Clayton Sinclair shares his inspiring experiences, stories, and knowledge with our host Jill James. Connecting the dots between inclusion and diversity with health and safety is easier than you might think. Learn how you can create a culture that is welcoming to all and sustainable for years to come.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:08
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded February 15, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. My guest today is Clayton Sinclair. Clayton is Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Blue Ocean Brain, an HSI company.
Diversity and Inclusion Expertise
00:00:27
Speaker
As an inclusion and diversity practitioner and leader, Clayton has coached and advised thousands of professionals over the last 16 years through one-on-one coaching, facilitated inclusion and diversity learning events, and enterprise-wide program execution.
00:00:43
Speaker
Clayton is a certified diversity practitioner and has designed and led programs for corporate diversity councils and employee resource groups for companies across the United States to launch or propel their journeys to becoming a more inclusive and equitable environment.
00:00:59
Speaker
Clayton is a subject matter expert in many areas related to inclusion and diversity, including tracking, naming difference, understanding group dynamics, having crucial conversations, the power of intersectionality, owning privilege, unconscious bias, becoming an anti-racist, alignment of intent, outcome, and more.
00:01:21
Speaker
Clayton is also a co-host of the podcast, Bourbon Beer and Bold Conversations, which is a podcast I'm really loving. Clayton joins us today from his home in Atlanta.
ESG Performance Introduction
00:01:32
Speaker
Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jill. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on with you. And that was a heck of a run-up. I don't know if I can live up to in person the bottom.
00:01:48
Speaker
Well, it was fun to read about you and fun to call together. So I'm excited for our conversation today. Me too. And so I, if you're all wondering, like, why did I ask Clayton to be a guest?
Career Journey and Personal Growth
00:02:01
Speaker
Well, I asked him here today because many of us are starting to hear about, or our companies are evaluating what's called their ESG performance. And if this is a new acronym to you,
00:02:13
Speaker
ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance. And so if you do a quick Google of that term, it'll show you that health and safety, working conditions, employee relations, diversity and cultural sustainability, as well as a few other subjects fall under that social or that S category in ESNG. It's something for us to be paying attention to and learning more about as we strive to be the best leaders we can serving our whole workforce.
00:02:43
Speaker
But before we dive into that S and ES and G, Clayton, could you share with us a little bit about yourself? Because nearly all of our guests, your career did not start out where you are today. Oh, did it not? I wish I had an hour just to unpack that piece, but I promise you I won't make it that laborious. And I'm often
00:03:13
Speaker
thinking about sort of, do I really have an origin story? Because you know, Jill, when you've been doing something for so long, it sort of just feels natural to you. But I guess I do. So the shorthand version of it is I was asked to be on a diversity council back when I had an operational leadership role in financial services. And I was just did it for a resume builder, if I'm just going to be completely honest and transparent with you.
00:03:42
Speaker
And, um, so in fact, it was such a resume builder that on the first day of training, you know, how they sit you in a room and they walk, they, or not walk, but go through calling on different people to say, what do you want to learn in this program? What do you want to get out of this program? That kind of thing. And, uh, knowing that this was a diversity kind of certification program that was connected to being on a diversity council.
00:04:07
Speaker
my answer to that question was I'm the black guy. There's nothing you can tell me about diversity. So, you know, you brought your full ego with you. Absolutely. Right. I mean, I brought the full ego on and you know, I will tell you what I, what I learned from the program that was a little bit over a year long was that in that
00:04:36
Speaker
phrase I used, black guy, I really was only focused on one story, the black part of that. I had no real conception or had never really thought about very deeply what it meant to be a guy in the black in the guy part of that black guy phrase, right?
00:04:54
Speaker
And so what it did in that year-long training was to really open up my perspective to understand that I am more than one story, and more importantly, to be able to focus on more than one story, right? And then the other thing that it gave me is, and this is why I call it a calling, is because honestly, it saved my life by saving my marriage.
Organizational Culture and Diversity
00:05:19
Speaker
So- Yeah, tell us more. Yeah.
00:05:24
Speaker
had been married to my significant other. We're now going on 22 years, but at the time, we'd only been married five or six years. And so we were kind of in that seven year itch window. And I had been in class one day and came home to tell her this triumphant story of the lesson that I had learned or I'd picked up in class. And after I told her that, waiting for the congratulations and kind of patting myself on the back mentally
00:05:54
Speaker
you know, she looks at me and says, I've been telling you that for years. And it was just like, like any good spouse would do. Exactly. I mean, it was it was just epiphany. It was like, whoa, I needed to be able to connect with her in a better, deeper, more meaningful way. And I was able to do that through the tools and skills that I gained in this diversity certification. And the thing that she told me years later,
00:06:23
Speaker
was that she was, and I don't think I'm revealing anything that she wouldn't say if you're on here, that she was ready to kind of cash it in, kind of walk out the door, kind of find her bags and pack up. But because I'd learned to look outside myself a little bit, because I'd learned to be more empathetic, because I'd learned to not only focus on that one single story,
00:06:47
Speaker
it really led to the restoration of our relationship. And like I said, I'm proud to report that close to 22 years later, we're still, we're still kicking, right? Which doesn't mean it's easy every day, as you know, but we're still, you know, we're still kicking and committing in it. So it really saved my life, this, this calling to become a diversity practitioner. And so here I am. That's fantastic.
00:07:09
Speaker
So much is about the relationships that we have with others and what it does for us professionally, personally, as parents, as community members. Clayton, I wanted to just back the train up a little bit. When you started this training, you mentioned that you're working in the financial world.
