Why Care? #19: Pauline Miller - DEI From The Inside
“[Working in the DEI field] I learnt lots of things and things we should always remember – One: we don’t know everything. One: We can’t resolve everything on our own...But most importantly, I learnt about myself.”
In Episode 19 of the ‘Why Care?’ podcast, I am joined by Pauline Miller, Chief Equity Officer, EMEA for dentsu, where Pauline is responsible for shaping and leading its DEI strategy and execution. We discuss the challenges of being an internal DEI practitioner, how to engage the C-suite and board of organisations, and the importance of celebrating the short-term wins.
Pauline shared that she has been interested in a career in HR since she was a teenager, but it was later in her career when she worked with employee networks in the US that captivated her to forge a career in the sector. We then discuss learning moments and Pauline shares her most impactful one, which is when she found herself going from accepting a meeting from a group about empowering girls, to sitting in a refugee camp in Ethiopia working with them in the short span of 4 months. The experience was formative in developing a passion for empowerment and a strong sense of self-confidence.
These lived experiences are important for informing how we practice as DEI professionals, but Pauline urges that you must account for and utilise the lived experiences of others around you and how they may differ from your own in order to successfully practice DEI.
DEI is often about the long-term goals of how we want the future of organisations to look in terms of inclusion, but these goals can take a long time to manifest. Pauline is a big believer in celebrating the short-term wins, both to inspire the organisation and keep morale high, but also to demonstrate to stakeholders the benefits of DEI strategy to an organisation.
We wrap up the conversation by discussing what is important for both effective DEI strategy and being an effective DEI practitioner, such as striving for continuous learning, joint accountability so everyone recognises the part they play, and pushing for DEI to remain a strategic imperative by organisations.
Links
For more from Pauline, you can find her on LinkedIn at Pauline Miller
For more from dentsu, you can visit their website at: www.dentsu.com
The Promises of Giants by John Amaechi
Dope Black Women podcast show
Mindset by Carol Dweck
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Transcript
Pauline Miller 00:00
I have been challenged by things like the gender pay gap, the number is wrong. No, it's not, I'm telling you the number is wrong because it needs to do this, this, and this, and instead of focusing on the number, we should explain why there's a gap. I'm like, Okay, let me just make this statement make it very clear. The gender pay gap is not wrong. It is correct as per the government's reporting guidelines. Therefore, if you focus on explaining the gap, you look like you're focusing on excuses, as opposed to focusing on what people will actually see when they click on the Government portal, which is just our numbers.
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:40
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker, and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organizational 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 organizations 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 organization 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 19 of my Why Care Podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. In this episode, I speak to the truly awesome and inspiring Pauline Miller.
Pauline is the Chief equity officer in EMEA for Dentsu and is responsible for shaping and leading its DEI strategy and execution. Pauline has had roles in many parts of the financial services industry. In her last role at Lloyds of London, Pauline held the position of Head of culture with responsibilities spanning organizational culture, diversity and inclusion, employee engagement, leadership, and talent development. We talk about the challenges of being a DEI practitioner, how to generate quick wins by engaging with the CEO and board, and the importance of celebrating every step on the journey. Pauline shares the key principles of a DEI practitioner which are key to her success, alongside DEI initiatives that she's put in place which have had a real organizational impact. This is an absolute gem of an episode for DEI practitioners in particular, but also offers shedloads of advice and tips for organizational leaders and what they need to do to set DEI practitioners up for success. Pauline, it is an absolute pleasure to see you today. Thank you so much for joining us on The Why care podcast.
Pauline Miller 03:19
Thank you. I'm really excited about this conversation. I think we could probably talk for ages. But I'm sure the listeners and the viewers will want us to be succinct.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:29
Well, I always start with just learning a little bit more about you because you have an incredible background, so many different sectors, and industries that you've worked in. And of course now at Dentsu previously at Lloyds of London. I just love to hear all about it.
