Why Care? #43: Indivisible with Denise Hamilton
“ I think that as a black woman, I have always been keenly aware of the harm, and the danger of a consequence of low expectations. But I had never really considered the opposite of that, and the pressure of high expectations that if you don't have the family, the house, the car, the great job, the if everything is not rolling, when you have been perceived as having every advantage? Wow, like that failure, can for some of these men obviously becomes a debt, right? And I would say, not just suicide, but also just contributes to feelings of deep, incredible loss. I've been told my whole life, that I'm supposed to have this and this and this and this, right? And if I don't have it. I think that is its own struggle is its own cage. And I was like, wow, we are literally all sitting in the same cage. Our cages look different, but they're the same cage. And it's like, the danger that we have is thinking that inequity only harms us. No, it harms everyone. ”
In this episode of Why Care?, host Nadia Nagamootoo welcomes Denise Hamilton, a leading DEI practitioner and author of Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences Into a Stronger Future. Denise shares her journey from corporate America to becoming a sought-after DEI consultant, emphasising the importance of practical application and the human side of diversity, equity, and inclusion work. They discuss her innovative approach to DEI, the necessity of evolving language and practices, and how to navigate the discomfort that comes with challenging long-held beliefs. Denise also delves into her impactful charity initiative, Good Givers, which redefines how we think about giving and supporting communities in need.
Highlights
Denise's Journey: From her extensive career in corporate America to becoming a DEI expert, Denise Hamilton shares her unique path and the experiences that shaped her work in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Empathy and Integrity in DEI: Discover how Denise emphasises the need for empathy and integrity in DEI work, highlighting the importance of understanding human experiences and aligning actions with core values.
Impact of High Expectations: Denise discusses the pressures faced by white men due to societal expectations, contributing to high suicide rates, and the broader implications of these inequities on society.
Reimagining DEI: Learn about Denise's innovative approach to DEI, advocating for a shift from inclusion to being indivisible, and how evolving language and concepts can lead to more effective strategies.
Thoughtful Charity: Feel inspired by Denise's Good Givers initiative, which redefines how we think about charity by centering the dignity and needs of recipients, allowing parents to be the heroes in their children's lives.
Addressing Bias and Building Consensus: Denise highlights the importance of confronting biases, both personal and systemic, and building consensus on shared values and goals to ensure successful DEI implementation.
Key Takeaways
Denise Hamilton’s DEI strategies focus on practical implementation and evolving language and practices:
Her approach integrates real-world experiences with strategic DEI efforts to create lasting impact within organisations.
She emphasises the importance of empathy, integrity, and continuous evolution in DEI work.
Navigating DEI challenges requires a compassionate and proactive approach:
Leaders must address discomfort and biases head-on, fostering a culture of inclusion and fairness.
Practical initiatives like Good Givers demonstrate how thoughtful, community-centred approaches can redefine charity and support.
Guest Bio
Denise Hamilton is a renowned DEI practitioner and author of Indivisible. She is the Founder and CEO of WatchHerWork, a digital learning platform for professional women, and All Hands Group, a workplace culture consultancy. With over 25 years of experience in corporate America, Denise has navigated and addressed numerous challenges as one of the few black women in executive roles. Her practical approach to DEI, combined with her lived experiences, has made her a sought-after consultant and speaker. Denise is also the Founder of Good Givers, an innovative charity initiative aimed at supporting families in need with dignity and respect.
Links
Denise Hamilton LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamiltondenise/
Purchase “Indivisible”
Avenir Consulting: https://linktr.ee/avenirconsultingservices
Transcript
Denise Hamilton 00:00
The danger that we have of thinking that inequity only harms us. No, it harms everyone. It doesn't only harm marginalised people. It harms everyone. We don't get the best person for the job. We don't get the creative ideas. I have a recurring nightmare that the cure for cancer was already born. They were just born in the wrong neighborhood and we won't have it. We cannot afford to waste human genius. Human ingenuity is so precious and so valuable. And so when we set up constructs that keep people from contributing to all of us, we all lose. We all lose.
And I think that contrast of those two statistics really made that very clear for me that we need to solve the problems. And instead we have made it an us versus them. And there is no us and them. It's like we're all sitting in a boat and we're at one end and they're at the other end and we say, ha, ha, ha, they've got a hole in their end of the boat. Honey, we're all in the same boat. If it sinks, we all sink. And so this interdependence and this connection I thought was really powerful. Like, the goal is to be indivisible.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:45
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, business psychologist, coach, speaker, and founder of Avenir Consulting, which creates organisational growth and success via inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to companies' bottomline 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 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 through sharing life experiences and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organisations 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 43 of Why Care. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. This episode is a huge treat as I speak to nationally recognised workplace culture expert Denise Hamilton. Denise is the founder and CEO of Watch Her Work, a digital learning platform for professional women and All Hands Group, a workplace culture consultancy. She's consulted for and presented to dozens of Fortune 500 companies and her thought leadership has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fox, Bloomberg, Newsweek, and she's a regular contributor to MIT Sloan Management Review. Her book Indivisible was out in February 2024 and is one of the most accessible DEI books I have read.