00:07:31
Speaker
Now, those two things, where you are now and what got you into it, there doesn't seem to be a big connection there. But just so people understand, like, where you started your career, you were working in the finance world. What does that mean? I was working for a bank, a commercial bank. I was in their technology organization. And specifically, I was doing project management for technology
00:08:01
Speaker
integration. So when when the bank would implement a new system, for example, then my team was the team that supplied the project managers to that effort. So we kind of kept everybody on task with the timelines and then within budget. So yeah, I was I was in a role that didn't have anything to do with HR, which is where most people typically think these kinds of equity and inclusion roles are are situated and where they are typically situated, right?
00:08:31
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I mean, and you were working in a role that's logical and process driven, right? And doesn't probably have a lot of room for things that we might consider squishy.
00:08:48
Speaker
Oh, my friend, right? If only you knew how there were a little room there was. Yeah, right. And so you make this big jump. Yeah, career wise, did you feel like you landed home? I did, you know, I don't know, several people have said this kind of this idea of if you love
ESG Metrics and Sustainability
00:09:12
Speaker
what you do, it never feels like work. Right.
00:09:15
Speaker
And what I'll tell you is that I love what I do, talking to people about being able to create environments that are more equitable, more inclusive. I really do. I love it. I wake up in the morning reading articles and posts and social media is all kind of slanted that way. And I will tell you, I also, I also read from other
00:09:42
Speaker
lived experiences, right? So I know some of y'all out there might be kind of, here's this kind of hippie, liberal minded sort of dude with this agenda. And I'm like, yeah, I have one. But I also try to make sure I stay informed around lots of different viewpoints and perspectives. Because in many ways, every viewpoint and perspective is kind of equally valid, right? So if I don't know,
00:10:08
Speaker
what it is, then how would I be able to ever think from the perspective of learning from it, first of all, but then secondly, if necessary, finding a way to influence that perspective to maybe shift a little bit, right? Yeah, I think that's something that all of us, those of us in the environmental health and safety space as what I have begun calling worker justice advocates that we can relate to, we need to take in that
00:10:36
Speaker
all perspectives, right? In order to be able to move forward with our work and impact change for the better in our workplaces. Yeah. Wonderful. So Clayton, thank you for sharing that story with us. It's interesting for sure. Wondering, could you lay the groundwork for us here with this concept of ESG that I opened with and so that we can kind of dig into our conversation today?
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely be happy to. So again, as you mentioned, the quick Google Nader can tell you that ESG is
00:11:13
Speaker
The E is environmental, the S is social, and the G is governance. And I am no expert on this framework, but I do have some expertise from the perspective of diversity, as well as cultural sustainability being key components in my view for the S or the social component of this model, if you will, right? And so my understanding of the movement is
00:11:42
Speaker
is a way to think about how do we evaluate companies and corporations, particularly in many cases investors and other external stakeholders who are looking inward into the company to say,
00:11:58
Speaker
are you building something that is sustainable for the long term? So are you paying attention to the environmental concerns within your purview, again, those social concerns? And do you have a governance, which I think Jill might be where what you specialize in sort of fits in, but do you have governance to make those things that you say that
Generational Perspectives on Culture
00:12:18
Speaker
you were cared about sustainable, right?
00:12:20
Speaker
Right. I mean, kind of a foot in each and, you know, safety falls under that social piece. And we can see that in terms of, like I framed up before, worker justice, right? Governance, because we are complying often, that's the, you know, when it comes to health and safety, environmental health and safety.
00:12:39
Speaker
We are driven, employers are driven through governance, through regulatory requirements that they have to do. And any of us who've been at this work long enough know that, you know, the real work begins after we're compliant. Right, right. Yeah, right. And which falls under that social piece. Yeah, right. And so, you know, when you think about then that, that social piece, there are some
00:13:07
Speaker
compliance components, what I'd say, and you alluded to it, or actually hit it actually, Jill, so thank you. But it's the softer piece somewhat of this S is the equity and inclusion work that I do, and certainly the cultural sustainability, right? And so if you think about this idea that a culture is a defined set of beliefs or morals, methods, or some kind of collection of human sort of knowledge, if you will,
00:13:33
Speaker
The dependency, though, is the ability to pass that on, right? And that's where this cultural sustainability comes to focus, I think, in the sense of what kind of culture are we or do we have? And then are we able to pass that on to our next generation in order to continue to get the benefits of whatever that culture is?
00:13:58
Speaker
Yep. It makes so much sense for any of us who've been doing this work in health and safety for any amount of time. We hear the word safety culture, which is something that I've often bristled at because I don't think
00:14:17
Speaker
safety culture is independent of the corporate culture. Exactly. It is the corporate culture. It's not the yeah, I mean, you can't have like, oh, we're gonna have our own little subset culture here.
00:14:32
Speaker
It's either you've got this particular type of culture in your environment that is supporting employees to be the best that they can be and safe and healthy and productive, all of the things. Anyway, please keep going. No, I'm so with you because culture is holistic. That's the point of it. It's in the informal.
00:15:00
Speaker
It's in the formal, it's in your processes, it's in your procedures, it's in the ways that you talk about things, right? And so I am so loving this idea because one of the things I actually had written down was this idea that equity and inclusion cannot be bolt-on values. And what you just said around safety is the exact same thing. It can't be a bolt-on, right? So how do you embed it in the DNA
00:15:29
Speaker
of the organization. So, you know, I think maybe hopefully many of your listeners have heard about this idea of what the benefits of having equity and inclusion baked into your culture are. And I'll just name a couple. Yeah, please. Yeah, please. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. One is this idea that in Boston Consulting Group did a study back in 2019. So a little bit dated, but I think that the information still holds.
