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Balancing the Future Ep. 24 - Blueprint for Belonging: A Guide to Human-Centric Work with Nzinga Shaw
291 Plays13 days ago
Nzinga Shaw, trailblazing Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for the NBA, NFL and Starbucks, recounts her path from Spelman English major to global DEI authority. Shaped by educator parents and civil-rights stories, Shaw explains how sports can bridge racial divides, why the pandemic elevated employee well-being, and how flexible, trust-based cultures outperform rigid mandates. Join this discussion with host Chris Mitchell as we explore ideas around building trust, using data-driven inclusion, and cultivating focus, courage, and entrepreneurial thinking in the next generation of talent.
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Transcript
Introduction to Zing Shaw
00:00:09
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Balancing the Future. I am here today with Zing Shaw, and she is a very, very special person when it comes to just understanding not only human behavior, but understanding culture and people. And a lot's happened over the last six years.
00:00:27
Speaker
So we're going to dive into that a bit. But before that. Share about your background. Give the audience an idea of who you are what
Family Background and Education
00:00:35
Speaker
you love to do. I know you've got a large family. I say it's large because anything more than one is large enough. so Well, Chris, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. My family, I don't know that I would describe it as large. I do have three very small children, eight, six, and four.
00:00:53
Speaker
um I live in Atlanta, Georgia, with my husband, and we are just excited about watching them grow and their path in life. I'm an only child. I grew up with two educators as parents, and that was always an interesting dynamic in the household because I was older.
00:01:08
Speaker
always listening to adult conversations. And both of my parents as educators focused on race relations in their studies. So my father was a professor at and NYU for 40 years. He taught African-American history.
00:01:21
Speaker
And I would say at a very early age, I was exposed to conversations around race. My mother grew up in the deep South in Charleston, South Carolina. And my father was the complete opposite. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
00:01:33
Speaker
So their experiences growing up in the 60s, um, um were very different from one another. My mother um can recall stories of being bitten by dogs when trying to integrate public schools in Charleston.
00:01:49
Speaker
um She remembers hostile race relations with black and whites in ah deep south, ah whereas my father would describe ah more, I would say, gentle race
Career Beginnings and Education
00:02:02
Speaker
relations. So, you know, acknowledging that we still had a lot of hills to climb um but nothing as overt as some of the experiences that my mother had. And so I grew up in Long Island um in a very small village in New York named Freeport.
00:02:19
Speaker
um Freeport had about 200,000 residents at the time. So it was a small community. We all knew each other, very mixed dynamics in terms of race relations,
00:02:30
Speaker
Everyone lived in Freeport and we lived happily with one another. and then my mother passed away when I was 16. So that kind of threw wrench in our family dynamic. And I ended up ah having a long conversation with my father about where I should go to college.
00:02:45
Speaker
What made the most sense in terms of this new normal ah without my mom? and without siblings. And we ended up deciding collectively that Spelman College would be a really good place for me to be um because Spelman is a school for African-American women.
00:03:01
Speaker
There were going to be figures at Spelman that could serve as not mothers, but you know certainly maternal figures in terms of the professors that I'd be interacting
Cultural Insights and Career Direction
00:03:10
Speaker
with. And then just the student body, having some built in sisters from the very beginning and women that I could study alongside that would have similar experiences to me, their lived experiences, but also just walking in the shoes that I've walked in in terms of some of these race dynamics that I was going to encounter. So i ended up going to Spelman, loving it. And um that was the beginning of my journey. OK, OK.
00:03:37
Speaker
So what about work? graduate me through your, your resume, if you will. Yeah. Things that you like and some things we didn't, we don't like all that much, but. Well, I'll tell you, uh, coming out of Spelman, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And so I was an English major and I was an English major because I love to write.
00:03:55
Speaker
And, um, I ended up working at Essence magazine out of college, but I was not in the editorial department, which was my dream. I actually ended up in the human resources department, but I figured a job is a job. I'll take it.