In this episode, Denise shares the need to focus on the ultimate outcome of what we want from DEI work. It's not about counting how many of each type of person we have, but about putting in place all the necessary systems and structures so we can get the most value from everyone. We discuss the potency of our stories, some of which are lies that we tell ourselves to avoid the discomfort of reality. Denise is not shy to call out when there is misalignment between what people say they value and what they are actually doing or standing by and letting happen. What I love about her is also the empathy and compassion she offers in recognising that people need to have space to grieve the loss of their stories. There is so much to take away from this episode.
Enjoy.
Hello, Denise. A very, very warm welcome to Why Care. Thank you, huge thank you for joining me and saying yes to being a guest on my show.
Denise Hamilton 04:44
Thank you so much for having me. It's always an honor to be invited to someone sharing their space with me.
Nadia Nagamootoo 04:51
Do you know what, like I just absolutely thrilled when you said yes because having listened to the Next Big Idea Club book bite initially and then having read your book, I am a real superfan now of Denise Hamilton. Your storytelling, your ability to just make diversity, equity and inclusion topics, conversations accessible. I have absolutely loved reading your book and everything that you have put in there. I want to thank you for actually having written it, to be honest, because this is what the world needs, this book. So, thank you.
Denise Hamilton 05:33
Thank you. You made me blush.
Nadia Nagamootoo 05:35
Let's get into it because there's so much to cover in our conversation. I have too many questions for you for the space of time. So, for those who don't know you, give us a little bit about your background, how you came into diversity, equity and inclusion and how did Indivisible come into this world? How did you come to write it?
Denise Hamilton 05:56
Well, I'm an accidental DEI practitioner. I have been an executive in corporate America for about 25 years and I had been, quite frankly, the only woman or the only or first African-American in almost every job I'd ever had. And that fiduciary experience, that understanding of the corporate structure, the organisations, like what works and what doesn't work, coupled with my lived experience and an educational background and communications and organisational behavior really kind of equipped me to step into this space.
People kept asking me, how are you as a Black woman being successful in these environments? What are you observing? What are you seeing? So, a lot of the ways that the book and also the way that I counsel and consult with clients, I've seen it. This is not something I've read in a book. I've lived these experiences. I've been in these rooms. I've been a part of these conversations and where we can see the fork in the road. There are so many forks in the road in terms of decision-making and because I have the background I have, it really equipped me to be an effective partner in these spaces.
And I do see myself as a partner. I'm a facilitator to help you do the right thing, to help you find and connect and anchor with your values to see how you're going to operate as a leader in an organisation. I'm not really here to come in and teach you how to do things. I'm here to facilitate the best part of you so that we can all be as productive as possible in our work environments.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:38
Wow. So, through these questions then, being asked, well, how do you navigate this space that you're in, typically the only Black woman and all that. So, if that's what kind of propelled you, is that how you became an accidental DEI kind of professional?
Denise Hamilton 07:55
Yeah, I kept getting asked to come and speak, come and address this group, sit with a group of leaders because I've seen it, I've lived it, and I've successfully navigated it. And that's a really important piece of the discussion, right? And I'm very careful because I was able to successfully navigate it does not mean that it is navigable, right? Does not mean that it is optimised. Because I was able to run the gauntlet and climb over the mountains and dig through the mud, it doesn't mean that other people should have to climb over the mountains and dig through the mud. Like, what we should be doing is removing obstacles. So, that experience of kind of having run the drought myself and seeing the places that have easy opportunities for improvement and also to understand intent, right? Because I think very often when we talk about discrimination, we talk about issues of inequity, there's a malice that we tend to attribute to people that are what we would call a bad actor. And very often, it's more nonchalance than it is malice.
So, if all of your answers and your structures kind of speak to malice, then these people, they don't even know what you're talking about. So, you're not communicating because they really don't have any malice. What they do have sometimes is thoughtlessness and a lack of care and a lack of interest. But we can fix that, we can lean into that. So, I was able to kind of operate in these conversations ascribing the best intent to all parties involved with the goal of like, how do we move forward together? Because that's really what we're all here to do. And by avoiding the kind of us versus them and the default conflictual stance, I just found I was able to work in some of the environments that people would say are the most resistant, the most difficult. The very late adopters to this work. I've been able to be really successful with them because I try to respect them and their experiences and their perceptions and just try to find a way that we can blend our stories. I don't require you to give up your story to accept my story. Maybe your story is true and my story is true. So, how do we blend them together so we get the actual story? So, that's really the framework and the posture that I try to take in my work.
Nadia Nagamootoo 10:21
Yeah. And as you're speaking, I can kind of see almost how this book then came about because you're essentially what you're talking about there is being indivisible. Is that where you saw that actually isn't about letting go of your truth and me letting go of mine, but actually kind of bringing it together? Is that where this concept and the book came from?
Denise Hamilton 10:42
Yeah. I really think that the DEI conversation has been structured suboptimally.
Nadia Nagamootoo 10:51
Yes. Agreed.
Denise Hamilton 10:52
Right? We've made it like a hobby or a program, something that's nice to have instead of a value. Inclusion is a value. It's not a program. Right? And so, when you approach things with a kind of afterthought posture, you're going to get afterthought results. Right? And I think that we also, when we think about DEI, we make it smaller so that we can win easily. And this is in a corporate context. Right? We don't always measure the things that matter. We measure the things that we can measure. So, we can pat ourselves on the back and say, oh my gosh, we recruited at this college and we brought in six minority interns or we put two women in the leadership development program. These are lovely, lovely initiatives. They are not the work of DEI.