00:15:57
Speaker
And it found that companies that had more diverse leadership teams were 45% more profitable than companies that didn't. And that profitability is driven a lot by innovation.
00:16:19
Speaker
So it's this ability to take different lived experiences, different people, the diversity of thought and expertise and ability, combine all of that, you have more innovation. If you have more innovation, that ultimately bubbles up into having more revenue, more revenue ultimately bubbles up into having more profitability, right? And so that's one of the key benefits. The other thing is that I'm sure many of your listeners work in organizations that are in, as is ours, right? This war for talent.
00:16:50
Speaker
That's right. And so as new people in particular, as as newly tendered and tenured individuals, I like to call them are entering the workforce, they are really looking at organizations and saying, I want to be somewhere where my values are reflected. Right. And so
Fostering Inclusivity and Diverse Teams
00:17:09
Speaker
if you take this idea that being equitable, being inclusive more naturally comes to the folks of us that are on the
00:17:18
Speaker
earlier side of their careers like I have a 20 year old who's going to be starting a career and I can tell you that he is absolutely much more tuned into this idea that equity is important to him and more importantly he has a greater range of
00:17:34
Speaker
people in his circle that have differing lived experiences. So he wants to see that reflected in the workplace that he is going to choose. And so that was the same with mine. We you and I have the same age and it's the same conversation. You know, hearing that over and over again like that. I'm not hearing about I need to make this much money. I'm hearing about what's the experience going to be like? Is it going to be reflective of how I grew up? Yeah.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, am I going to have the ability to interact with people who are from different backgrounds, lived experiences, generations? How are all of these things going to support me in my work? It's not like, tell me how much money I'm making. Oh, and I like the juxtaposition of, since you and I are of a similar age,
00:18:31
Speaker
I'll ask you the question. Did you ever think about that kind of stuff when you were kind of starting out of your career? Never. Yeah, it was A, went to college. B, can you get a job? C, does it give you a livable wage? Right, right. And kind of hard stop from there. Right. And I'm telling you, I'm in the same place. And so I know your listeners can't see me, but I'm African American. So I'm black.
00:18:56
Speaker
And I didn't have any considerations for what environment was going to be sort of nicer to me, right? Now, I will also tell you that I didn't experience a lot of overt discrimination or bias. So I'm lucky in that sense. But again, it wasn't even on the radar to be looking out for those things. Now, if it had been overt, I probably wouldn't have gone a place to work that that happened. But
00:19:26
Speaker
barring that, right? I didn't think at all about my own safety in that sense of psychological safety, right? Or safety of my emotional safety, maybe, if you will. Yeah, similar for me. You know, it wasn't until I got into my first job, when I'm a woman and realize, Hmm, yeah, I'm a minority in this field. Yeah, you know, like,
00:19:52
Speaker
I'm a badge-carrying 24-year-old female going onto construction sites, and my co-workers, there weren't very many of us either. And so those sort of things crept into the career as challenges, and not having a lot of places that supported.
00:20:15
Speaker
Um, you know, I remember when, when I got pregnant, my manager who had been a manager for probably 25 years said, I don't even know how we do this. Wow. You know, like that's, that's how few of us there were. Yeah. Like, what do we do with you? Um, but yeah, our, our generation, our lens way different than our children's. Absolutely right. Yeah.
00:20:45
Speaker
I can also tell you that when I announced to my manager that my wife was going to have a baby, I was not met with the same response, right? Because there wasn't an expectation that I was or the expectation for me as a man was was different, I am sure than the expectation that may have been put on you as a woman in that same kind of scenario, right? Right, right.
00:21:11
Speaker
Right. So Clayton, we're talking, we're talking here about lots of different things, including generational impacts, right. And what that means, but also the importance of really looking at all of these things with a particular lens so that if nothing else in this environment, we can be the employer of choice. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. I mean, you've got to be, um, able to win the, the war for talent. I've heard it.
00:21:41
Speaker
been phrased, right? Doing that employer choice is just it's key. And it's not just what you said earlier, we asked money has something to do with it. How many vacation days or PTO is offered has something to do with it. Location has something to do with it. But we're also talking more about some of those softer, more nebulous kinds of values that are also playing a huge, huge part of it, right. And that's why, because it is soft, because those values are kind of squishy,
00:22:10
Speaker
is why I think it has to be, or they have to be deeply embedded in the organization. Again, not just kind of bolt-ons, right? Right, right. So you talked about embedding DNA, you know, embedding this idea into the organization. Can you talk about what some of that can look like? Like, what does that look like? You know, we're talking about these things, but as
00:22:33
Speaker
as health and safety leaders, which is the audience that we're talking to and some HR leaders. Thank you, HR people for listening to this podcast. Clayton and Jill are talking about things that are hitting a nerve with me of either, ooh, is that really part of my job? Or I know this is part of my job, but how do I get there? Can you talk about some of those tangible things that people could be
00:23:01
Speaker
working on for themselves or helping their organizations get to start on a path, at least. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely right. So, and I'm so glad that you said tangible, right? Because even though these are soft sorts of things that, or even aspirational in some senses that I'm talking about, and that my work
00:23:28
Speaker
often revolves around, there are some tangible things that one can do. And I always like to start, Jill, with the individual, right? Because so again, I'll direct you back to my long winding, sort of how I got to this role, but that phrase I used black guy on that day, and where I said, you know, it only encompassed one story, I really only ever focused on this idea of being black. So one story. And so the first thing I think people can do
00:23:58
Speaker
is just seek out other stories, right? I mean, and particularly in the context of work, right? And so you've mentioned that your leader or manager kind of was in a conundrum when you came and said that you were going to have a child, right? So as a man, what can I understand about that story and that lived experience that you had, right? And in the event that you and I have a professional relationship,
00:24:28
Speaker
I don't have to ask you about baby directly or even that experience. That was 20 years ago. Um, you know, other than small talk around, how was your weekend? I might one day say, Hey, Joe, I want to sit down with you at some point and just ask you what really has been your lived experience as a woman and either in the corporate environment or in your specialty as a, um, help and safety, um, experts, me, professional, whatever the word, right. Where it is. Right. But just start to dive in and say,
00:24:58
Speaker
What are other lived experience? So seeking out those other stories, right? Um, that's a huge one because if we don't, you know, it's very easy for us to point and say, Oh, that Clayton, he's kind of, he's messed up. Like don't do what he does. Right. Either from a safety perspective or an equity perspective, a lot of perspective, it's easy to kind of point at others. It is much harder to look within ourselves and say, how am I contributing to this overall?
