Why Care? #12: Christian Hug - Making Global DEI Locally Relevant
“Discussions are not just about the [employee] population who we have, it’s about their network, their families members, their friends. … It’s not just about the demographics we replicate, it’s about everybody else, because we are all diverse ultimately.”
In this episode I talk with Christian Hug, the Vice President of LifeWorks & Inclusion at Discovery, the company behind the popular television channels: Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Science Channel and TLC. Christian reflects with me on the journey that lead him to his role, including the passion for travel and diversity passed down to him from his parents.
After opening the episode with our discussion about Christian’s remarkable journey in his career, we move on to discussing the changes Christian has seen in the approaches companies have had towards DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) strategies over his 20+ years’ experience in the field. This includes the rise of employee networks, such as women’s networks or LGBTQ+ networks, and the spark that the recent Black Lives Matter movement has endowed to the DEI sector causing a real growth in engagement.
We move on to discussing how Discovery wants its employees to “bring [their] whole self to work”. To do so, they use a Multicultural Alliance (MCA) Monday to bring conversations about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion into their employees’ working week, and we look at how this rotates around Discovery’s global regional groups to ensure it is not dominated by the US division.
Christian then expands on this topic, explaining how different regions and countries have different concerns, for example the UK has a greater focus on social mobility compared to the US and there are large conversations around skin tone in India. This means different approaches must be taken to tailor the discussions to engage regional employee bases. He expands on this further by discussing how some topics may have different stigma (or even legality) in different countries, such as LGBTQ+ issues, and how this must be considered whilst also not silencing the discussions.
Ultimately, this conversation develops into how to best manage a global DEI strategy for a multi-national company. Christian suggests that companies must have global principles on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that are then interpreted and implemented at the local level for goals and activities.
We then finish the conversation with Christian leaving us his advice on how to find employees with the passions necessary for DEI, and how to nurture these employees into change leaders.
Links
For more from Christian Hug visit: www.christian-hug.net/, or find him at LinkedIn at: www.linkedin.com/in/christian-hug-2b19b61/
Or for more from Discovery visit: https://corporate.discovery.com/
Find MyGWork, the LGBTQ+ professional group Christian mentions at www.mygwork.com
Transcript
Christian Hug 00:00
The gender discussion in Russia is for sure a very different one to say the UK, Italy, Spain, or Latin America. And often we refer to Asia pack as one region. When you look at the countries we're operating within, even a country in and of itself, as I mentioned, India, they're so diverse and within them so it's just fascinating, you need to give empowerment and accountability to a local level, and then follow through.
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:29
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo Business psychologist, coach, speaker, and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organisational growth and success through inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organisations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organisation that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society by sharing life experiences and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organizations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier, and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Hello, and welcome to Episode 12 of my Why Care Podcast. How do you create local relevance when building a global inclusion strategy? What do you need to be mindful of when designing training that's going to be rolled out across the world? And how do you achieve leadership accountability in each country? In this episode, I speak to Christian Hug, Vice President of Life Works and Inclusion at Discovery Communications. He has an incredible 17 and a half years at the company driving the Diversity Equity and Inclusion strategy forward. He has an MA in human resources management, and he's a business coach and an intercultural trainer, bringing with him the personal experience of living and working across cultures and regions. We talk about the pitfalls of applying a one-size-fits-all to DEI within a global company and Christian offers insight into how Discovery has worked hard to ensure the DEI work has relevance in each country. Christian also shares how best to gain leadership, allyship, and advocacy. He speaks with passion about his work and is a true model for inclusive leadership. Enjoy.
Christian, welcome to the Why Care Podcast show. I'm so excited. I'm really excited to have you here. It's a pleasure to see you again.
Christian Hug 03:03
Likewise, Nadia, thanks for having me.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:05
Tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you get into working in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion, everyone's got a journey and a story to share with regard to this. So what's yours?