Pauline Miller 03:44
Sure that's really interesting. Actually, everyone has a different story and how they landed. I think mine was probably baked from school because at the age of 14 wanted to work in HR. I had done some work experience at the London Stock Exchange and loved it. I learned how to fold packages, and put them into envelopes. And as I marveled at graduate programs and how you whistle down thousands of people down to finally 10 or so you know, going onto the programme. So it was that interest in people and people in organizations that led me to HR.
Nadia Nagamootoo 04:15
At 14, you had decided actually this is an interest for me.
Pauline Miller 04:20
Yes, at 14. I had slightly few detours along the way, I ended up in IT when I graduated, and I had a couple of kids along the way before I finished university. And then there was this period of time when I worked for an investment bank and I realized that I was moving further and further away from being involved with the people and an opportunity came up for me to go to the US. And whilst I was in the US, I engaged with some of the employee network leaders there and had been actively involved in employee networks in the UK. And I got back thinking that was amazing. I just have to do more of this stuff.
Nadia Nagamootoo 04:59
Specifically, what was amazing about it, and what were they doing differently?
Pauline Miller 05:03
It was the passion. It wasn't so much that the US was doing it differently to the UK. But it was the opportunity to see where the US networks had such a passion around being Black professional in the organization, the connections that they had with some of the universities, Howard University, for example, and they had come over to the UK and I thought I'll get involved in that event as well. I had a great friend working at Barclays at the time who was the D&I manager, and she got me actively engaged in some of the different aspects and I realized that I love this type of work. It really energizes me, at a time when it wasn't so much about my own journey. It wasn't so much about all of the unique differences that I bring to the party. It was about what was engaging and energizing me. And once I understood that I took the opportunity to transition to a different part of the bank, ran, and moved into my first D&I role. And I guess I always think of it as moving around the financial services sector, I left the investment bank, I moved to a wealth management division, I left wealth management and move to a custodial bank. And then I moved into the insurance sector at Lloyds of London. So I did a wonderful tour of financial services. And in coming to my current position at Dentsu, all those roles have grown, so starting out as a D&I manager and moving to a regional head, moving to a global head, and then eventually head of culture at Lloyds and now a member of the executive team at Dentsu, the EMEA team, the chief equity officer reporting to the chief exec for EMEA.
Nadia Nagamootoo 06:43
So inspiring just to hear about the path that you've taken. And I love that you've gone with your feeling of what your passion was where you felt energized and followed it.
Pauline Miller 06:53
It's exactly that. I asked myself the same question every couple of years. Am I enjoying what I'm doing? And is what I'm doing going to get me to where I want to go next? Every single time that's what I'm asking. Those are the two questions, you don't need to ask anything else. And I enjoy the work that I do. I enjoy what we can do, how we can change organizations, and what we can do for the people in those organizations. So if I'm enjoying it, then absolutely, and of course like anyone I want to grow my career and be able to do more things and impact more people and have a real purpose for what I'm doing. And the role at Dentsu now is really about creating that meaningful impact and purpose and progress to be champions for others.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:40
Yeah. Now, you mentioned that initially, it wasn't necessarily about you but very much about what you could offer and those ERGs and the community and the conversations. But what have you gained personally? And the reason I asked that question is that working in the space as a practitioner in diversity, equity, and inclusion, it's almost impossible not to grow as an individual yourself. The self-reflection that's needed, the self-awareness that's needed in order to be an outstanding Diversity Equity Inclusion practitioner is much more than I hadn't necessarily thought it would be when I first started working in this space. Like, every time I'm challenged, every time I'm listening to a different podcast or a different conversation or reading a different book, I'm challenged in terms of my own views, my own perceptions, what I thought was right, or the truth or reality, and what then isn't. So I guess I'm curious as to your own, what have you learned about yourself?
Pauline Miller 08:39
Oh, my gosh. So I learned lots of things and things that we should always remember, one, we don't know everything, and we can't resolve everything on our own. But most importantly, I learned about myself. And there were two pivotal points in my journey that I think really opened me up and really, I would say was the step change for me as a practitioner. But then as a leader in the practitioner world of DEI.