00:25:24
Speaker
thing that
Personal Stories and Lived Experiences
00:25:25
Speaker
I'm calling a culture. How am I contributing to building this environment or this place where I'm spending a lot of time with other people called my workplace, right? Yeah. Being a story collector is what you're talking about and asking people to share their stories. And as you're describing that, I'm thinking of one of my last jobs where a large portion of our workforce
00:25:55
Speaker
were refugees from in particular Myanmar, the most recent. And so one of the managers told me one day, he said, you know, I have been trying to figure out why when we bring people together for like a lunch, none of our new employees are eating any food.
00:26:20
Speaker
He said I really had to talk to them and ask like why aren't you eating like this is a free lunch Like why aren't you eating and he said what I learned was We were serving cold food
00:26:31
Speaker
and cold food is unsafe because of where they came from and the refugee camps they were living in, they knew that the way to stay safe in terms of not getting some kind of food poisoning was to eat food that was cooked. And so he said, so from now on,
00:26:51
Speaker
When I'm hosting a lunch, we are having hot food. We are having cooked food so people can feel part of. And that was just one little story. And that supervisor was paying attention enough to know, hey, these people aren't just being jerks and saying this food isn't good enough. They had a real concern about, yeah. That is amazing, right? Because what you're kind of illuminating, hopefully, for,
00:27:22
Speaker
your listeners out there is this idea that, you know, we make up stories all the time about why people are doing things or what's happening in any given context, right? But this is such a great example of a person that went beyond maybe what the first story might have been in their head, right? To say, I want to find out really kind of what's under the covers, what's going on here, and then learned something
00:27:50
Speaker
and then did something different by changing up kind of the menu and the food that they're bringing in. And then what I know that leads to is a sense from those employees of, wow, I belong here. People care about me. My leaders care. And so what that drives is this desire and willingness when the time comes, it's like, OK, I don't even have to ask these folks to go above and beyond.
00:28:18
Speaker
Right? Because they've got a loyalty. You're building up this internal loyalty about making people feel like they belong. And it can be done in such simple ways. Right? Yeah. And I mean, it doesn't. Clayton, do you want to maybe talk about how
00:28:34
Speaker
I mean, asking people to tell their story of their lived experience might sound really intrusive. That might sound intrusive, but if people are going to do this in practice, and I'd encourage everybody to do this, be a little, what's the word I'm looking for? Anthropologists, you're getting interested in people. I love it. Yeah, how might, what might some of those questions look like?
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So definitely some of the questions, aside from the one I asked, but let me give you a preface, right? The first I think is to just simply make sure that you've got authentic relationships with people that aren't like you, right? So who do you sit with? If you sit in the cafeteria when you're when you're eating lunch, right? Who do you go to?
00:29:30
Speaker
for advice when there's something that's happening in the workplace that you need to talk to somebody about or you need counsel, how broad is your circle, right? Your sort of trusted circle. If there are a lot of people, so for me, if I only talk to black men, for example, when I need advice or when I'm going to lunch, I'm only inviting black men to eat lunch with me, then I might want to say, well, how do I expand my circle to make sure that I
00:30:00
Speaker
no more people that have more people than the network that I can count on. That's the first thing. So you're exactly right about, though, the actual questions, right? This probably isn't a question that you want to ask the one that you just met. Right. But after you have that conversation, then there are a lot of ways to broach it. And you can say, you know, if you want to talk about race in the workplace, for example, you know, it doesn't even have to be that something bad has happened, you could just say, Hey, you know, again,
00:30:28
Speaker
back to riffing off the question that I posed earlier, but, hey, Clayton, I think we're buds. We're buds, right? Aren't we? Hopefully we're buds. And in that, I'd just love to know how you have experienced corporate America as a black person.
00:30:51
Speaker
Right? It's as simple as that kind of question, right? Because it's opening a door and it's signaling to someone that, hey, I want to know about what's going on for you, right? And then your own work, if you're not a black person or a person of color, for example, is to, when you listen to that story, if they are willing, that person's willing to talk about it, is contrasting your mind how your story has played out, right?
00:31:20
Speaker
So if they talk about the time when there might've been discrimination or bias that they were unfortunate victims of in the workplace, think about that scenario and say, wow, as a black person, white person, or non-person of color, do I think this would have played out kind of the same way for me in that same kind of scenario? Again, back to Jill, what you said around the idea of telling your boss you were pregnant.