Christian Hug 03:18
So the very short version is that I am at Discovery, and I am in year 17, which I had never anticipated. [Nadia: Congratulations.] Thank you. I've got different careers, I would say at Discovery. So partway in or halfway in almost as an HR generalist or HR practitioner, I took a sabbatical, took a break and I had started working in the UK, I moved to Germany, and had an EMEA pan-regional role. Through lots of re-organisations, and different changes in the business, I just needed some time off, I needed a break, and I had moved my life from one country to the next. Anyway, I came back, and I was offered a role to look after the space of health well-being, and inclusion, which at Discovery is sort of a separate function in and of itself. It's a specialist function like learning and development, or compensation and benefits with a pure focus being on the employee, their physical and mental wellbeing being one side, and really creating a culture of inclusion.
Not so much the diversity angle where you say, in two years’ time I want to increase my diversity population by X percent or something like that, what we're seeing lots in the media, it was really sort of coming from within mirroring the culture that already had been well established in the US where our mother company was located in DC at the time and just really bring that over to Europe and to an international setting. We set up resource groups where a lot of the engagement and initiatives are coming from but also starting with raising awareness. That's where it usually begins. It's kind of bringing in speakers having relationships with external bodies where you can bring in expert knowledge, talks to senior leaders about X, Y&Z that you're seeing, and then really creating that sort of lively culture of inclusion where we've been benefiting for many years from the US. It was my role to kind of mirror and do it differently and I customised for the international population.
Nadia Nagamootoo 05:24
Why was that important to you? What's your passion and desire to make the EMEA area region more inclusive?
Christian Hug 05:33
I'd have to go back probably to sort of my family in a way. And what I have been experiencing from a very early age is that my family has always been very accommodating towards people from different countries. My parents, even before I was born, had people from Turkey living with them in the same house, people from Spain and people from Italy, and this was in the 50s and 60s after the war. So my parents have always been very open, and very accommodating. My mom isn't really from the region where I grew up, so she was always a bit of an outsider to the rural space, maybe that may have been the linchpin. So that said, I have actually sort of learned to translate what certain things mean, I've always found myself really curious, listening to the differences that other cultures had, I've got two Italian uncles, as well. And so, with that, I love the differences and I love sort of when I studied English, and I visited the UK when travelling, I found it fascinating to sort of see the differences and then reflect on what that means for me. I guess I was trying to make sense of the world for myself, where I had come from, what this means, and how you sort of get by in life by learning about different systems and society as a whole.
And I love that, and I loved learning more about that. One of my most mind-blowing experiences was when privately I travelled to India, and I absolutely loved it. The minute I stepped off the plane, I had the smell of the spices, and it's beautiful, I never thought I'd like it that much. I have another experience I once or what part of the world when I was living here, where I wouldn't naturally go to and so I looked at the map, this was around 2005. Actually, I thought, oh, Romania, so I travelled to Romania, I hadn't been before, I didn't speak the language, I was just curious, as you can probably get a sense, I love different cultures, I love different experiences, and seeing how people live and traditions, etc., so being able to get fully entrenched in that sort of space, and get paid for it is wonderful.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:53
Yeah, so tell me, then I'm interested in your work in Discovery. You've been there a while, as you've just mentioned, so what have you noticed that's evolved with regard to diversity and inclusion in Discovery over the years?
Christian Hug 08:07
Yes, we first brought the concept of an LGBT group to the UK, a concept of women's networks, and family forums, really looking at our demographics and seeing what makes sense to begin within the UK, and then the other offices and the larger markets. And to really sort of starting to, when I say mirror the discussion or bring that to Europe, or to the international part of the business, it wasn't so much a copy and paste, the mindset was probably a bit of copy-paste, yet the dialogue and the discussion on the ground were a lot better, how did that resonate, in the evolution of x in the UK, etc. We were mirroring our guiding principles, giving it local relevance and that was kind of just really aligned with our culture.
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:53
I’m curious there, what you've just said about giving it local relevance because in a lot of the workshops when I ran, sometimes there isn't any choice but to use US content because there isn't any UK content, for example, a lot of the discussions are happening in the US and its relevant conversations. But sometimes it can turn UK participants off going even just simply with a US accent, they'd sort of switch off and go, well, it's how can I apply that here? Why are we having these sorts of discussions in the UK? Can’t we use UK content? I can't conjure up UK content, obviously, but how do you do it at Discovery? How do you make it relevant to your region?