The first one was at State Street, I had been approached to have a chat with an organization, I didn't want to, and they came in and I put lunch on for them. It's the end of the year. And I was like, you know, what can we cherish for Christmas? One, I talked to this group that is interested in just hearing how they can engage with corporates around supporting young teenage girls and being advocates. And so they came in, we had a great couple of hours conversation, I was happy to give the time. And at the end of it, they said oh my gosh, this is just amazing. You have got to join our advisory board. And I'm like, yeah, why not? Sounds easy. And that was let's say around November-December.
And I had a conversation the following year in January and by the best way to put it in April, I was sitting in Dziga in Ethiopia in a refugee camp in their home, that was where I grew my voice and my speech. But actually, it was the moment of being in the airport. So when I arrived at Addis Ababa my flight arrived before the US flight, and I was sitting and waiting for my US colleagues. And at that moment in time, I suddenly got this period of self-doubt. Oh, my gosh, what have I done? What am I doing here in Ethiopia? Who am I? What do I bring to the table? What's my special power, I’m not a movie star, like Ronnie Coleman that was on the plane, I wasn't like a teenage advocate like Rossio, I sat back, and I just thought of all these other people that have done so many more amazing things than I have done, other than to have one great conversation over lunch. And I felt like an imposter. I felt like a fraud. Two or three days later, we were in and talking to the refugees directly, when I suddenly found that inner passion that allowed me to recognize the power that it's not so much about how far off I am at the curve of the corporate ladder. But the experiences that I had as a young teenage mother, a 15-year-old mother, allowed me to be able to be empathetic, to share her feeling, and to really talk about their plight as well.
The second example was much more corporate-driven. It was 2019, I'm at Lloyds of London, and no great surprise because anybody can Google, Bloomberg wrote an expose article about the drunken sexual harassment, lad sort of pub drinking ways, in the Lloyds market. And that moment was what then changed my role in terms of leadership and driving change for the organization. And of course, in quick succession came things like the COVID pandemic, which forced me to step up in the space of driving some of the changes around COVID, and what we were doing for our colleagues there. And then, of course, George Floyd's murder, which, again, as a Black woman, had me stand up and say, hang on, we've got to do this differently. So different points, some of which were opportunities, some me putting my hand up again, hey, I'll get involved in that. Yeah, I’ll be an advisory board member. But critical points along the way, where I've grown and developed and learned to have a really clear voice, to articulate what that need is both from my perspective, to understand the organization's lens, and to better the leaders, and what they're trying to do or to be able to speak up for those that are unable to speak up for themselves.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:46
What I love about what you've just said, is that recognition that as a DEI practitioners, we're coming to the table, of course, with our own perspective, and of course, with our own personal lived experiences and story. And we acknowledge that this is the lens through which we see the world, but also with acknowledging that everyone else, needs to be taken into account and that everyone else has different stories and different experiences. And that as a practitioner, it's about bringing all of those together. And maybe that isn't the hardest thing. But surely one of the most challenging things working as a DEI practitioner, internally, is then to gather all those voices, all those different perspectives, and guide the organization to a place where everyone feels like there's equal opportunity to have their voice heard, listened to, valued and respected. So how do you do that?
Pauline Miller 13:37
I think it's really interesting when we think about the DEI on the inside of an organization. There are different stages that organizations get to when they are hiring or bringing in resources to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some will do it at the side of the desk and it's a shared role, etc, that's a different dialogue to talk along. But if we think about the organizations that want to put this in place, it is either because there is a passionate HRD chief people officer that says, this is where we need to drive and bring that person in, or it may come from the chief exec themself, or it may be much more from a sort of regulatory lens and we really need to make sure that we're covering safety and behaviors and so forth. So different angles bring that role into an organization. My view is don't hire me if you're not sure that you want me, that's how I look at it. It's just not worth the time, the resources, and the investment to bring me in if you're still trying to convince yourself that you need a Chief Equity Officer. And the missing part and the bit that I don't often say is that the reason that I say don't hire me if you're not convinced is because it takes a really long time to move the dial. It can take a long time to get the Exec, the CEO, and the executive team aligned to the fact that we're bringing this role in and you may not win everybody there. When the role comes in, it takes time to assess the organization, and of course, what people want is initiative and activity.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:08
Return for their money quickly.