00:04:07
Speaker
And I'll tell you, that's changed the entire trajectory of what I thought my career would be. i ended up doing a lot of recruiting, and that was a good way for me to understand organizational dynamics, how roles evolve in organizations,
00:04:22
Speaker
I got to work very closely with hiring managers to fill their jobs. It was good foundation for ah person starting off in the HR space. And then Essence got acquired by Time Magazine. and And we knew that Essence was going to go away, or at least in the capacity that we knew it.
00:04:38
Speaker
And my boss said, Zing, I think you should go to grad school. She said, you're young, you're smart. ah This is a very volatile situation. And so it's probably a good time for you to go study.
Diversity in Sports and Leadership
00:04:50
Speaker
And I was like, well, I don't know what to study. i ended up doing some research and I found a program at the University of Pennsylvania and it was called the Master of Liberal Arts Program. And it allowed students to study across the disciplines at the master's level at all of the schools at University of Penn.
00:05:07
Speaker
So I could create my own curriculum. and ah create a capstone project that was the culmination of all of those experiences. So I got to study at the Wharton School of Business, the Annenberg School for Communication, the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Social Work. That's cool. And I even got to go to Oxford University in the summer and study abroad, which was my first time leaving the country and having a really, really cool experience, particularly around race.
00:05:34
Speaker
So this concept came up when I was in the UK. I remember being at a bar one night and meeting two people, a man and a woman. And the woman was black, the man was white. They were both around the same age as me, which was mid-20s at the time.
00:05:48
Speaker
And I introduced this concept of race when we had our discussion. And they both kind of looked at me perplexed and said, we don't know what you mean. And I said, well, I don't know what you mean. would You know, he's white, you're black like me. and And they said, no, we're both British and you're American.
00:06:04
Speaker
And that was the first time I had ah an aha moment that um when you step outside of the United States, everything is not race centric. That is a concept that we have created in this nation and that we over index on in this nation. But when you live globally and when you have these global experiences,
00:06:25
Speaker
in a place like China, for example, or even the UK, Brazil, it's not something that people are over overly fixated on. And that's when I begin to become very interested in this concept of diversity.
00:06:38
Speaker
And so to answer your question about my career, my career took me from um Essence Magazine as an ah HR coordinator to leaving graduate school and coming back into the ah HR space ah in the sports sector. So I worked at the Yankees.
00:06:54
Speaker
I also worked at the National Football League. And I realized that sports was at this very interesting intersection for um creating culture and also facilitating what I thought could be positive race relations, because sports happens to be one of those vehicles that brings people together.
00:07:14
Speaker
You know, you go to a sporting event Whether it's the World Series or the Super Bowl or just a regular game, and you look around any given arena and there's everybody there, whether they're old or young or black or white or gay or straight. You've got this arena filled with people that are all excited about this one entity, this home team.
00:07:35
Speaker
that they want to see win. And so we put our differences to the side, even if it's for two hours of the game. We, you know, give a high five to the person sitting next to us. We're able to put our differences to the side and unify around the home team.
00:07:48
Speaker
So I always, you know, enjoyed this concept of using sports as a vehicle to create unifying ah relations amongst people. And so I, I, Spent most of my career in professional sports working in HR.
00:08:02
Speaker
And then I realized that I wanted to go deep and not wide. So the deep for me was DEI. And that was before it was even called DEI. Just knew this concept of bringing different types of voices to the table, utilizing people for the strengths that they bring to the table and figuring out how to create high performing teams from what people are good at.
00:08:24
Speaker
No different than the way LeBron James operates in basketball. You know, people always ask this question. Who's the GOAT? Is it Jordan or LeBron? Well, it's not LeBron. Well, my answer. I'm sorry. I come from a different era. OK, well, I'll tell you why I think it's LeBron.
00:08:39
Speaker
And I want to hear this. OK, well, here's what my take LeBron can have, he has the ability to go from franchise to franchise and bring home championships.
00:08:51
Speaker
Now, Jordan, bar none, was able to be 100% of a beast at the Bulls. But I don't know what he was capable of doing elsewhere.