Christian Hug 09:34
So we have got employee resource groups and they’re dotted across the different regions, they have co-chairs in different regions. So, for example, taking the Black Lives Matters movement, that really has actually given a lot more focus to the whole discussion, it almost dialed up the seriousness of why we were doing this. We have a Multicultural Alliance that is out of the US, they run events, and we have what we call the MCA, Multicultural Alliance Monday and their talks, that's usually US-led but we also have a UK take over or we have an Asian Pacific takeover. So that MCA Monday becomes a discussion, a dialogue, where actually just this week with Asian heritage month, there was that focus being given towards the Asian community, and actually our Asian Multicultural Alliance. And the UK has done amazing discussions bringing in Steve Lawrence's brother last year for discussion and debate, again, making it locally relevant. Whilst there might be a discussion in the US about systemic racism, in the UK, this might be a little more about mixed race, that's where maybe the translation comes in. And also, in the UK, one talks a lot about social mobility, which is something that's not so common in the US.
So you just got to find those nuggets and the differences and, you know, in some countries I’m thinking outside of the UK now as well when you looked at the multicultural lines in the Asia Pacific and what the definition of their work is. It stretches when you start with India, actually, where they're talking about the tone of skin or color of skin, it is quite relevant because the North is a lot more fair-skinned in India than the south. And there are so many ethnicities in India which is like, in and of itself incredible. It's fascinating. So, I think it's just giving focus to the different continents and regions where we are and then listening in on those stories. And for example, in some countries, when I think of Asia, now, we actually have the topic of LGBT wrapped in the multicultural discussion as well, because it so makes sense for us. Now, it may well in the future be a different discussion that we spin off the LGBT focus. That's also evolutionary how these dialogues and discussions grow. In Singapore, for example, you do not speak about LGBT.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:01
I was thinking that it was surely not necessarily within their culture, something that is openly and overtly discussed. I'm curious then, is that something that we then as diversity inclusion experts, or specialists need to acknowledge and accept, that culturally, there are people no doubt Singaporean, or in the APAC region, who identify with being in the LGBTQ plus community, but because of their culture, they will cover and they won't be open about it, and that we have to accept it. Because very much in the UK, the stance is actually covering is harmful, it's not good for your mental health, we want everyone to feel like they can belong, and be their true selves. And that's ultimately what diversity and inclusion stand for. So how do you then adapt when the national culture or the regional culture doesn't allow people to be open about who they are?
Christian Hug 13:00
The beauty again, when you work across regions, you can pick speakers and activities from another location. For example, Asia Pacific, for us at Discovery also encompasses Australia, India, Japan, and Taiwan, these countries are very open to the LGBT discussion, they are very open countries. So, what we would do is we would host an event and speakers might be attending and be overtly speaking about those topics and they are located in another country, and then it's okay. And we make sure also, we're posting internal discussions and events on all the different pages, intranet pages, or workplace pages, as we call them. It's like Facebook’s internal one, so that is absolutely critical that even in places where certain dialogues and discussions aren't being had, the employees know that there is solidarity and they know that our culture is far more embracing of, say, the LGBT or a certain religion than what may be the case from a sort of a national viewpoint.
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:13
This is the challenge I find with global organisations where you've got national culture or local cultures interacting with the organisational culture. So, what I'm hearing you say there is that we want people to know everyone who works for Discovery, it doesn't matter where they work in the world, that at Discovery, we embrace difference and they can be who they are. That might be misaligned, then or not necessarily exactly the same as their local culture and where they were brought up, and their lived experience of whether they'll be accepted for who they are in their country. Is that right?