Pauline Miller 15:11
Absolutely. I will always remember my first D&I role where I was told this is how you do things, Pauline, you get a sponsor, you get a network, and you launch it. I launched so many networks in the space of six months, which was not good. But they want to see activity. And the reality is, is that not all activity will lead to long-term sustainable change. And you have to do the analysis and the diagnostics across the organization and use lots of data points. You cannot write a strategy in the first month of turning up, I feel that you have to be in the organization to really start to understand what that looks like. And what that picks up. So I always talk about the fact that the lens of the inside is about the impact of the organization being embedded, you have to have a clear perspective. But you have to also be able to understand how to do things and really get things done. DEI is part of organizational culture, and you really want to understand what the interplays are between the culture of the organization, how it's felt, and how it impacts those from underrepresented groups.
Nadia Nagamootoo 16:16
As someone who is working then inside an organization, as a DEI or equity officer, or whatever the role title is, how is it best to navigate those pressures around delivery, delivery, delivery? Can you make sure that you set up these groups? Typically what I see as well is that there's the senior person, whether it's a chief exec or someone who has a very clear understanding of what they want. But what they want might not necessarily be the best way forward. They want something quick, they want something now, but as you were just saying, that isn't always what needs to be done first. So how do you navigate that?
Pauline Miller 16:51
There are a couple of things that you would do in any type of role. So you have to have communication. So you have to communicate what the immediate deliverables are. So what are the things that you can do immediately, and signpost what it is that you want to do in the three-month window, the six-month window, etc? So in my first few months of Dentsu, I have focused on listening, reading, getting a sense of what's happening, going in and sitting in because obviously, it's a mid-pandemic, if you like mid-slash coming out at the other end, but there are fewer people in so I need to be in just to sort of sit in and people will come up with Oh, it's great. Thanks. So tell me what do you do? And how does that work? And so the questions that I'm asking, they don't feel like I'm interrogating them. But what I'm doing is trying to understand, to pick up snippets of conversations and comments. So whilst I'm listening, it's really important that I am communicating to my key stakeholders about what I'm hearing along the way. So what are the big statements? What are the big areas of focus? And what are the things that we're going to deliver? So as an example, I have been very clear that we will look to produce a three-year strategy by the first half of next year. But in order to do that, we need to undertake employee listening, we don't listen enough to our colleagues.
And so with that, we can understand that voice of inclusion, we can look then also at the data metrics and things like that. Now, the quick wins are things like considering our engagement survey, how can I help get them over the line with a technical issue around data collection in the engagement survey? How can I refine the diversity reporting scorecards that we have already in place? What do we need to do in terms of furthering our inclusion education, and how do we support the work that we're doing from a pitching perspective? In addition to that, in my current role, there are three chief equity officers for the region, and each one of us reports to our respective Chief Exec. And it was a purposeful move not to have a global chief equity officer in order for us to be closer to our people. And so the piece though, that I also note is ensuring that we are all aware and aligned. And that's another area of sort of a short quick win is making sure that we've been very clear about what our comms looks like from 2020 to now that we're all in the roll. So there are quick wins, identify the quick wins, but recognize that you must signal the journey to the slightly longer wins.
Nadia Nagamootoo 19:35
Yeah because each organization and each industry has its unique challenges, right? So because you've named the Leadenhall market and when you're faced with that sort of deeply embedded structural discrimination, bias, whatever the word is that you want to call it, the same still applies. Surely there's more because when you look, it's really hard not to feel overwhelmed when you've got that level of deeply embedded bias in an industry that is predominantly white male, that I'm not against white men, by the way, it's just the way that the industry is. And therefore, inevitably, there is a certain bias in terms of how people in the minority group, therefore, are treated, and how they experience that particular industry and their organization.