Right? They're not the actual work. And so, I think really focusing on what the ultimate outcome we want. First of all, getting consensus of that. When I sit down with leaders, that's one of the first things I do is, why am I here? What do you want to have happen? Because I think it's become in vogue to kind of bring somebody in as a consultant. All you have to do to be an expert is to be from across town. Right?To be from somewhere else. But to bring someone in that's going to tell you what to do. And to me, that doesn't really work. What works is unlocking what you want to do. Unlocking what you care about and how you... Now, if you care about it, I can help you with the skills to execute it, but I can't make you care about it. Right? And I think we skip that step of building consensus and making sure we actually agree on what success would even look like.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:48
Agree.
Denise Hamilton 12:48
Right? And if we don't agree on that, it's really hard. All the programs in the world are not going to make a difference.So, that's why I wanted to write the book because I wanted to help people understand why they were having so much trouble. Right? The first five chapters of the book are literally what gets in the way. Why is this hard? And so many things that we don't even consider. For example, one of the chapters is stories. The fact that we have these stories that are wildly different. Right? So, if I think of police as Andy Griffith, as the neighborhood kind cop.
If when I was a kid and I got in trouble, the cop would just bring you home to your parents and you would... If that was my experience, then somebody else comes along and says, no, the cops were selling drugs. No, the cops killed someone that was innocent. No, the cops broke the door down and killed this innocent person. They really can't even process what you're saying because it is so different from the story that they have. And so, very often, I think that we rush to kind of figure out what are the programs that we have to put in place? And we have to stop and say, wait a minute, do I believe that a five foot two soft-spoken woman can be the leader? No, I don't believe that because my stories tell me that the heroes of the story and the leaders are six foot two with a deep voice and a cleft chin.
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:21
Right?
Denise Hamilton 14:21
So, if I have a story of what a leader looks like, I don't even have the capacity to let someone else into that role because I haven't interrogated my base story of what my belief is. So, we spend a lot of time when I work with clients, what do you really believe? Do you really believe that somebody could come out of this school district and add value? Do you think they have to come from Cambridge or Harvard to be truly valuable? Because if you believe that, that's going to shape all of your decisions. And by the way, that's not true. Right? So, you have to remind them like your stories have to be examined and that foundation, then you can create programming and activities and you can set all kinds of measurements. But until you get the base right, everything else kind of feels like noise. And then we say, I don't know why these programs aren't working. Yeah, they're not working because they're programs. They're not a true expression of your core values and beliefs.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:26
It's not the deep work. You're not tackling the hard stuff. You're just going for the stuff at the top, which is the easy pickings.
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I have to say, there's so many things that I could pick out from your book just to kind of have this discussion with you. The first one that hit me was right at the beginning of the book, which are the statistics that you offer, okay, which really signposts inequity. I mean, it's just clear. In particular, you call out kind of health inequity when it comes to race. So you offer the US black women mortality rate at childbirth, which is 48.9 per 100,000 live births compared to 14.7 for white women. Whilst it's absolutely shocking, I kind of already understood that there were health inequities and we absolutely need to tackle that. The statistic that you then offer was something that I was really shocked about, which is that white men account for 70% of US suicides. That's one of the highest in the world. And I don't think I'd ever considered, you sort of suggest that partly at least in part, that statistic of white men being the highest number of suicides in the US in terms of ratio is because of the pressure of the labels that are placed on white men. And you say, it's about the commitment to the mythology of their superiority and how it's a trap. Can you just expand on this? What's your thinking behind this?
Denise Hamilton 18:09
Yeah, I think that as a black woman, I had always been keenly aware of the harm, the danger, or the consequence of low expectations.
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:21
For sure.
Denise Hamilton 18:21
But I had never really considered the opposite of that.
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:25
Me neither.
Denise Hamilton 18:26
What is the pressure of high expectations that if you don't have the family, the house, the car, the great job, if everything is not rolling when you have been perceived as having every advantage, wow, that failure can for some of these men obviously becomes a death sentence. Right? And I would say not just suicide, but also just contributes to feelings of deep, incredible loss. I've been told my whole life, I'm supposed to have this, and this, and this, and this.And if I don't have it, I think that is its own struggle. It's its own cage. And I was like, wow, we are literally all sitting in the same cage.
Our cages look different, but they're the same cage. And it's the danger that we have of thinking that inequity only harms us. No, it harms everyone. It doesn't only harm marginalised people. It harms everyone. We don't get the best person for the job. We don't get the creative ideas. I have a recurring nightmare that the cure for cancer was already born. They were just born in the wrong neighborhood. And we won't have it. We cannot afford to waste human genius. Human ingenuity is so precious and so valuable. And so when we set up constructs that keep people from contributing to all of us, we all lose. And I think that contrast of those two statistics really made that very clear for me that we need to solve the problems. And instead we have made it an us versus them. And there is no us and them. It's like we're all sitting in a boat and we're at one end and they're at the other end. And we say, ha, ha, ha, they've got a hole in their end of the boat. Honey, we're all in the same boat. If it sinks, we all sink. And so this interdependence and this connection I thought was really powerful. The goal is to be indivisible. Because if you can be indivisible, you can be indestructible. But instead, we've made this a hobby, something nice to do.