Christian Hug 14:51
Yeah, you've just paraphrased our mission statement actually, in that case. Bringing your whole self to work is what we want. We want people to bring their whole selves to work and feel comfortable. I mean, when you think about Discovery as an organisation, we are telling diverse stories on TLC and on HGTV on the content that we're putting out there. And it really starts from within, it starts from us as human beings on a simple human level, that may be human rights that may not be tolerated or accepted in the same way, we in the Western mindset may think that they need to be embraced. And we absolutely make sure that you know, take Russia or Brazil as an example, some countries sadly had backlashes on certain topics. Within Europe, Poland, and Hungary, we have a large presence and population-based in Poland, we do panel discussions, and I'll pick the LGBT space to show solidarity with our employees, your country's culture, or the country's current situation might be in dire straits when it comes to the LGBT topic.
However, within discovery, you may not feel comfortable being open and out, I get it right or we get it. This is not just about the 8 or 10 hours of the day that you're at work when you go out and leave and if they're facing anything that is off against our ethics and our values, there are clear processes in place for them to really also go back and get that protection internally. Things like transgender guidelines, we have our transgender policy, supporting the trans community. Now, it may be a very small population that actually is going through gender reassignment, what things like these and discussions do, it's not just about the population, who we have, it is also about their network, their family members, and their brands, right? Doing the right thing in the space of gender diversity and in the space of caring responsibilities, if we kind of coordinate against the scope, I may not have kids, but the fact that the company is looking well after families makes me feel proud working at Discovery. That whole inclusion discussion, I think that's also what we always sort of refer to, it's not just about the demographics that we replicate, it's about everybody else, because we all are diverse, ultimately.
Nadia Nagamootoo 17:21
I'm curious then, as a global organisation, you have teams working globally, across different geographic regions. So, what then are the challenges that you see working cross-culturally, you know, do you have examples of when differences meet culturally and how that can be a challenge?
Christian Hug 17:39
What would be a piece of advice may be to others is that it's great to set a strategic direction and to have a philosophy or some principles in place that you can really hang your activities on and then I feel that’s what is really important. And I think we've started doing this at Discovery, more so last year, since the Black Life Matters movement. To really set that strong global direction with five mosaic workstreams is what we call them, they're very business-oriented objectives and work streams in that space, and then there is a push towards them being interpreted on a very local level because the gender discussion in Russia is for sure a very different one to say the UK, Italy, Spain, Latin America, and often we refer to Asia pack as one region. When you look at the countries we're operating within, even a country in and of itself, as I mentioned, India, they're so diverse within them.
So, it's just fascinating, you need to give empowerment and accountability to a local level and then follow through making sure that local definition exists, local activities exist and people are being held accountable towards those locally set goals, whatever they may be. You can use synergies then on a pan-regional level etc but ultimately, you set the direction and then you push the efforts to a local level and get some red tape around it or provide some rigour and form of what we have a steering committee, where you just highlight the importance so that things don't fall off the wagon.
Nadia Nagamootoo 19:25
If you got an example of how in one country, they've made it more relevant to them in a certain way compared to the US or another country.
Christian Hug 19:35
Let's start with one workstream that I was actively involved in, one of the five, I can name them if that's of help. We've got unconscious bias and making sure that the training is mandatory. So, everybody learns about their own biases at number one, and number two is looking at supplier diversity, which means just really looking at where we give most of our money. Who do we give most of our money to and do they actually mirror and match our values? That's not to say that we would pull contracts immediately, I think the approach would be more to go into some sort of dialogue and say, what is important to us is X and Y. The representation of that comes across as x, how can we help you, it would be more that sort of dialogue approach that we would probably be seeking on an off-screen talent. So, content diversity, we call it social good, and then recruitment and development. So, some are externally focused, and some are product focused that are internally focused if that makes sense. There's one example I can give you and that's unconscious bias, we roll out unconscious bias training globally to the entire population. And so, starting with a training or basic training, for lack of better words that we had in three sections, focusing on understanding bias, respect, integrity, and allyship, is what we could have rolled out as one product for our global population which is around 10,000 people.