So, as a DEI practitioner, how do you continue feeling motivated, when actually the inclusion, tiny micro-steps forward that you make, or maybe the 10 steps back when you meet someone that just is never going to get it? Like how do you maintain motivation?
Pauline Miller 20:39
I celebrate every small quick win. Every win is a win. And every single step is in the direction of travel, and what is learned behavior, what are biases that have come through from the circles and the privilege that you may have had, or just the environment that you've been in, when you have learned what success looks like, i.e. success when I joined as a graduate in an insurance organization. Perhaps success looks like me being the man and you know, sort of downplaying and making comments towards women because that's what it looks like by the person above. So when you understand that from a cultural perspective, that's possibly how people have been ingrained. And of course, they know it's wrong. Let's be honest, those that are doing it know it's wrong. But you have to start with the quick wins. Now, for me, a quick win might be having a conversation with the CEO of a particular firm, and actually being able to share the story more deeply. Here are the examples. These are the things that we've heard, this is where we got that data from, this is what your data is telling you or etc. So the more that we can take one person on a journey, and a quick win in that instance, is saying, Well, yeah, sure, great, you may not want to do this, but I can also tell you that X Y Zed person and other firms are doing this because there is nothing more that people want other than to beat the competition. So there's always a winning argument.
So I am comfortable. And I like the debate and the challenge. So I like the fact that I can reach into my toolbox. And I can pull out examples from different industries, different companies, different firms within our industry, I can pull on data points, I have been challenged around things like the gender pay gap, that the number is wrong. No, it's not. I'm telling you the number is wrong because it needs to do this, this, and this, and we should instead of focusing on the number, we should explain why there's a gap. And I’m like, Okay, let me just make this statement, make it very clear, the gender pay gap is not wrong, it is correct as per the government's reporting guidelines. Therefore, if you focus on explaining the gap, you look like you are focusing on excuses, as opposed to focusing on what people will actually see when they click on the Government portal, which is just our numbers, they're not going to see any explanation on the Government portal, they are only going to see our numbers. So being really clear as to the why, the follow-up conversation with the same senior exec was, well, in Germany, it looks like this. And I went, Ah, yes, but let's talk about Germany. Because in my toolbox, I have dialogued and engaged with colleagues in Germany in different organizations about the barriers for women in Germany. And so being able to pull on different experiences, and sometimes you may not have them, which means sometimes it's really important that you consider the broader colleagues in our sector so that you are connecting with people that are in different countries that can give you different perspectives. As with D&I practitioners, it's about diversity, so invite diversity into the lens in which you're trying to address.
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:56
Yeah, I love that advice and that tip because it is easy, I imagine getting sucked into the day-to-day challenges that are facing you in your immediate environment. The pressures that have been put on you to show some change or shift and improvement in inclusion culture or in setting up that ERG or whatever it is, that actually you could quite easily get sidetracked and not remember to continue extending your network, continue educating yourself, continue to reach out to those colleagues who have a different experience to better understand how different countries, different parts of the world how they are experiencing different challenges to the ones that we face in the UK or that they're faced in the US can be quite overwhelming because the content is out there and opportunities are out there. Sometimes I feel that we have obviously podcast shows talking about DEI, clearly, we have books, we've got articles, and an untold number of articles online, we could read and read and listen. So how do you choose where to focus your energy?
Pauline Miller 24:58
I do like to continuously read and it varies what I choose to pick up at whatever time. I bought two books last week, I haven't even opened them yet.
Nadia Nagamootoo 25:06
I bought three last week and I haven't touched them. They're sitting on my desk.