We hope that you will be a nice person and hire a Black intern. Bring a woman in here to do, she can be the assistant on the team. These small measures, this Noah's Ark approach of two of each kind, right? That's not what the goal is. The goal is that you respect, value, and appreciate the beauty, the value, the worth of every single individual. And that you allow them to bring their genius, their magic, their substance to us and that we all benefit from it. That's the goal. So if you shift it and make that the goal, now all of these conversations are very different. They're very different.
DEI is not charity. It's survival. It makes your country, your community, your state, your city, wherever you are, it removes the barriers that allows everyone to bring their A game. I want all the A games that I can access. I want all the genius I can access. So I want to remove anything that creates a boundary, a barrier that is unnecessary.
Nadia Nagamootoo 22:02
Gosh, we can't afford not to, is what you're saying. I mean, I love what you said about the person who has the cure for cancer has already been born. They just were born in the wrong neighborhood.I mean, wow. That just makes you really think, doesn't it? How is it there is so much divide that we're constantly looking at what makes us different? What some people have versus what some people have not and comparison, constant comparison. I mean, it's a lot in the human psychology that comparison we're constantly benchmarking and it's all about competition for power. So this concept, which is why I loved your book so much around being indivisible, you say the goal of inclusion itself whilst noble is inadequate.
We need a bigger goal. We need to be indivisible. I think you've spoken a little bit to this just now, but maybe you can expand a bit more. Should we be moving away from even the language of inclusion towards something else?
Denise Hamilton 23:05
Well, I think language is always evolving, right? These concepts are evolving. As I sit here talking to you on another continent, this used to be impossible.This used to be impossible, right? So we have to allow things to evolve and to grow and to mature. The solutions that I had when I was 15 of what my goals were, I hope I don't have the same goals at 53 that I had when I was 15, right? So some of our language was deeply essential 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago. Some of the policies, some of the laws, some of the rules, some of the initiative, like all of it is subject to constant evolution, right? Even when I think about diversity, equity, inclusion, diverse from who?
Equal to who? Included by who? Even in our language, we put one group at the center and everybody's trying to get to the center, even as we're doing this work. The language is even inadequate, right? Now, I don't say that to say it's not any good and we need to dispose of it.I say that to say that we need to constantly be evolving. We need to constantly be growing and looking for once we've met like one threshold, what's the next threshold? What's the next threshold? And it would have been ridiculous in the 1800s in the midst of slavery to say, you know, we should be indivisible. That would have been a ridiculous conversation. Yes.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:48
Yeah. They weren't ready for it. Right.
Denise Hamilton 24:49
We're in a season, we weren't ready for it and I just feel like we're ready. We're ready to move into a different part of the story. I think like each generation has been charged with writing their chapter of the story, right?And so I think when we think about what our chapter is going to be, it should not be regression. It's not about going back to the good old days. It's about moving forward and figuring out what is next and to allow ourselves to broadly imagine what's possible. What are we capable of doing? And if we can do that, I think that it won't feel stagnant. We've seen a backlash against DEI in recent months. And I really think it's because a lot of the ways that we even talk about it, some people intentionally minimize and sideline and compromise the language. So setting aside the people that are intentionally diminishing it for their own selfish gains, I think also you shouldn't have the same goal for 40 years. It should evolve. And so how are we evolving what our efforts are and what our expectations are? My expectation is not that you're just going to hire one minority woman on the board or put one minority woman in leadership team or put one member of the LGBTQ community in the blah blah. That's not my expectation. That's so paltry, right? I had a client that I worked with the other day that is just a perfect example of this. Their client base is women.73% of their staff is women. And their leadership was, I think they had one woman on a 17 member leadership team. Be a serious person. You could not possibly be reflective of the audience that you serve, nor the vast majority of your workforce. Have to be effective. You would never go in to open up a new market office in China and not think you have to have someone who understands the language, who understands the culture, who understand. You just wouldn't ever do that in any other situation. But we've made that wildly acceptable to have people who don't have any anchor to an experience be the arbiters and the controllers of that experience. Where do we do that?
That doesn't even make sense anymore. So it's not about Noah's Ark, two of each kind. It's about authentically respecting the fact that different people with different perspectives and different backgrounds contributing to your decision-making process are going to give you a better decision. It's not even an argument. All research has borne it out. There's a lot of research that says homogeneous groups make faster decisions and they're happier with them. That's a really interesting metric. They make faster decisions and they're happier with them. So it's efficiency and morale. Notice I didn't say they make the right decision. They make the best decision. I didn't say that. When you introduce diversity into a space that's homogeneous, they're not going to like it all the time because they may lose some of that efficiency and they may lose some of that morale because you thought this was a great idea. And then I come along and say, actually, that's not a great idea. And it's not a great idea because of this, this, this, this, and this.
That's not always comfortable. But do you think you're going to have a better decision if I'm there? Of course you are. They're like, that's not even negotiable. So the issue of reframing what the target is, what the goal is, I think makes this a better discussion for everyone, for all parties in it, because we're all now rowing the boat in the same direction.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:07
Yeah. This example that you gave of this recent client is similar, I suppose, to an example or a story you offer in the book. And this was about the challenge that you offered to a white man who felt like his company's gender and racial diversity goals were really going to limit him in his progression and his ability to actually do well in the company. And that's not uncommon feeling or thought, right? Particularly for those who typically have fallen into majority characteristics, so white, cis-hetero, able-bodied men. What I loved was reading how you challenged. You sort of say to him, you offered him space to share his concerns. So you listened to him and then offered him a different story or different perspectives. And you said, when you were invited to join this leadership team, you knew the organisation was overwhelmingly female, but they only had one woman on the board.