00:09:02
Speaker
Whereas LeBron has been... you know, on the Cavs bringing home a championship, the Miami Heat bringing home a championship, the LA Lakers bringing home a championship. He can go from place to place. And I think it's because of his unique ability to find the good in what people bring to the table, his teammates, and then leveraging those good things and using them for their strengths. So,
00:09:25
Speaker
He doesn't over-index on what someone can't do. If he knows that you're not a good defender, then he won't rely on you to defend. But if he notices that you're a great shooter, then he'll pass you the ball and give you those opportunities to do what you do well.
00:09:39
Speaker
And so I like his game. I like his style of play. And I like his ability to lead in that way. And I try to think about my work very similarly. When I think about workspaces, it's not focusing on what people can't do, but like, what are, what's the one thing that Chris is good at that I can leverage?
00:09:59
Speaker
And then if I can combine what you're good at with what I'm good at, because hopefully there'll be two different things, then if we keep doing that and putting these teams of people together, we will ultimately ah have a high performing team that has representation across the board with the things that we need to get work done.
Human Capital and Well-being
00:10:19
Speaker
So I've spent my career in places like, the National Football League, Edelman, um the National Basketball Association, Starbucks, leading diversity and inclusion, because I've always thought that if you look at brands that are big, that have the ability to touch multiple clients, multiple customers, and then you infuse this concept of diversity and inclusion and equity and belonging,
00:10:49
Speaker
and leverage those things, then you might have the ability to just change the world. Awesome. My goodness, that was thorough. That was very good. I've never heard it presented that way. But when I think about, and I'm going to probably cheapen this when I say just human capital, when I think about human capital, because that's what's tossed out now.
00:11:06
Speaker
What comes to mind when I say human capital? I think we had something off camera where we were talking about human capital. And it just seems like it's just doesn't have the emotion, doesn't have the the feeling. It doesn't have anything to it. So what what comes to mind when i when I say human capital? Well, when you say human capital, I think it's just the way that people describe people at work.
00:11:26
Speaker
Human capital, human beings doing work. Capital because they are, um you know, creating some type of value, whether it's monetary value or um the ability to create products that ultimately create monetary value. it comes back to this, this concept of monetary value.
00:11:47
Speaker
um But I think it's the way that people are utilized in organizations and and being leveraged for the things that create value for the company. That's what I think of when I think of human capital. But to your point, it does feel very dry. It feels transactional. It doesn't feel like what I think about when I think of human beings, which are multidimensional, um,
00:12:10
Speaker
you know, people who have the ability to um share their stories in an authentic way, um who are not defined by data points. I think oftentimes we, when we think about human capital, we think about data points. So I'll even hear people say things like, what are the metrics for success?
00:12:30
Speaker
Or um how many women are represented in your organization? And for me, you know like I'm a woman, but I'm also a mom.
00:12:41
Speaker
I'm also a wife. I'm also um a good friend. I'm also a person who is well-traveled. I'm also a person who's educated. i'm also a person who likes to do interior design.
00:12:54
Speaker
My life is so multifaceted that just being defined as a woman is very limiting. It is an important facet of my life, but it certainly is not the defining facet of my life. And so I think where we go wrong with human capital is that we assign data points to people and then try to fit them neatly into a box.
00:13:13
Speaker
And human beings don't fit into boxes neatly. You know, we're a culmination of our journeys on this life and in this this thing that we call the world. And um it's it's almost a missed opportunity for us um in organizations when we define people so narrowly.
00:13:33
Speaker
You know, when I think about the whole human being equation over the past five years and that transformational exercise, because so much has happened within corporate and how they score and how they value and what's expected.
00:13:46
Speaker
And I think the new word is well-being. And we talked about that. I mean, what do you think when all of that's on the table? What sticks out to you? Because I'm trying to figure out what the right strategy might look like for people, because people are super important as it relates to our business.