Pauline Miller 25:10
So I like to read snippets, I read small chapters and chunks. I read them for different purposes. So I was reading Me and White Supremacy, way before George Floyd was killed. I was reading it because I was dialoguing with a colleague, and a friend over it. When I looked it up, I thought the book is written as a journal, and it's about an ongoing discovery. How can I recommend it to someone else if I haven't tried it myself? So I picked it up and read it more like a journal. And then once I got for a few days, and then I sort of put that one down, then I picked up a different one. And so for me, it's about constant snippets, and that energizes me like they're all over the house, you can imagine we can have these conversations at dinner, anything on the television will come up, sometimes the family is telling me what's there or what I should be looking at, or they saw this and they thought of me. So I think from my perspective, the opportunity to continue to learn is the thing that I am passionate about and I encourage people to do it. You don't however, have to do what I did as a Masters because I was bored or read an entire 300-page book, you can take small learnings. And what becomes really engaging is when you read something, you think about it, reflect on it, and then you have a conversation with someone else.
Nadia Nagamootoo 26:22
It’s the different conversations that you probably would never even think to have, to even raise or bring up that sort of different dialogue. That's probably one of the most rewarding and exciting parts of my job as a DEI practitioner, it is the different conversations I'm now having. I'm learning about different people, and I know that I've still got so much to learn. And for that, it's a sense of, I guess, at times like that overwhelming sense that there's limited time and a huge amount of knowledge that I know that I need to still work on to educate myself, and I'll continue learning. In an organization, you know, you sit back and think how many DEI practitioners are there going to be in one organization in a regular size, anywhere from 1000 to 30,000 people you're talking to a handful, it can be really lonely.
Pauline Miller 27:09
So, the opportunity to continue to grow and learn through educating yourself, for instance, with a podcast, sometimes I just listened to five minutes, 10 minutes of a podcast, and move on. And that's not because I didn't like it. It's that Oh, got that. The other day, I was listening to one that wasn't D&I related. And I was like, Oh, I quite like this, I then ended up buying the book.
Nadia Nagamootoo 27:34
Thinking then back to your Lloyd’s days and before Lloyd's London. What are the initiatives? What are the things that you have put in place, not necessarily the quick wins, but just in general, that you feel they've really shifted the dial when it comes to creating a more inclusive culture?
Pauline Miller 27:51
So let me pick out a couple. So I'll start with State Street because I think there were two really great programs that I led. So one of them was our training around bias. I did a presentation post the programme. And I remember saying to people, Look, this is not a silver spoon, doing this programme will not fix your problems, you have to think more broadly than the training programme itself. But effectively, what we did was we were training our organization, and our middle managers around unconscious bias. And we had done some work with the very top of the house to engage them in supporting the programme. And then we moved it to our middle layer. And I really do mean the middle, so we had executive vice president, Senior Vice President, Vice President, we went for the Assistant vice presidents, the AVP population, the biggest pocket of managers in the organization, and it was sort of the AVP, VP, but that's who we were driving at because they are the ones that are leading the teams. They are the ones that are driving and creating the culture of inclusion. We ran three sessions a day, I feel for the company now when I reflect on it, they did this training for us because some of those sessions, it was a UK-based company, but some were at 6 am, in the morning for them. But we ran them three times a day when we ran them so that we could have global participation and so that people could be on from Germany, and from Australia. And there's somebody from here we wanted that diversity. And we called it great minds don't think alike. So it was a really fun programme. We used WebEx, they had breakout groups, and they did stuff on screen. And that was more than 10 years ago, of course, now we're all used to it. So hey, then it was seen as quite different.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:40
Before last March, it was unheard of to even have a call. I'm rarely on the phone having a chat on the phone. Now if I'm organizing a meeting, it's usually a Zoom meeting.
Pauline Miller 29:50
Zoom or teams. Yeah, we forgot the days of the normal telephone. So, we did that programme, but the reason it was so impactful was that not only were we developing the managers, training the managers, then looking at those managers and their engagement survey scores, to see if there had been any movement. But we also followed up with the community with sort of follow-up nudge-based training and opportunities to continue their learning. So, for example, we did a number of short vignette videos that could be used to show them what bias looks like in an interview, in a team meeting, and different examples of bias at play at work between a manager and a colleague or a manager in a team environment. And we filmed them in our offices, we worked on the scripts together, I remember with the actors and the actresses, it was great. So we did all of that. We also created a community for the managers that went through the programme to share their insights, share their learning, share when they've noticed bias, and how they overcome it. So it became a conversation that was ongoing, post the actual initial 90-minute training session.