00:31:47
Speaker
All the things that went into that announcement, then I ask myself when I hear you tell that story, would that have happened with me? And since both of us happened 20 years ago for both of us, I can say from data, right? I can say when I made that announcement, none of that stuff happened to me. That's interesting, right? And so then you start to see that pattern that is contrasted and it's really simple to do. All I will say is the last thing,
00:32:15
Speaker
be authentic to you. Right. So if what I said around my, my start or intro doesn't work for you, then don't use that. But what I will say is find a way to broach the conversation, even though I know it feels a little bit sensitive. And that's why I recommend having a fairly decent relationship with somebody before you go there. Okay. I promise I did say last thing, but this will be the last thing I promise. Okay. So
00:32:42
Speaker
you've got to also give that person the space to maybe not want to have that conversation the first time, the first time you ask them, right? But just know in your mind and in your heart that you've sent a signal that you're willing and open to it. And so then when the moment feels right to you, go back and ask again. Yeah. And that's kind of, hey Clayton, I know that I asked you about your lib
00:33:08
Speaker
experience or your corporate experience as a black person and you didn't want to talk about it. I'm just wanting you to know that I'm still curious about how that plays, you know, how being black has impacted you, if it has at all, or how you think about it and how I might be thinking about it differently as a non-black person or a non-person of color or a white person. And so I do want to, I do want to try and have that conversation with you for my own learning and curiosity, right? Yeah.
00:33:35
Speaker
not to hold not to hold you up as some object of ridicule or, or, or some, you know, shiny object to pity or anything like that, but just, hey, I just want to learn something, man, you know, so so go back if you're, if you're turned down the first couple of times, folks, keep going back. And so that's not just race, even though I use that example. That's if you're trying to talk to someone that's a different gender than you are. If you're trying to talk to someone that might have a different sexual orientation than you do, if you know that kind of information about them, right?
00:34:04
Speaker
If you approach this one time and you're one and done, then you've missed that opportunity to build that culture that we talked about. And you're lessening your opportunity to be able to pass on a great culture to the generations that are going to come after us.
00:34:22
Speaker
Right. That's
Diverse Perspectives in Problem-Solving
00:34:23
Speaker
right. You're making deposits. Yeah. You're making deposits and investment in that relationship. And, you know, I think, I think about, um, different community committees that I've sat on in my, in my lifetime where, you know, the community, uh, leaders get together who are the dominant
00:34:46
Speaker
the dominant culture, the dominant race, the dominant sex, and say, we need to be, and the big announcement is we need to be more diverse. And then everybody has a different definition of what diverse means in their head because it's not necessarily defined. And then more often than not, in my experience, it has been, well, we invited them
00:35:15
Speaker
the innocuous them to come here and then they don't come. So I guess we've done all we can do.
00:35:25
Speaker
And so the answer is no, you haven't. We haven't gotten curious. We haven't built relationships, right? And so, you know, how can we do that in our work as health and safety professionals? Maybe you're building your first safety committee, you know? Like you really want to be able to have
00:35:48
Speaker
and a representation of your work environment. Absolutely. And how can you build some of those relationships to get a full representation of your working environment so all those voices are represented and not just the ones who are like, yeah, I'm a good talker, I'm not shy, I'll be on your safety committee. You know what I mean? We tend to often go for the easy people.
00:36:12
Speaker
Absolutely. That will engage with us and we don't have to try to draw everything out. But these are times when it really makes a difference to make an investment to get voices at tables so that they can impact change in their work environment and that you're not always just with the same like-minded people. Yeah, no, no. I mean, that's 100%, right? And so I think one of the things that is important
00:36:40
Speaker
in terms of trying to build really any team, but certainly the team, as you described, Jill, is to first ask yourself if, well, let me say it differently. If the team's already been built and you just realize kind of, wow, it's very, everyone here is kind of similar, right? So first ask yourself, who are we missing? Yeah. Right. And so that might be, you might be missing somebody that works
00:37:09
Speaker
on the front line, the shop floor, right? It might just be a bunch of managers sitting in the room, right? And again, that might be okay. But a lot of the times we don't ask the question. So that kind of first question is who are we missing, right? Then you can start to branch out and say, well, do we need somebody that's in the field or on the line, right? From a frontline perspective, do we need an executive team member to be here to hear these kind of revelations that we're going to be drawn out in these ideas, right?
00:37:38
Speaker
So who's kind of who are we missing? Here's one of the things also, though, is that it's important to ask that question from the perspective of sex or race or gender as well. And I'll give you an example of that, right? So I was putting together a command center, we were doing a huge technology implementation, we had this new software
00:38:03
Speaker
package that we were rolling out to over 3 million clients at an old bank that I worked at, right? And so we were going to be implementing a command center or a war room. Some of you all may have heard that expression where we were going to be operating 24 by seven. And it was an office building nice. And so I had made sure that there were snacks and we had food and we had shifts and there were computers that people could log into to use. And I'm just patting myself on the back for all these things I've done.
00:38:32
Speaker
And there was nighttime parking. And here's where it gets interesting. I had a woman coworker come to me and she said, hey, Clayton, have you worked it out with the guards to make sure they're in the parking lot 24 by seven so that we can have escorts to our cars from when we're leaving our command center shift. And I was like, what?
00:39:00
Speaker
Every woman who's listening right now knew what you were going to say before you said it, Clayton. Exactly, right? I'm patting myself on the back for all this stuff I've taken care of. And here's the miss, right? So for all the women out here, you know I'm going to say next also, right? To the men, let me just be really clear. This was not Clayton intentionally wanting to harm women or not caring about women in situations. It was simply this idea that as a man,
00:39:31
Speaker
I've never considered the need for assistance or for an escort when walking to my car late at night. I just haven't, right? And I've also never, I've never assaulted anyone quite frankly, but I've never assaulted women when I've been with them in parking lots late at night. And so I just didn't have the frame of reference. So guys,
00:39:57
Speaker
If you're one of those types of people like me that feels bad when they hear scenarios like that, what I'm telling you is feel bad for a second, but don't stay there, right? The trick is what Jill talked about from the other manager that was dealing with the refugee situation, the trick is to, okay, what can, how can I rectify? What can I do to be different? And so I was like, Hey, thank you so much for the feedback.