00:14:01
Speaker
So when I put that you know on the table for you, what what pops out and and and what do you want to comment on? Well, you know, well-being is an important word because I think that for us, we spend so much time at work, multiple hours a day, um several hours a week, a lot of time away from our families and our friends and the things that are really important to us.
00:14:24
Speaker
And so you do want people to be well. You do want people to have a sense of happiness and joy, because if there is no well-being, then they're not going to create things of value that would benefit the company.
00:14:39
Speaker
And so I think that's why you hear that word coming up in corporations a lot, especially like I would say post-pandemic. um I hear the word well-being a lot because our mental health was at risk when we were in the pandemic. I mean, it was just such a strange time being thrown into a situation where we were told that we had to put on masks and don't breathe or else you could die and kill others and you must be six feet apart and you know you must wash your hands all day long it was scary because we just didn't know what we were contending with and then we were watching people die and watching people get very sick and we were isolated and it felt very strange because human beings are not
00:15:24
Speaker
We're not wired to be isolated.
Remote Work Dynamics
00:15:26
Speaker
We're not wired to be alone. We work very well in groups. um We feel happy and joy when we're with others. And so to be thrown into isolation without having a chance to prepare for it made a lot of us unwell.
00:15:42
Speaker
absolutely Our mental health was at risk. There was an uptick in suicide. There was an uptick in depression. And so I think that you're hearing this concept of well-being a lot because organizations learned very quickly that if people are not well, then your company will not survive.
00:16:01
Speaker
You know, I was thinking about, and this is probably there's something that's going on in my head when I think about, you know, those that are remote and then the need for people to remain remote.
00:16:12
Speaker
i don't be personally I don't think don't think it's healthy because I think I need the energy that's in this room. You can't see all these other folks that are around us helping with this podcast, but...
00:16:22
Speaker
When I think about what's necessary, I mean, I need your energy. They need our energy to make sure that this can be successful. So what what do you think when I say remote versus go back to work? Because everybody's going back to work now. Yeah. How does that make you feel?
00:16:37
Speaker
I mean... I honestly believe in diversity in every respect of the word. And so I think it's OK for some people to want to stay remote. I get it. um The reason I say that is because when I was working at Starbucks, I was the head of diversity. i was the global chief diversity officer at Starbucks in Seattle during the pandemic.
00:16:57
Speaker
And we heard from a lot of employees that were, um let's say, physically disabled that used to have a really tough time getting to the office.
00:17:08
Speaker
And because our corporate headquarters was a very hard building to navigate, it's a huge structure. Even getting up the steps, you know, there wasn't a... readily available ramp. And so you would have to wait for someone to assist you. It was always like just very hard.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so when they had an opportunity to work from home, they were very productive and getting things done quicker and didn't have to worry about getting in a wheelchair, and navigating traffic and all of these things that able-bodied people don't think about.
00:17:40
Speaker
And so for them, this sense of being remote was joy and it brought a sense of, of productivity. Whereas to your point, there were a lot of people who, um, maybe had family dynamics that, um, didn't involve a partner or a spouse, or maybe they didn't have children in the home. And so being at home all day and all night felt very lonely and very sad and, um, isolating. And so what,
00:18:10
Speaker
when we said we were remote, that was almost like a death sentence for them. And and it was very um depressing. And so I truly believe that organizations have to take into account when we say,
00:18:26
Speaker
remote or hybrid or in-person, you have to take into account who's in your workforce and what are they experiencing, recognizing that one size will not fit all. And if you try to make your culture a place that is all or nothing, you're gonna end up losing valuable human capital because you're not flexible in the way that you are maneuvering what's going on around
Generational Perspectives on Change
00:18:51
Speaker
you. So what comes to mind for me is flexibility.
00:18:55
Speaker
Okay. And trust. yeah I also think there's a sense of mistrust when organizations force everyone to come back into the work five days a week. What you're saying is that we don't trust that you're going to be doing the right thing if you're left alone.
00:19:10
Speaker
We have to watch you. We have to monitor your behavior or else we, you know, um do not believe that you will be doing the right thing.