Nadia Nagamootoo 31:03
Did you feel that they were engaged when they noticed some bias play out and not recorded what they said on the platform?
Pauline Miller 31:09
Yeah and most of them were sharing, I was in an interview today, and I realized this happened. And I was thinking, and then I remembered, my training doesn't have to be that they're calling out somebody else. This is about sharing their observations, sharing where they've noticed bias, or sharing where they've seen something of interest, all in the name of creating an inclusive culture, long-term. Coupled with that are the processes that you have to deal with yet, of course, you've got to think about where bias plays in. So that was one and that was really about engaging the organization massively, you know, across the organization, across the globe, to impact those managers that really play a direct role in the working environment for our colleagues. The second was at the same organization, I was working with a function to move the dial. So in this instance, it was at State Street, and it was working across the EMEA HR team. Globally, they had set a goal to move the number, the percentage of women in leadership positions by seven percentage points over three years. And what we found was that the EMEA position was lower than the global position, so we were significantly behind in the EMEA region. And what I did was I created a virtual team of people across every function that had a role in the employee lifecycle of our target women, it literally included every function, probably bar payroll. And the point was that what we had done was we did a sort of career watch on the women, the women that we had in the promotion round process, as well as all the vice president women that we had above, so those that we had expected would get to the senior vice president position over the next three years.
Now, we took it extensively from having huge spreadsheets that talked about development opportunities, mentors, etc. And the women were aware that we had identified them as a targeted population, we met every two weeks in that function with close to 15 or so HR representatives across the HR function, and across the region. And we career watched them, this person is mobile, and they have indicated that to us locally, there might be an opportunity that comes up, how might we ensure that they get put into that, this person needs this progression, how can we close that gap together? This role has been questioned as to whether or not is a senior vice president role or not. So I think it was those types of things that we did that really helped us to, I'm going to say elevate what we were doing, how we were doing it, how do we move those women and prepare them for the promotion rounds, including what the promotion round actually looks like. What's going to happen? Let's give them an insight session around what happens when you get put forward for a senior vice president role. So, I think that piece of work really engaged the whole function, to recognize it, they all played a role in supporting the diversity and inclusion goals. And we did progress. We did move the dial. First-year, we got zero promotions. Everybody that was promoted was a man. In the second year, however, because we invested in the pipeline by creating group mentoring sessions that looked at sponsorship opportunities, we targeted managers, the senior leaders. So all of that work started to play through by seeing the promotions in year two, so we did get there.
Nadia Nagamootoo 34:45
Yeah, what I love about that, is a couple of things. Really, I love the term career watch. That's a really important thing for organizations to dedicate the time to understand if you see that there is a leaky pipeline, I think that is what it's usually called. There's something that's happening well, either women or ethnic minority individuals or whatever the minority characteristic, that you're not seeing that diversity somewhere in the organization, typically at the top, you dedicate the time to understand, well, what is it? What are the barriers? And so, what I heard there is that one of the barriers is that actually there wasn't a clear expectation about what would happen once they did get that interview. So just even dedicating the time to explain what would happen, and that joint accountability, that everywhere isn't just about the process, then there's something there's an issue with the process. Everyone has accountability.