What we decided we were going to do though is to take a look at how these examples are going to translate in the different markets. So, we ended up engaging with human resources of people in culture, as it's called in Discovery, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Japan, in Singapore, in Taiwan, in Korea, in India, in Russia, and so on across really the larger offices. So we ended up with about 30 nuanced unconscious bias training, they all were recorded in the local language rather than buying an off-the-peg product that we roll out and say, well look, here's subtitles, this may be in Spanish and French, and your native tongue, we spend an enormous amount of time with the person recording the training, to say so which examples in these instances are more culturally appropriate? Do we use a gender example? Do we use an ethnicity-related sample? Is it then going to be something about mixed race? Is there stuff about calling people in or out when certain discussions happen and really making it culturally acceptable for maybe a lack of better words?
Nadia Nagamootoo 22:22
Essentially, I suppose what you're saying is that you're tailoring it so that it resonates with the intended audience in a better way and so therefore they can use it and apply it more in their own setting. So, you're making it easier for them to apply, basically.
Christian Hug 22:39
Exactly. This is the time when you can really get people hooked on the diversity and inclusion discussion and it starts with one's own awareness. If you fail to make that effortless, then I think it's a lot harder to gauge people's interests or garner people's interest in sort of furthering the conversation. So, we wanted to have people make a connection to the topic and their own experiences and to their own behaviours because it's not about clicking online through online training. It's really about the behavioural shift and what it does, obviously.
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:18
I'm interested in this particularly because you're talking about unconscious bias training and how to make sustainable change because a lot of the pushback on unconscious bias training is that it highlights that people are biased but it doesn't then help or support them in actually doing anything with it. It is not sustainable change, it's a one-off, sometimes 90-minute session, then what do people do with it and how do they apply it? So, do you think that tailoring it to each local region and making it more specific so that they can apply? Do you feel that the impact has been enhanced? And have you measured it in some way? Do you know the benefits of that training?
Christian Hug 23:56
We haven't measured it yet. We will measure it though, again, through the global employee surveys that we do repeatedly. So, it's too new to say that to be honest, what we have though, is engaged senior management and we've had workshops with leadership teams, to really deepen the conversation. We're now also following up with discussions by function as well as by geography and it's really about airing their conversation and giving that conversation space and room, and showing that it is important. This is not something that you check the box of inclusion and something that when you're hooked as an ally, that's ongoing, right? You're either fascinated by it or you stand by a certain group. And we've always said, for example, the women's network isn't doing the panel discussion just for women to learn more about how can I have a better career or have different self-esteem or hear different stories to then relate to and what am I going to do, it's actually also about men listening in on the experience of women in the workplace. And it’s the same for any other groups that we have. If you just cater to men or women, you may not cater to a lesbian woman, right? Or if you have a person of different ethnicity, you might just be covering the ethnicity piece, but not maybe the fact that we're talking about women. So, I think what's really interesting is that we're combining this more and more in the efforts that we're making. We've had the Family Forum, and we also talk about rainbow families, and the Modern Family, it is really making sure that we're joining the dots. It's not in silos because it's really about personal enrichment by listening to the different stories that are being shared, and the different needs that are out there. I think we can all benefit, grow and make better decisions ultimately about ourselves.
Nadia Nagamootoo 26:20
Yeah, I love that there are different communities, talking, sharing, and wanting to better understand each other because that's some of the risks with ERG. Sometimes it can just be while you're in this box but people do, obviously, multiple diverse characteristics would align themselves but intersectionality is so key. And I think this also makes it massively complex, this area of diversity and inclusion that we're trying to navigate because it's so individual, everyone's got an individual life experience. You know, just because I'm a first-generation UK-born ethnic minority female, that doesn't mean that another woman with exactly those same characteristics will have the same lived experiences as me or will have the same needs and requirements as me. I think what you overlay in what you're talking about with regards to Discovery is the additional complexity of you're not simply UK based, you're not simply German-based, or you're not simply US based, it is global. That cultural mix, and the heritage and the local nuances at play make it massively challenging, I would have thought to navigate and make sure everyone feels like they belong in Discovery.