00:19:22
Speaker
yeah. That's what I hear when I hear that people are being forced to be one way or the other. I feel like it's mistrust. So I'm going to ask the question about the Gen
00:19:33
Speaker
Compared to everyone, every other generation out there in the way they think. And they've been exposed to a lot, you know, just given all that's happened over the last years. What have you heard about the Gen Z's and their reaction when we say culture, and when we say corporate expectations? And, you know, you have the transformation from the EI. Now we're talking about well-being.
00:19:53
Speaker
Where are they and that pot? You know, I love Generation Z for a lot of reasons. I happen to be Generation X, so we're a couple of generations removed. um But I am a teacher. I teach at the University of Tennessee right now in Knoxville.
00:20:08
Speaker
And so my students are primarily undergraduate seniors, but I also teach first year and MBAs. So they're all Generation Z for the most part. And i will say that having that close proximity to their generation and having these challenging discussions with them around these different academic concepts or just um conversations around what's happening in society. What I can say about Generation Z is that they will buck the system.
00:20:36
Speaker
They are unafraid. They challenge societal norms and they don't necessarily believe everything that is told to them. You know, like some generations, like my parents' generation, for example, they were boomers.
00:20:50
Speaker
um they believed whatever was told to them. So like, They were Christians, both of my parents. But you ask them why? Because the Lord is our shepherd and we shall not want.
00:21:01
Speaker
And I'm like, but what does that mean? Like, how did you come up with this? And it was it was taught to them. And so they never challenged any concepts in the Bible. They didn't think ah more deeply than what was readily in front of them. It was just like, this is what was taught to us. And so this is what we accept. And we're going to move it forward.
00:21:20
Speaker
um Whereas this new generation, Generation Z, Certainly they are coming into the world with certain religious beliefs because it was passed down to them or different ideological ideological beliefs based on what they've been taught.
00:21:35
Speaker
But they will also look a little bit deeper than the surface and they will um ask questions. Or um if there is something that feels like a conflict, they will state what that is and and express why.
00:21:48
Speaker
I feel like this generation is Generation Z is trying to get to a place of unity. I do believe that they are... um not happy about the discord happening in society.
Creating Effective DEI Strategies
00:22:01
Speaker
They don't enjoy watching inequity.
00:22:05
Speaker
They don't um believe everything that is told to them. And I do believe if any generation has an opportunity for systemic change and to make real advances in society, I do believe that it's Generation Z. So when I think about strategy and I think about human beings and trying to I guess, implement the right strategy.
00:22:29
Speaker
I can look at what was done three or four years ago and I can think about, you know, what's on the horizon. So what are your thoughts when I think about an ideal strategy? And I say ideal, I know that's a big word when we talk about human capital. But what does that ideal strategy look like to you as we move forward?
00:22:46
Speaker
You know, I think it looks like what the medical industry does, which is diagnose what's wrong in in their work. um Let me can I just tell us a quick story to to explain what I mean by that.
00:22:59
Speaker
So if my back hurts. And I go to the doctor to find out what's wrong with my back. The first thing that the doctor is going to do is have me fill out a really long questionnaire and ask me lots of questions that have nothing to do with anything that has to do with my back.
00:23:16
Speaker
So the questionnaire might say, you know, how many nights um a week are you getting more than seven hours of sleep? Or how much water are you drinking on a daily basis?
00:23:28
Speaker
Do you get exercise on a weekly basis? Are you eating fruits and vegetables? um Do you have diabetes in your family? Do you have cancer in your family? I mean, just asking all types of questions. And I just came here to find out what's wrong with my back.
00:23:44
Speaker
But the reason that the medical industry is doing that is because they're trying to diagnose what could be an ailment or rule out what is not impacting this trigger.
00:23:54
Speaker
And so asking an exhaustive set of questions gets you to a place where you're now able to pinpoint what could possibly be happening before you can do further work in diagnosis.
00:24:06
Speaker
And then once you actually you know get to a place where you think you understand what the root cause of the issue is, well, then we can have a process to follow procedures where we might have to do surgery or we might have to give you medical intervention through an IV or through some type of oral medicine.