00:40:21
Speaker
But I think it also points to the idea of why you need diverse feedback on a team because there are things that you might want to consider that you've never thought about.
00:40:32
Speaker
Right. And I think even that example that you gave, again, is where generational differences come in, too. So we're talking about all of the, I don't want to call them labels, but all the ways that we are as human beings and the way that we walk through the world. And generation is different, too.
00:40:52
Speaker
when my son started college this year, he's second year of college and living in an apartment for the first time and has this friend network and some of his friends are women and he said, you know, I'm hosting game night at my apartment and we're going to get done late at night
00:41:15
Speaker
and I'm really thinking about how my female friends are going to get back to their places safely. That is awesome. He said that to me and he said, Mom, what do you think I should do about that? Yeah. I'm like, okay, there's an escort service on every campus, here's the things, here's the phone number, put it on your refrigerator so you guys can call and this makes it easy. But that's, again, I think that's a generational difference where he's tuned into that.
Consistency in Inclusive Culture
00:41:44
Speaker
in a way that maybe other generations haven't or because of their lived experience. Absolutely right. And that that that's the point of making sure that you've got folks that have those different lived experiences, particularly when we're talking about things like if you want to implement a safety committee. So you want people that have just started you want people that have been there forever, right? People that are from all the myriad colors of the rainbow from an race and ethnicity perspective, again, just because
00:42:12
Speaker
We have differing lived experiences that bring things to the table that can help improve the environment for everybody, right? And so if you just have a bunch of black dudes in the room who are right-handed and five foot eight like I am, right? Then you might not get a fulsome kind of solution to the varying
00:42:38
Speaker
problems that you are considering, right? Let me give you one last example because I think it's very well, right? And you and I are of some array. So the older listeners, hopefully, maybe younger too, but older, I know will identify with this. Remember those old school refrigerators that had the handle on the on the left side of the refrigerator as you as you looked at it before the day of French doors for everybody, right? Yes, that's right. So think about that.
00:43:04
Speaker
When you pulled that refrigerator door open with your right hand, what happened? Yeah, it was easy for you to put it in. You saw the food, right? You saw the food. You could walk right in. Yeah, you were standing in front of it. I have a left-handed child. And his grandmother had one of those refrigerators. And he walked up to it the first time on his own. He was walking, so probably about two, maybe less than three. He certainly wasn't talking.
00:43:31
Speaker
And he's naturally, and he, so he pulled the door with his left hand. And what happened was the door banged him in the head. Now I thank you. I know, right? I thank you for giving my son a little bit of sympathy. But my point of that story is when the people designing refrigerators were sitting in that room, you know, 60, 70, 80, whatever it was years ago, do you think?
00:43:56
Speaker
they were like, oh, this is our time, our chance, our master opportunity to make life hard for left-handed people. That's right, yeah. Right? They probably, now they may have been, because I wasn't in the room, but they probably weren't thinking that. What probably happened is a combination of a couple of things. One, I think statistically, it's roughly 20% to 30% of people globally are left-handed. Maybe it might even be less.
00:44:25
Speaker
So if you take that statistically and you say there were five engineers in the room, that means that the chances that any of them were left-handed is probably very slim. And so you just had a bunch of right-handed people going, let's put the handle on the left so that when we open the pool from the right, you see the food. Again, there was no plot. There was no notorious thing where we're going to screw over
00:44:50
Speaker
left handed people, it was probably that there just weren't any left handed people in the room at the table when they went and tested out the design in the test market, right? It just weren't. And so nobody said because no one had had the left handed experience. Now, you have a left handed person in that room, they go, Oh, you know what, we can try it that way. But we got to make sure that when we do testing on this, before we release it, we get some left handed people in there to tell you what their experience is going to be.
00:45:18
Speaker
right and then and then over time exactly what we've seen happen is that you can actually mount the the handles on different sides of the refrigerator doors exactly right right yeah so it can fit for whomever yeah yeah that's great stores and by the way sometimes like left-handed baseball gloves cost more
00:45:40
Speaker
Oh yeah. It's like the pink tag. It's like the pink tag. Exactly. So again, when you're, when you're understanding these different lived experiences, then you can start to go in and understand, wow. Well, wait a minute. Why, why do left-handed scissors cost more? Why does a left-handed baseball glove cost more? And over time, could that put someone who is financially constrained at a disadvantage being left-handed? I mean, I don't, I don't know, but as a right-handed person, if I'm thinking about those things,
00:46:05
Speaker
Then when I'm trying to, again, think about my safety committee or establishing this new process and procedure, at least I'm having, I have the broadest viewpoint possible, right? And that's what I'm trying to help us get at is this idea of, of having that broad viewpoint. And you said it best, Jill, making deposits, because that was the second thing I was going to talk about in terms of how do you sustain this value of building a great culture is you've got to be consistent.
00:46:32
Speaker
right, you've got to continue to make the deposits, even when it seems like the deposits aren't earning any interest.