You knew it was almost half people of color, but there was only one black person on the board. Did you care about them? And as I read it, I was like, right? It's quite a hard pill to swallow. And I'm intrigued how he responded to that challenge. What's your thinking in the approach to that?
Denise Hamilton 30:30
Yeah. I think it's why when I start with any client, I try to get clarification on values we share. You can have any conversation in the context of shared values.If you tell me that you appreciate fairness, if you think you believe in merit, if you think you believe, and I get that up front, what is it that you believe? Okay. So you really truly believe that out of all of these women that work at this company, they just cannot find a capable woman to step into this environment.They found one, but out of 17, 16 people, they just can't find more than one. Do you really honestly believe that? That's statistically impossible, right?
So when you say you believe in fairness and merit and all of those things, I'm like, how do you think this is happening? Is it that you believe that this group of people is just so vastly superior in capability and execution that of course they would always rise to the top of every single organization? Oh no, no, no, no.I don't think that. Well, what do you think? I think very often we do not require people to interrogate their own reality.We position ourselves to tell them about their reality. And I find, I just ask questions. How is what you're living and experiencing?
How does that align with what you just told me you value? How could this environment possibly be fair? And make them defend it. Why am I defending a system I don't run? Right? Like you explained to me why you, this feels good to you and what you think the factors are that are animating this reality. And if you really care about fairness, about merit, about all those things you just mentioned, then I should see the results of that. A really good example of this, I was talking with a friend, I believe the conversation was about affirmative action and the conversation had gone on for a while. And we got to this conversation about values and how I believe that you really have to examine and lay every decision that you make along your values. And so he was like, it has to be fair, Denise. We have to make sure that we get the best person in the job and all these programs are keeping out the best. I said, okay. I said, you believe in fairness, right? You believe in merit. He said, yeah. Okay. Didn't you get your son an internship at your company? What do you mean? Isn't your son a C-minus student? If you believe in fairness and equity and all these, you believe in that you have to have merit and you have to dah, dah, dah, then walk me through that decision to give an internship to someone who patently didn't deserve it. Didn't you tell me that he only got an internship with you because he was too lazy to chase one on his own? Isn't that what you said? But that didn't stop you from compounding his already long litany of advantages. You had no problem giving him yet another advantage. Was he the one that deserved that opportunity?
And he had to admit, no, no, he wasn't. That's the thing. You have to make sure that whatever policies you want, that you really truly apply them throughout every capacity of your life. Not just when it comes to excluding someone, right? Make sure that it has a consistent through line, a through line through everything that you do. And if you do that and you read that, that kind of opens up, that takes a film off of your eyes. Like sometimes you didn't make good decisions. Sometimes you had better options to make the decision. So you give yourself a big pat on the back of how much you've accomplished. Well, slow down, slow down. If you hadn't had the same set of variables that this other person had, do you think you'd be sitting in that seat right now? And that doesn't mean you shouldn't have the seat. You should give up the seat. I'm not even talking about that yet. I'm just asking you, do you really honestly believe that all of this is just a coincidence?
It's just a coincidence that these boards all kind of look the same and it's an indicator of the value and the worth of this particular group of people. Do you really believe that? No, you don't believe that.So then let's move and act with sincerity, with integrity around the policies and the decisions and the practices that we have in our organizations. And if we do that, then we move forward together. We're all better off. So I think first we have to debunk the very potent lies, the stories that people tell themselves before we ask them to move forward and to do something different.
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:42
Yeah. I mean, that last thing that you just said that we're all better off.
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I'd be really intrigued to hear, because I love the approach and I love that you can land this message as like, actually, yeah, I don't believe that. Actually, now that you frame it that way, I can't believe in this, that meritocracy that I had been talking about before. It can't be a coincidence, right? So let's say that that message is landed. How do you then convince, I suppose, influence their thinking that actually they're not losing out something? There's a discomfort there and that's something I speak about in my book, which is like, so how do I know how much of my success is due to color of my skin, my gender, my sexuality, or anything else about me? So they have to hold that discomfort with no clear answer, because I don't know. I can't measure tangibly how much an extra leg up I might have had. And then there's that conversation around, well, what you've just said, which is we all benefit from this, where from their perspective, it might not feel that way, right?
Denise Hamilton 37:40
If you are a person of integrity, especially as a leader, then you fixed broken things, right? You approach everything through the lens of correction. I share a story in the book of a friend of mine, CEO, she came into a leadership role. The company had grown through mergers and acquisitions. And so they had a bunch of different silos. And one of her roles was to kind of harmonise and make all the units come together. And in their analysis, one of the companies had a practice of paying the women 25 to 30% less than the men for the same jobs. And they looked at everybody and it was clear as day. But the answer to your question is what happened in that boardroom. They're sitting and they're talking about this thing. You've realised you have a problem. You've observed it. You've noticed it. You've documented it. You validated it. And so she said, well, let's just fix the problem. Give them raises. And, oh, well, we can't do that. I mean, that's going to be expensive. And there's going to be, how are other people going to feel about that? And how would…. you see a problem, you fix it. And I think sometimes we get locked into perpetuating these harms because we have overvalued the cost of correction. We just don't want to fix it, especially if it benefits us. And we have to be honest about that. So again, remember I told you, I start every session with what do we value? Is it integrity? Is it meritocracy? Is it fairness?