00:24:26
Speaker
But the point is that we had to go through this huge diagnostic in order to get to a place where I can actually pinpoint what's going on with you and repair it. That's what's missing in strategy around human capital and DEI right now is that We don't have a common language or even a way for diagnosing what's wrong in organizations.
00:24:47
Speaker
We don't have a way to clarify what could be happening versus what didn't happen. And so we're leaving a lot of things up to interpretation and chance.
00:24:58
Speaker
And in the absence of having strong definitions, in the absence of having a a manual for how to do the work, so a manual for procedure, that's why people go to medical school, because If you're going to operate on my heart, I want to know that you have the training and that you've gone through a rigorous set of experiences in order to be successful through this surgery. I'm not just going to let someone operate on me that doesn't have training.
00:25:25
Speaker
But we have people that are doing human capital strategy and DEI practitioners and organizations that are untrained. They don't have formal training. A lot of times they were hand selected to do work because of what they look like, unfortunately, um without having um the background to get to a place of a solution.
00:25:47
Speaker
And so With all of that going on, we get to chaos, which is where we're at right now. We're in the middle of chaos and and figuring out how to clean it up. So I think to answer your question, we've got to go back to the very, very beginning.
00:26:04
Speaker
um We've got to start to put clear and clean definitions around what this work means, what it looks like, start to even put together what a diagnostic could look like. And then
Navigating Corporate Diversity Changes
00:26:14
Speaker
work through solutioning um so that when any practitioner who is in given organization is managing issues, they have a framework that they can rely on that will help them through their their path.
00:26:29
Speaker
You know, this is ah this is my question. This is nothing that anyone handed me. um I mean, this is coming off the top. I mean, that seems and incredibly complicated when I think about that overall exercise.
00:26:42
Speaker
Is there any organization, in your opinion, that's doing it well? And I know that's, you know, I mean, do you have one? Yeah, I know Yeah, you know, what I'll say is that it's hard to know because i don't work inside of everybody's organization. I only know what I see um that's, you know, given in the news or through anecdotal stories that employees tell me. But...
00:27:05
Speaker
From an outsider looking in I will say that I like the way that McKinsey is attacking the work. Okay. Because I think that, you know, they so for probably the past 15 years now, McKinsey has done a study called Delivering on Diversity, and it is comprehensive.
00:27:21
Speaker
It looks at 1,000 organizations every year and really goes deep into every facet of the way their organization is run from all of the ah HR and human capital issues around recruiting and talent management and succession planning and compensation and even looking at the external ways that they market business.
00:27:42
Speaker
to their audiences, um the way that their financial systems are. right It just looks at the diversity of how um every organization is governing itself, even down to the board and and who's on the board and how is the board selected and what are the things that they focus on.
00:28:00
Speaker
And i think that what McKinsey is showing us is that they are disciplined. um They may not get everything right inside, but they are um trying to at least have a level of transparency and honesty around what some of these challenges look like, what some of the opportunities are, and being very thoughtful in the way that they gather that data to tell these stories. Whereas a lot of organizations are performative in their activities.
00:28:27
Speaker
um And that is very clear by Again, the anecdotal stories that you hear from employees on the ground, some of the trauma that they experience, or even um a brand like Target, for example, what they're experiencing right now, where five years ago, Target was um one of those organizations that everyone thought was ah doing exceptional work in DEI because they were very loud on the microphone about their support of multiple communities and they made a concerted effort to put different types of products on their shelf and they, you know, had representation in their employee population.
00:29:06
Speaker
And so when all of the noise started happening in the current atmosphere around dismantling DEI and Target said, we're going to roll back some of our ideas and we're going to pull back our programs and we're going to reimagine what this looks like.
00:29:23
Speaker
I think that the public scrutiny that we see and and people... boycotting target and getting very upset i think it's because target was so vocal in the opposite way that it alarmed folks and it really hurt it it almost felt like a personal attack versus other organizations you know someone asked me recently well why aren't people upset with walmart or amazon they don't have a robust diversity strategy and i said because they never did That's the difference. They didn't they they never pretended to um make this a part of their their ethos or or how they govern themselves. And so there was nothing to get upset about.