Leadership and Personal Growth
00:46:40
Speaker
Keep making them because they will over time. And so if you have that consistency, then that is the second way to embed it. First, you model the behavior yourself. Second is you got to be consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent, right. So I mentioned a lot of groups that I
00:47:00
Speaker
tend to belong to earlier. So around being male around being black or African American, my consistency challenge always is to continue to think about what other lived experiences, right? Do I need to be thinking about when I do my work, so I'm not a veteran. So I have to reach out and find people that I know have veteran status, right to understand how their lived experiences, their challenges and triumphs when they're in the workforce, when they come back from serving
00:47:28
Speaker
our country, I don't live with a physical disability. So I have to go find people that live with that physical disability to say, how can I make access a little bit easier for you, right? So it's just that idea of being open to consistently looking for those other stories. And then last but not least holding yourself and your teammates around you accountable. And this kind of is the hard part, particularly if you don't have
00:47:57
Speaker
you know, if you're not a manager, or you don't have a leadership position, you can kind of feel sometimes hamstrung, or that like, you don't have the ability to kind of influence those above you. What does that look like? Yeah, practice. Yeah. I think it's two things. One is if you have, you know, good enough relationship, you can go to someone and approach them and, you know, point out that, hey, you know, in that, in that
00:48:25
Speaker
meeting that we were having, right? I think you kind of dismissed Clayton's idea. And you mentioned that because you know, he's young in his tenure, he hadn't been around the block, he didn't know as much. And I don't know that that kind of is a way to help him feel like he really can contribute to this team, right? So that's a way you kind of could you could broach it.
00:48:50
Speaker
If you have that relationship, if you don't have that relationship, you might be able to find someone that you do have that relationship with. So you might know Jill, and you can go to Jill and say, hey, Clayton, I've seen, or Jill, I've seen Clayton in several meetings now be dismissive of people that are younger in their career. Right? Is there, is there a way that you could kind of talk to him? Because I think that we're limiting our opportunity to get the full value out of, you know, I don't know,
00:49:21
Speaker
Marco, because he doesn't feel like he's speaking up, because Clayton keeps kind of either jumping over him or as the leader, making those kinds of dismissive comments, right? So it doesn't always have to even be you directly, that that can foster that sense of accountability, right? Maybe you get one of the peers
00:49:39
Speaker
of that leader to be able to go and do that, right? I've done that with teams as well, especially in meetings. I've given feedback to people and say, you know, I noticed that when you call on people for feedback or to tell a story or to, you know, you're talking about something everyone needs to know or learn, you tend to call on the same people that are like you.
00:50:05
Speaker
Um, and you know, it's, of course it's easy, it's easy to pick on people that are like you. It's easy to pick on people that you know, that are going to speak up and are going to take your idea and run with it. Yeah. But you know, challenge yourself to.
00:50:22
Speaker
to call upon people who you don't normally call upon, people who aren't like you. I've given similar feedback on, you do a really great job with this. Keep doing that, the stop, start, continue thing. Absolutely. And when you're giving examples, perhaps think about not always framing them in a sports analogy. Right, exactly. I mean, like that kind of feedback. And people that you've made deposits with that you're talking about,
00:50:50
Speaker
can't take that and say, huh, I never noticed that about myself. Yeah. And the ability to do that, right, Joe, is also is a skill, I think. And so to your point, you know, in terms of when you're getting that feedback, so this is for us, your listeners who are managers or leaders in their organization, when you get that kind of feedback, lean into it, right? Because so often we jump to this idea of, well, wait a minute, that's not what I intend to
00:51:17
Speaker
I didn't mean to make Jill feel dismissed by never calling on her in that meeting. And hey, I get it, right? When I'm getting that feedback, sometimes it can be a little bit painful or a little bit uncomfortable, but I've had the best moments where I've really been able to learn something and then do something different by leaning into that feedback and listening, right? Really hearing the person. So when Jill comes to me and says, hey,
00:51:44
Speaker
you know, you're, you're doing this, you're doing that, I'm really going to try to lean in as a leader to hear her. Right. And that's the, that's the key to being able to make the changes that are positive, that build this kind of culture that hopefully will make us an employer of choice, make us more profitable, and then be able to pass that down the line for generations and generations to come so that when our 20 year olds, Joe, are where we are in our career, right,
00:52:11
Speaker
They, they are having a different kind of conversation, but they're having it at a place that maybe you and I helped build. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, yes, absolutely. And Clayton, I'd like to talk about, um, you know, journeys that those of us who are leaders and, you know, anyone who's listening to this in employee health and safety, we are leaders. We are modeling behavior. We are leaders. Um, how can people continually
00:52:36
Speaker
update themselves to be on a journey and I'll just set up a little bit of an idea for those of us who have been at this work any length of time. There are different personas of people who do our work in health and safety. And one of those personas that's not a popular one that some of us have fallen into is being what we call the safety cop.
00:53:01
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and being that person who's always, you know, like trying to catch, be punitive. We looked for something that was wrong. We're telling people that they were wrong. It doesn't do anything to build relationships. I myself have been, you know, guilty of that early in my career. You know, I literally had a badge, right? And so I had to figure out how to use that badge for good.
00:53:27
Speaker
in terms of building relationships with people and not just saying wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, here's your fine, here's your fine, here's your disciplinary action, here's your this, here's your that. And so as we grow and expand in our careers as influencers, as leaders, how can we put ourselves on a journey? What does that look like?
00:53:50
Speaker
It's it's a that's a great question, right? What i'll tell you is um from an equity inclusion perspective It's going to be different for everybody because because we all have different um blind spots Or areas where we need to really connect for me. It was it was and continues to be gender, right? So How do I play a role into propping up sexism? Right or or discrimination of women?
00:54:18
Speaker
And so I'm happy to say that I don't think I played much of a role in that today, but I am seeking feedback, to your point, from women, asking them, hey, how am I showing up in this meeting? How am I showing up in these settings, which is part of it, and then I'm acting on that feedback. But I really think it's a commitment to understanding what your blind spots are, to knowing that you have them, first of all, to try to understand and learn what they are, and then simply to hold yourself accountable to being different.