Christian Hug 27:35
And you'd be surprised about the creativity, one minute you think, oh, okay, what are we going to do for the x and y event, we have done great stuff last year. I haven't heard of any of the groups that fought with an idea, the next minute, you may or may not have been in touch with them, they post the most amazing campaign on our intranet page, and you think, oh, this is great, well, let's make this bigger and let's share this. We have local employee resource group sites because we want people to post stuff in a local language that is totally acceptable and then comment on it. Yet, we also have respective global pages. So, we would have a Global Women's Network page, we have a global pride page, we have a global disability, that's actually the only virtual one that we have that is global. It's called ABLE-D a group for people with special needs seen and unseen disabilities, and really what people are doing locally in their markets. I sometimes tweet onto the global page because it deserves to be seen by a broader audience or we encourage them straightaway to share it outside. I think this is all about learning, it's all about enriching yourself, and broadening your mind, and it's so in tune with Discovery's overall mission and value statements.
So, I think we've been lucky to be in the early days when I set up the function and learning. Like I said earlier, from the US, now I think, internationally, that we got the cart rolling, it's so much multifaceted. I'd always like to say that the reason I'm still doing this job all these years is that there is so much learning still, it's fascinating to hear about the many different cultures and their lived experiences, etc. And it actually makes you very humble when you listen to some of our people, what they have experienced themselves or speakers that we bring in, it also then brings home we're living in one world and that this is just one world. There are so many different experiences and then you can look back and think have I been privileged? Yes, in many ways and stages in my life, I have been extremely privileged. How can I use that privilege to better other people in the self-dialogue that I'm having?
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:55
I'm interested because you mentioned ally ship before as well. And you just alluded to it, how can I use that privilege that I have? How do you encourage and embed that mindset within leaders, within Discovery, and across regions?
Christian Hug 30:13
I would say that most of our leaders and senior leaders have lived and worked in other countries, so they would have firsthand experienced by themselves what it's like, I think it's very hard to teach something, and get that spark going, when it's not there. That's what my observation would be, you either have a passion, it's there and you build on it. And you need to find that nugget of what's the person's personal related story to the topic and when you can sort of unravel that, you can use that leader as a senior sponsor, as an ally, or as a storyteller. And when you have several of them, you may not have everyone that leaps at the topic in a similar fashion, some people might just want to hold their personal stories back, and they might not just be so extroverted and that's to be respected.
On the whole, I would say, we've been extremely lucky that the leaders get the topic intellectually, you don't have to kind of hammer it in, you just need to provide a bit of guidance as to where they could get engaged and how they can get engaged. The fact that we have now cascaded our diversity and inclusion goals, objectives, and definitions to a local level puts them fully in the driving seat. So that's wonderful, they can shave their own, they don't have to take what's coming down the corporate chain, it's now on you as a leader, we're all in this, you've got a role modeling responsibility. And what we're doing is all reasonably new, right? I can't give you lots of experiences and success stories yet because as I said, since the Black Life Matters movement, we've really started to dial up this whole model.
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:00
What was it about Black Lives Matter that you think brought this to the fore?
Christian Hug 32:05
Our senior leaders in the US and internationally, openly shared that as a media business, there is a responsibility that we have in the storytelling that we do but also with the power that the media has, we need to be visible in the driving seat by taking this topic seriously. We need to help society and the culture, by educating in everything that we do and by our products, the stories need to also have a lot more focus on that internally, not just do it because it's the right thing to do, do it because this actually is the signature of our culture. And that's really so wonderful. You don't have to tell any of our leaders why it's good for business, they get it, and some have different views about it. And you would take those leaders, that's my approach, typically, you take those that actually totally get it, you showcase that and the others will come. You're not going to have out of 10 leaders, you might have three or four that really are getting it, they're fired up, they have a personal connection, use them, build them up, give them the platform to shine, the ones that are in limbo that get it, they would want to do it, but for some reason haven't yet, they will with the right personal conviction, they will also do it.