00:30:04
Speaker
But when you go so drastic from one place to another, that's the thing that infuriates people. So organizations have to be very careful in this moment um and very thoughtful about deciding are you going to stay the course? If you made some big proclamation five years ago, are you going to stay the course? And if so, you might get some heat, but you might need to determine if you're willing to withstand some of those external pressures.
00:30:33
Speaker
And if you're not, then that's fine too. But make sure you can explain why not, because there are going to be people asking a lot of questions.
Advice for Young Professionals
00:30:41
Speaker
And if you they don't feel good about your answers, you might be risking your brand, your reputation, or your bottom line, which is what we see happening at Target right now.
00:30:51
Speaker
You know, my concern, and I don't know if I should use a C word, are those professionals that are coming into corporate. And what I mean by that, they've been exposed and the lens in which they, i guess, would look at corporate would be different, especially if I'm a diverse candidate entering corporate.
00:31:07
Speaker
And there are all these programs out there and all these organizations that had figureheads, chief diversity officers, and there was an intense focus on diversity, equity, inclusion. And now they enter corporate and there's nothing.
00:31:21
Speaker
I mean, what do you say to someone like that that's entering and had that exposure and what should they be looking for? It's such a good question. I think there's two things that come to mind right away. The first is that you have to focus on your craft.
00:31:36
Speaker
become an expert at whatever you are trying to do. um When I was at the National Football League, I had a mentor inside of the organization. he was a very seasoned senior executive.
00:31:49
Speaker
And he's still my mentor to this day, as a matter of fact. And I remember asking him, I said, Neil, what will it take to be successful in my career? And he said, figure out something to do that the company is not doing, that the company needs to do, and then figure out how to do that thing.
00:32:09
Speaker
so And so to me, it was a riddle. But the more and more I thought about it, and and as I saw us struggling with some diversity issues and it started to impact our bottom line, I realized the company needs to be doing diversity work and they're not doing it well. And maybe I need to learn how to go do this.
00:32:29
Speaker
And that's literally what prompted me to go deep into the diversity space when Neil presented that riddle to me. And it literally changed the trajectory of my entire career. So I would encourage some of these students that are coming out of school, don't focus on your your.
00:32:47
Speaker
race, don't focus on your gender, don't focus on your sexual orientation, focus on your craft, be an expert at whatever you're doing, do it super good, become invaluable so that the company needs that skill that you bring to the table because you've differentiated yourself from the pack.
00:33:05
Speaker
And then you won't over fixate on things that you can't control, like your race and gender. um I would also say Think about entrepreneurship.
00:33:18
Speaker
Like a lot of us were taught that we have to have a job out of college because that's just what our parents told us. I mean, my dad told me, you're going to be a teacher. And because he was a teacher and he would tell me that because it was a good path for him as a black man who grew up in the 60s, who was being forced to go to the war and his only way out was to be in school.
00:33:45
Speaker
And so that's literally why he got a master's degree, got his PhD, and stayed in academia, because it was his only way not to fight in a war that he believed he would not come out of.
00:33:56
Speaker
And a lot of his friends ended up dying in the war. and And so he thought that education was the only way out of death. And so that was, you know, when he was giving me that advice, it wasn't because he necessarily wanted me to be a cookie cutter of him, but he wanted me to have some sense of stability and a path in my life where I would be unharmed.
00:34:20
Speaker
And so he said, you're going to be a teacher. You're going to get your summers off. I get paid in the summer and I don't even go to work. And he like made it like this awesome thing. um And, you know, I never became ah a school teacher in the way that he was. I am a teacher now. um I guess that's a full circle coming around. But I would just say um entrepreneurship is something that kids should not be afraid of. A lot of these young people have innovative ideas.