00:54:49
Speaker
And then rinse and repeat over and over and over again. And understand that this isn't a, it is exactly what you said, Jill. It's a journey, right? It's almost, I almost like to liken it to an excursion, right? Because on a journey, you kind of can know where you're going. Like you can journey from your house to grandma's house and you know where it is, you know, the best roads, all that kind of stuff. On an excursion or a safari or an expedition, there's often a kind of a learning component. You're trying to see something you've never seen before. You're trying to do something you've never done before.
00:55:19
Speaker
And so I actually think about it. That was one of my challenges for myself in 2022 was to think about how do I stay on an excursion where I'm continually learning, where I'm continuing asking the right questions, where I've continually to show genuine curiosity about the world around me. Um, and if you do that, that's how you get on the path. And last but not least, right. You, if you get on this equity and inclusion train, if you will, or journey or whatever you want to call it, you're going to mess up.
00:55:48
Speaker
You're going to meet a time where you say the wrong thing or you do their own thing. And I always get this question, well, Clayton, what do I do? First of all, apologize, own it, move on and be different, right? Don't make it, don't make it bigger than it has to be, but stay in the game. Because often when we mess up, when we're given that corrective feedback, we don't see it as a gift. We see it as punitive. Like you just said earlier, Joe, you see it as,
00:56:15
Speaker
Jill's punishing me for this. No, she's giving me valuable feedback about how I'm showing up somewhere. So take it in and then do something different, right? But I think we don't have that commitment to doing something often, Jill. We have that thought of, well, someone else is going to do that. So if Jill's the safety officer, if Clayton's the diversity officer, then isn't that their job? And I'm going to circle us all the way back to where we started, which is
00:56:41
Speaker
To embed this stuff in our cultures, to embed safety in the culture, to embed inclusion in the culture is everyone's job. That's right.
00:56:51
Speaker
That's right. And every health and safety professional just said, amen. Because it's the thing that we're always saying. It's like, you know, employees are like, here comes that person, that safety person. We better do this. We better act this way in the end. We're like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what this is about. It's embedding. Yeah, it's embedding. That's awesome. Yeah, that's fabulous.
00:57:15
Speaker
Clayton, I know we're running short on time. One thing I'm thinking about right now, if someone's listening and thinking, okay, so Clayton's given us some really great ideas, it still seems a little bit squishy to me. Are there places that people can go to learn where they're taking training or reading certain things that they can do independently or that you can weave into a company?
00:57:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are a number of great resources that you can use through even the old Google Nader, right? So I would start on thinking about maybe watching a few short videos, right? So there's a bunch of content on YouTube that is made by people that have all kinds of different varying lived experiences, right?
00:58:11
Speaker
And so just going out and finding, you know, four or five minute video, um, hundreds of them talk about these different experiences and maybe of how, what it means to, uh, have a different sexual orientation in the workplace, what it means and in life, quite frankly, right? What it means to be, um, I'm a man, a black woman in the workplace and some of those experiences. So again, just kind of being curious and, and, and you could certainly.
00:58:38
Speaker
you know, push your company to, you know, buy stuff and augment the resources that you have available. But quite frankly, even if you don't have power to do that, or desire to do that, you can always do it for yourself in terms of just some of the general ways that you can continue to look into what are these different lived experiences like.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
00:58:59
Speaker
So always tell people it's Black History Month, by the way, when Jill and I when we're talking, I don't know when you'll air this, but at any rate, today it is. So
00:59:07
Speaker
I always talk to people and say, hey, look up, you know, look up a black author. I think a lot of people have the misconception that oh, well, this book was written from a woman's perspective, for example, that it must not be for men. Right? Or, or this book is written from a black person's perspective, it must not be for for white folk, we start to immediately make those kinds of assumptions. And what I'd say is get out of that assumption and go read a book by a black by a black author doesn't have or doesn't have to be a novel or go find a black, a black,
00:59:37
Speaker
podcast or in popular media, and listen to a couple of their podcasts, right? So it doesn't, it's, you know, we cut ourselves off often artificially, because oh, well, that's not for me, right? I would even say if you're, this is a bold one, but if your organization has employee resource groups, I would almost be certain that they are not limited to
01:00:04
Speaker
the people that they serve. So for example, that there's an African American or black employee resource group, I'm certain that the membership is not exclusive. So if you are not a black person or a person of color, or a person of color of another ethnicity, but not particularly black or African American, right? Join that black African American resource resource group, because you'll learn something, right? Everywhere I go, where there are resource groups, I always join the groups
01:00:31
Speaker
that are not necessarily germane to my life experience are always join the women's ERG. And quite frankly, some of the best programming comes from those other groups because of the perspectives that they bring to the topics that they are surfacing, right? And it's easy to do and join it with the mindset again, if I'm going to learn something, I don't have to take over, right? So it's just this idea, I think, Jill, of finding what feels good to you, finding what feels right to you. And again, just being consistent around it.
01:00:59
Speaker
It needs to be authentic for you because if it's not authentic, you won't stick with it just like a diet, right? That's right. Amen to that. Amen to that. Well, Clayton, the things that I took away today, the things that I've made a note of, one, being that story collector, asking about people's lived experiences.
01:01:20
Speaker
being consistent, continually looking and learning and collecting those stories, modeling behavior that we want to see, holding our teammates accountable, asking ourselves what our blind spots are, what don't we know about one another, and staying on the excursion, as you said. Staying on the excursion. I love it. I love it. You captured it all. You captured it all.
01:01:50
Speaker
Well, Clayton, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your expertise, and your training with us today. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me, Jill, and I am so appreciative of your listeners out there and the job that you're doing to bring this awesome content to them. So kudos to you. Thank you. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day.
01:02:20
Speaker
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