I'm going to hold you to these values that you say you care about. How can you be in integrity knowing that this whole group of women is being cheated out of what they should fairly be getting? How can you then just leave that in place? That's a choice. Some of this has to be dismantled. Some of it has to be corrected. And if I'm a person of integrity and character, I should want that to be corrected. So she experienced it. My friend who's a CEO, there was a lot of resistance, but ultimately she's the boss. And she said, give them a raise, make them whole. And if you look fast forward a couple of years, her retention of her employees was vastly higher than the current competitors in the industry. And I would attribute it to that. When people see that you truly walk the talk, you actually walk the talk. You don't just say the words about fairness and equity. You actually do the work. They will stay with you.
They will stick with you. They will commit to you. So it benefits us all to do the right thing. And if your resistance is around me, me, me, me, me, me, me, then say that. Oh, so it's not about fairness. Your value that you told me before. It's really about self-promotion and self-advancement. And if that's your truth, that can be your truth, but you don't get to be the hero of the story. Like that's the thing. You can't want to be the hero of the story, but also act in selfish, unilateral methods that exclude and harm other people. You don't get to do both. So you have to choose what you're going to do. And everybody wants to be the hero of the story, but they don't want to do the heroic things. And sometimes that means changing policies, doing things in different ways. I remember when I worked in commercial real estate and if you won one of the sales prizes, like you reached a certain sales threshold, the prize was a custom men's dress shirt. I don't want a custom men's dress shirt. I don't want that.
Nadia Nagamootoo 41:41
Really? Why not?
Denise Hamilton 41:42
That's not a prize. I can't believe this is still happening. Have clients that, well, they have meetings in strip clubs or men's only lounge business clubs. Do you feel like that's fair? Do you feel some of the stuff that you really like you may have to let go of? But if you're a person of integrity that was talking to me a few minutes ago about fairness and about integrity and the character and merit and all those things you were telling me about, these are where they get tested. So I'm not telling you what to do. I'm asking if what you're doing is matching what you're saying.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:19
I really appreciate your boldness in just kind of naming things and just allowing people to notice what's going on for them and what they're saying in terms of their values is misaligned with their practice or what they're doing. There's a story in your book, which is a really personal one, which I wasn't sure if I was going to bring up, but it really resonated with me personally. It's around grief and it's sort of recognising the truth that you hold and how you let go of truth.
I think it's really relevant to this conversation here because this is about challenging now. This is what I thought, the type of person I thought I was, and this is the world I thought I was living in. Now I have to let go of some of that and replace it with something else, which feels really uncomfortable. I really want to hang on to this lovely utopia and what I had in my mind.
The story, and I think you know probably which story it is, is around the Cosby Show. It resonated with me because we know now, obviously, the allegations and what fell out of the investigations around Bill Cosby later. But when we were younger watching that program with the Huxtables and fell in love with all these wonderful characters and this beautiful wholesome family, it was really hard to let go of what we wanted or we thought Bill Huxtable, Dr. Bill Huxtable was as a person, who he is, I suppose, in our mind compared to Bill Cosby and what later came out. I thought this hit home for me significantly because I, like you, grew up with the Cosby Show and very much appreciated what that program did, in fact, for underrepresented communities in seeing this black family and how they lived. It was wonderful to see that on our TVs. Tell me a little bit why you decided to share that story and how it connects to the point we're trying to land with it.
Denise Hamilton 44:35
I think that our stories tell us who we are. They tell us who the good guy is, who should live happily ever after, who's the villain. Our stories really educate and they form our character identity, how we see ourselves, who we are. And so what do you do when you find out one of your stories isn't true?
Nadia Nagamootoo 45:00
So devastating.
Denise Hamilton 45:01
I mean, that's really devastating. And one of the things I try to do in my work is to try to really braid empathy throughout every conversation. If I thought my daughter was going to get to go to this college that I went to because my dad went there and I went there and so she should go there and they change the rules and they make it more open and now there's more minority kids getting in and my daughter can't get in, I am legitimately sad. Now, your daughter is not entitled to a spot and clearly she didn't earn a spot. So it doesn't have to be real. It's not authentic.
Your daughter never had a spot at that school. But the grief that you have in losing your story, your goal, your dream is a true authentic grief. And I think very early in my work, I wasn't as respectful of that. I was very keyed into my pain and my harm as being a part of the group that was marginalized. But I did not ever really give weight to what is the cost when you lose your story? What does that feel like? And so when Bill Cosby, the allegations started coming out about him, I was, no, it couldn't be true. He didn't do it. I was very much like, this is not possible.
So that's the third person, the fifth person, the ninth person, the 14th person. I was like, oh my gosh, this is really true. And it struck me deeply. It was deep because he raised me. He was a third parent. He raised me in a lot of ways.I cannot tell you in the United States how many Black young people went to college because of the Cosby show. It's a direct line. So it was so impactful. So how do you accept new information that changes? Now the show will always be the show. The actual art is the art. But this person that we revered so profoundly, do I have the courage to let new information in? Yes, I did. I was able to accept that this is not the person I thought he was and I believe he should go to jail. So I want to acknowledge that's the first step of courage. Sometimes we have to let the new information in. We have to let the story change. And that can be really hard. But one of the things that makes it hard is this grief. I just cannot let the story change. So I end up becoming a keeper of the story instead of a truth seeker. Those are two different roles. And so that grief, if you're not careful, it stops you from letting situations change and growth to be honest with you. Like people hold on to things and it doesn't matter how much data you show them, how much information you give them. Well, I just believe it's like this. You have to operate in truth and reality.