Pauline Miller 35:32
I think the joint accountability was the bit that was most satisfying, if you like for this piece of work because when I considered it, I looked and I thought, look, this isn't all on me, because the goals came out of the inclusion team. This isn't all on just the senior leaders, this is everyone, the recruitment team has a role to play, nobody thought Comp & Bens had a role to play, but they do because they validate the job descriptions in that particular organization. So I think that joint accountability is real. And that's the only way that we really start to move the dial when we all realise that we have a role to play. No matter how small or insignificant it feels, we all have a role to play. And once we're all moving in the same direction, the dance looks choreographed, the dance looks so much better.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:23
Yeah, I love that analogy that we have to all be aligned, understanding where we're heading, and what is our outcome, we have to believe that the outcome is something that's important and necessary to create equity. And yeah, the dance looks choreographed. I love that. We're just coming to the end of our conversation, it's gone really quickly, I just want to get a sense from you of what is next on the DEI radar. What are the things that actually really need to be thought about, because it's an important thing in order to shift to continue the momentum in the space?
Pauline Miller 36:55
If you cast your mind back to let's say, the beginning of 2020. And now think of it as two years later, the explosion in interest and the dialogue around diversity, equity, and inclusion has grown massively. So what does that mean? One, there are more people doing this work. And there are more requests, indeed, and we have to make sure that the requests don't die out. So we have to make sure that organizations recognize that it is a strategic imperative. Okay, so it's not a priority that can be de-prioritized. It's imperative for us to reach our strategic goals. So that's number one, we have to recognize that because if it is superficial, it will easily disappear if times are hard again, or when it feels like we've got back to normal. And we no longer need to think about the DEI lens. Because we all did our anti-racist training, we all have undergone some core targets. And we've said we're going to be gender balanced. And that's it. Organizations need to stay true to course, and in time, and I think we're seeing some of this now, as individuals reassess their psychological contracts. And whether they feel the contract that they have made with their employer is the one that they want to continue on with, do they look back over the last few years and think you treated me horrendously, you didn't stand up and consider the experiences of black and minority ethnic colleagues if their well-being suffered, or whatever that looks like. All of those are things that will cause us to reassess our relationship with our employer. So organizations need to consider this in the long term. And we know that when the financial crisis came around in 2008, organizations that dropped their diversity functions struggled, they took longer to regain that trust and that real recognition that they were in this for the long term, so that's one.
On the other side, it's us as practitioners, we've got to be certain that we are continuing to bring expertise, knowledge, and real dialogue into our organizations. Because when you explode a function like ours and I say a function, but when you explode with a number of practitioners, we also have to recognize that we haven't finished learning yet. We're not all there. There are loads of heads of D&I’s and like okay, it's not about the number of years but it's about the experience, and we want to make sure that people are coming to the party, ready to learn, as well as share their experiences in other functions in other parts of the organization. I'm a big believer in transferable skills in the same way that I've transferred industries. We can transfer the skills, but as practitioners, we have to be as engaged in the learning, and we have to be as willing to recognize that there are wounds, though sometimes it's not all perfect. And I believe it's important to show when things do go wrong and to talk about those things. It wasn't easy to drive a programme across an organization on unconscious bias. And there were many hiccups along the way. We've got to talk about the things that are not right so that we can develop as practitioners. So I think that there's a real opportunity for us to not formalize, but to become really focused on how we can develop more people into this space, and how we can continue to develop ourselves.
Nadia Nagamootoo 40:27
Amazing. I love what you just said there and from an organizational perspective, but also for DEI practitioners. And it's a relatively new field. There aren't many of us out there. There is a growing number, yes, but it's still really early days in this field around the characteristics of an outstanding DEI practitioner, and you've named a few of them there. And one of which is self-awareness and self-education and continuous learning. Thank you so much, Pauline. Thank you for sharing everything you have about your journey, your learning to date, all those initiatives that you've put in place, and how to overcome some of the barriers in organizations as a DEI practitioner. I've loved speaking to you, thank you.
Pauline Miller 41:10
It went by so quickly.
Nadia Nagamootoo 41:13
That concludes episode 19 of The Why Care podcast. What I love about Pauline is her energy. I say it how it is, her humility, openness and drive to achieve collective accountability for inclusion. Do let Pauline 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 M&A consulting services. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast by leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening to and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks to Mauro Kenji for editing this podcast and Jon Rice for supporting the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