And then you'll have probably a very small number of them left. Now either there is corporate protocol and they'll have to come along and follow, not the best way. Ideally though because they're all intellectual people that we have, they will get that extra notch and get their calling. And I think they may not know what they don't know at that stage when they embark on it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:50
There's a lot of that in diversity and inclusion, you don't know what you don't know until you start this journey, and it applies to all of us. I'm learning every single day as I have conversations with people like yourself, read books, listening to podcasts, and every day I get this small aha moment, or sometimes a very large aha moment where I just didn't realise. And I think that that's the being comfortable with discomfort, with me recognising you know, 40 years into my life, that I didn't know something and probably, I would have acted in a way that may have excluded someone in the past. But now I recognise that and so I'm sitting with a level of discomfort, I am suddenly realising and thinking okay, but now I can do something with that information and that knowledge.
Christian Hug 34:35
Yeah, exactly. I think it's far worse not to do anything, being shell shocked, thinking I might be doing something wrong, going out there and starting the conversation with curiosity and with good intent. I think people will be a lot more forgiving should you put your foot into something that you weren't intended to do. Even though I think the weariness helps in how you're phrasing things when you're not sure and people won't be forgiving for sure. That's been my experience when I've sort of gone out and spoken to communities that I have not been so familiar with. And I walked away from talking to the trans community last year, and really wanting to understand what they're going through trans men and trans women. It's been all inspiring, just being able to, again, what I was saying earlier, being able to do this for a living, get paid for it as well, totally enriched by it. It's just wonderful. And you build on it, the next time you speak to someone in the trans community, you might actually be asking a lot more specific questions. And then empathy, I think empathy is so important, by just acknowledging what people may have gone through.
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:48
You've mentioned that Discovery has been on a huge journey just this past year, let alone everything, all the other work before then, but in particular, this last year. So what have you uncovered, that still needs work? What's the biggest challenge that you're seeing that still needs addressing and that still needs to work?
Christian Hug 36:07
On this topic where we can get better at, it is data, we've been doing so much for so long, over a decade now, and we've been extremely privileged, not needing to turn around and give finite metrics to justify the money about where it's being spent and the impact it does because it is very vital. And it's very difficult to do that. I think we want to really be storytellers and make an impact. That's where we've gotten to, from this is good for business, we know that this is good for our culture, we know that we want to celebrate our successes and go out there and be bold about celebrating. And that's what we haven't been able to do in the past simply because we haven't had the data.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:54
I look forward to hearing very much about the impact that you're having because no doubt, it's incredible the extent of work that you're doing, the localization, and the structure that you've put in place to make it work globally and to make it work locally. I'm very much keen to hear when you get that data in place what you learn. So thank you so much, Christian, I absolutely love speaking to you. I can't believe we've already come to the end. Yeah, it's gone so quickly. Tell me if those people are interested in learning more about yourself and your work, how can they get a hold of you?
Christian Hug 37:27
Sure. For a start, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm probably not the best respondent to my LinkedIn page admittedly. I would say, I have a website privately with my coaching practice, which is Christian-Hug, my surname.net. If you drop me an email on that, it could be totally discovery related podcast related, I'm happy to answer it, although it goes into my private accounts. Try LinkedIn. My G work is a website that we also are using for our vacancies. It's in the LGBT space. It's a partner that we have been working very closely with. We're actually ILGBT colleagues who are giving mentoring opportunities to the LGBT community and potential new talent and employees can also find out what's the LGBT culture like, you'll find me registered there as well. Be persistent, if you want to get a hold of me is what I'd say and for sure, I'll get back to you on day another.
Nadia Nagamootoo 38:26
Yeah, brilliant. Well, everything that Christian and I spoke about today, again, is going to be on the show notes page, which is going to be on the Avenir consulting services.com website, as usual under podcasts. So, Christian, I've learned so much from speaking to you today. Thank you absolutely wish you all the best with all of the work that you're going to continue doing at Discovery.
That concludes episode 12 of the Why care podcast. What a brilliant conversation. Christian’s energy for diversity, equity, and inclusion is infectious, and it's so clear he truly loves, what he does some amazing insights for global organisations on how to roll out DEI at a local level. Do let Christians and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram with the handle Nadia Nagamootoo and at Avenir consulting services. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast or leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening to and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks as always, to Mauro Kenji for editing this podcast and Jon Rice for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