And if you don't, we all suffer. But it's harder than it sounds because of this grief and this reluctance to give up a story, a beloved story, just because it's not true doesn't mean I don't love the story any less. It doesn't mean I love it less. And so do we have a capacity, a compassion and empathy around that loss? I think we should.
Nadia Nagamootoo 49:00
Yeah, I love that. And what I heard in that was that compassion is the first word that came to my mind as you were speaking here. How can we be compassionate in how we do DEI work, right? And how we acknowledge other people's stories and what they're letting go or will need to let go, the discomfort of letting go in order to recognise a different reality, a different truth, and how they marry those two up. And that takes work and there's grief there, that loss. There's one more point that I want.
There's another story that you share under a chapter called Reimagined Thoughtless Charity. And I very much appreciated this chapter, where you brought to light something that I've always struggled with, I suppose maybe is too strong, but just kind of thought about, is this right? Which is when it comes to charity work at Christmas time. And my daughter's school do this, where they organise that we give a gift, buy something new for a certain demographic of child and label it and wrap it up. And it gets sort of given to a child who wouldn't otherwise have any gifts or presents at Christmas time. And I have always thought, where is that line between kind of charity work and saviorism?
And I have, similar to what you described in the book, felt for the parents who don't get that wonderful glow and feeling when you see your child open a gift, that you were part of that. You're sort of taking away something from those parents. And so, you've hosted, you and your family have hosted, I thought was a brilliant idea, a toy giveaway called Good Givers. So, maybe you can just share a little bit about Good Givers and why you set it up.
Denise Hamilton 50:59
I'd love to. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. My husband and I both grew up very low income. And so, we've gotten a chance firsthand to observe how poor people are handled, how poor people are disrespected, how poor people are infantilized. The character of poor people is often challenged, which I don't know. I know a lot of rich people and I know a lot of poor people. There's good and bad people in both groups. Sure. But how we ascribe kind of positive intent to one group and just automatic negative intent to the other.
And so, there's a lot of observations I have about poverty and how we handle poverty. But one of them, as you mentioned, is how we do gifts at the holidays. And I just thought like we created this space where the giver gets to come in and be the hero. First of all, we do these tour drives and you gather the kids all together and you reach in a bag and you indiscriminately pull something out the bag. And, oh, you're a boy, so you get a truck. And you're a girl, so you get a Barbie doll.
Nadia Nagamootoo 52:14
They're going to be started on that.
Denise Hamilton 52:16
It just was so flat and two-dimensional as if the girl might not want a truck. It just never occurs to me she might want the Legos. So, I just was always struck by that. And then the other thing is people get toys that they wouldn't give their children. Like, why would you buy something for this child? It's got lead-based paint in it. You got it on clearance at the discount store, but that's what you get for the giveaway. But you would never give that toy to your child. So, I think that's an interesting dimension of this. But I always remember looking at the parents in the back of the room because the parents are always somewhere away watching some other rich, wonderful, kind person give their child this toy. And I thought, why does that person need to be the hero in somebody else's child's life? Like, I don't need to be the hero in your child's life.
And so, we flip the model. And what we do is we go and we buy the toys. I mean, at this point, it's like a thousand toys that we buy.And there's rules to the toys that we can buy. Big boxes. Guess what? You know how you like to open up a big box on Christmas Day? So do poor kids. They want the same things that your kids want. So, they have to be big boxes and they have to be of a base quality. Like, again, if you wouldn't buy for your child, don't buy it for these kids. I'd rather serve less people than give them a whole bunch of crappy stuff that'll just be broken in two weeks. And extreme diversity of toys. So, we have microscopes, and we have art kits, and we have athletic equipment, and we have craft supplies, and we have an easel. And we have, like, the idea is these kids have varieties of interests, just like rich kids do. And I would say they get less opportunity to develop those gifts and those interests than rich people do. So, why don't we give them a chance to get a toy for Christmas that actually reflects them? And then, here's the shocking twist.
The parents come in and they get to pick the toys that they give to their children. We help them wrap them up, and then they leave. And we're not there on Christmas Day because we don't need to be because we're not the heroes. We get the parents to be the heroes, right? They know their child really would love this chemistry set. They know that their child would love a karaoke machine because they love to sing. They know their child far better than we could ever know their child. So, why don't we let them pick and let them take the gift to the child on Christmas Day? And so, we then now plan this year will be the first year we're doing a hundred good givers all over the world. We're doing actually a couple in the UK because it's really a simple model. Yes, if you go to indivisiblenow.com, you can go and sign up to just learn how to do it. I'm not magical.
We go to the store, we buy some toys. How we do it is we go to a low-income apartment complex area that we know they have income guidelines to even live there. So, we don't do an application or anything like that. We find an apartment complex that has the population we want to serve. We talk to them. If you and five friends get together and you can only do five families that have two kids each, great. Have the apartment complex help you pick the five families and you do good givers. If you can afford to do a whole complex, then you do that for the whole complex. You could do it as small or as big as you want to do it.