00:34:49
Speaker
They know how to start companies. You look at someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who, was playing on his computer as a student at Harvard and then was like, i'm not going to finish this Harvard thing. And then he created Facebook and Meta and literally changed the world in many ways.
00:35:07
Speaker
And um I think that a lot of people have that same energy and same ingenuity, but we are not... um encouraged to go down that path because of fear that our parents have that, you know, it's unstable.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I think my advice to students is this world is unstable. Like there's, if you're seeking stability, good luck with that. There's no such thing as that in this life. Every single day that we wake up, we have no idea what will come.
00:35:39
Speaker
You know, like we hope for the best and and pray that um things turn out positively. But there's always a monkey wrench.
Conclusion and Future of Work
00:35:46
Speaker
There's always something that will occur that you didn't bet on or even prepare for. And so life is really about how do you take these moments of instability and um hone deep into the principles that you were raised with and taught with about perseverance and about building community and, um you know,
00:36:07
Speaker
driving through love and and all of these these things that we want. How do we hold true to those principles in these moments that feel very uncertain? So my last question is probably more in line with strategy and HR and how hard it is now and going through that transformational exercise.
00:36:28
Speaker
And given what you know and what they're up against, is there anything that they can do differently? I know we talked about training. I know we talked about you know learning and and trying to understand people and human beings in a different way.
00:36:41
Speaker
But what is that that one or two or three things that they should be doing that they have to do in order to move forward in a successful way? Well, the first thing is very simple. Push back.
00:36:53
Speaker
I mean, my generation, we just didn't push back. Like we knew that things that were being discussed in the workplace around changing systems or the way you manage people and talent, we knew that things didn't sound like they made a lot of sense, but we just went along to get along.
00:37:12
Speaker
And so um I think pushing back if you don't agree with an idea is OK. I think There is an artful way to express your um dissenting opinion without being offensive.
00:37:28
Speaker
So I'm not saying that you should be willing to start a fight. That's certainly not what I'm suggesting. But I am suggesting that you use your voice and be courageous when you see things that are happening that don't make a lot of sense to you and have the courage to say why and to stand true to your principles.
00:37:46
Speaker
um i also think that this generation has to learn how to focus. And what I mean by that, there's an old Chinese proverb that says, um if you chase two rabbits at the same time, you'll catch none.
00:38:01
Speaker
because they're fast and they're furious and they're all over the place and you don't know what to focus on. And it's like, oh my God, there goes that. And so like, you're trying to capture this thing, but because you're not disciplined and focused, they both get away.
00:38:15
Speaker
So I think that in this age and time where there's social media and a lot of information coming at them and a lot of different, you know, news stories and, and,
00:38:27
Speaker
um Just things to think about. I think that this generation, it's very easy for them to become confused and lose focus on what they should be working on or what they should concentrate on.
00:38:41
Speaker
And i I hate to see it happen because... These are smart people that have the ability to really do so many great things, but because they're unfocused and undisciplined, nothing gets accomplished.
00:38:54
Speaker
So i I think that that would be my second piece of advice is don't try and catch two rabbits at the same time. Laser focus on which one you're going after. If the other one gets away, like wish him well, because you'll come back for him another day.
00:39:07
Speaker
But go get that one rabbit and keep pushing. You know, it's been an absolute pleasure. I mean, ah I've had the privilege of talking to some smart people and you are absolutely at the top the list. Oh, thank you. me So I thank you for your time. I know you're a busy woman. So we really do appreciate you.
00:39:27
Speaker
And you asked me some great questions. So I always love a good conversation and dialogue. And I appreciate you back the same way. Awesome. You know what I learned today? I learned that I don't know where we're headed.
00:39:38
Speaker
I know that human beings are truly very special and important. And I know corporate will figure it out because they have to. I think that there's a good balance between, you know, working remote versus being, you know, back full time. It just is what it is. And I think as we continue to evolve, ah we'll figure it out together.
00:40:00
Speaker
And I think that that togetherness is what is required. So just looking forward to our next conversation on balancing the future. Until then, enjoy your time.