And people say, well, are you going to create a non-profit organization? Are you going to do these gift drives all over the world? No, the whole point is you can do it.You can ratchet up your kindness. You can do thoughtful charity. We all have the capacity. If we can remove ourselves from it and we can center the actual recipient and be respectful of people who are experiencing economic challenges, it doesn't mean they're bad people or lazy or terrible. It doesn't mean any of those things. It means they need some support. And if you want to support them, authentically support them. Like you really want to help a poor child, help their mother, help their parent, help their caregiver. That's how you help poor children. So I think this idea of everyone being able to just get the instructions, follow the instructions and do it for themselves for me is the best part of it because I'm not the hero, right? In your community, we need you to be a leader where you are. One of the biggest lies of our time right now is the myth of hopelessness and helplessness. And I just reject it. You are capable of impacting your right around you. And I think we've been talked out of that.I love that we are very concerned about things that are happening all over the world, right? That's beautiful. But if the people that live right down the street from your house can't read, if the buildings down, if you're having problems in your own community and you're doing nothing about it, I don't know.
I feel like that's something to explore. And sometimes we attach so much judgment to economic struggle that we talk ourselves out of helping. And so I hope that Good Givers is a model for people of just an easy way that they can dip their toe in an upgraded charity.That's what we call it. It's upleveled charity.
Nadia Nagamootoo 58:34
It's just fabulous and how amazing. So we'll put all of the details on the website in terms of the show notes of that website that you've just said. Final question, which I'm asking all my guests this season, which is related to the topic of my book, Beyond Discomfort.
And I'm interested in you sharing and you have already in the book. So I'm happy for you to use a story that's in there, but a story where you experienced discomfort when you realized a bias that you hold and how you navigated that discomfort.
Denise Hamilton 59:11
Oh my gosh. I would say Good Givers. We just talked about it when we were organizing the gifts.It's very easy to find great gifts for young children, 10, 11, six years old. That's easy. Oh my gosh. It was such a delight. Teenagers are a little bit more challenging, right? What do you get for a teenager that they're really going to like? What do we even get as a pool? So as we were talking about it, there's a little disagreement in our little family group. We were, well, let's just give gift cards. And instantly everybody's like, well, but yeah, that's what we do for the teenagers in our lives. So we'll just give them a gift card and let them go get what they want.
And immediately the judgment came in. Well, what if the parents don't give the kids, what if they keep the gift card? What if it doesn't get to them? And I had to catch myself and I'd say, why do we think that these parents would steal from their children? What about them? It gives us even the impression that that's a reality. It's a bias. Why do I think that they don't want a Christmas gift for their teenager the same way I want that for them? Why do I position myself as the authority in their life, even with something as small as a gift card? And then we even took the conversation a little bit further to say, what if she did keep it? What if the other dad does keep the gift card? Because the lights are about to get turned off and they use the gift cards.
Why is that my business? So I think there was this real deep realisation that, honey, you're not in charge of everyone. And the fact that you're trying to help them doesn't mean that because they're poor does not mean they're bad people. And why do we make that leap to change the rules to make sure they're not terrible, bad people that are going to cheat us and abscond away with our little gift card, right? Like that was the first thing. And then secondly, they're adults. We should infantilize them. And if they choose a different route, I should give a gift with clarity of what my intention is, is to help this family. And it would be okay if that was rerouted to a more urgent need. I need gas in the car to get the kids to and from school. Like that would be okay with me, right? And so I think this idea of moving ourselves out of the center of our giving, that's really the concept of the whole book ofInvisible.
You are not the star of every story. You're not the hero of every situation that you need to remove yourself out of the center and understand that you're in community with other people, with other needs and other priorities, and that we need to negotiate that. But if you look at everything through a lens of you being the center, that really diminishes almost every single situation. It really is. I can't think of an example of a situation that that doesn't harm, that kind of thinking doesn't harm. So even the folks that work and do this work every single day have to always check our own biases.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:02:41
Oh, we do.
Denise Hamilton 01:02:42
And have to be really careful and respectful of the people we say we want to help and support.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:02:50
Denise, what a way to finish this conversation. Thank you a million times over for everything that you have shared today, this incredible conversation, so many insights, so many wonderful, powerful stories that really explain what is the next step. How do we evolve the work that we're doing?
And I so appreciate. If those who are interested in learning more about you, where are you? Where can they get hold of you?
Are you on socials?
Denise Hamilton 01:03:19
I am on all the socials at Official D. Ham, as in Denise Hamilton. Official D.Ham is my handle on all the socials. And they can check me out at denisehamilton.co. And they can take a look at the book at Indivisible Now. And obviously the book and the audio book is sold any place that books are available.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:03:41
And I highly, highly recommend Denise's book. Everything that we've spoken about is going to be available at the usual place on the show notes page. We will get the full transcript up there too. Oh, wow. I'm even more of a fan than I was at the very start of our conversation, Denise. You are fabulous.
Keep doing what you're doing. Keep sharing your thought leadership. Thank you so much for joining me on Why Care.
Denise Hamilton 01:04:07
Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I believe there's no greater gift than the gift of your attention. So I just appreciate you sharing your space with me and congratulations on your book.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:04:17
Thank you, Denise. That concludes episode 43 of Why Care. I could have listened to Denise talking all day. Her storytelling and her points are so compelling. I love her boldness in how she calls out behaviors that aren't value led, and her vulnerability in sharing her own learning. Do let Denise and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Insta with the handle at Nadia Nagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast through leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks to Mauro at Kenji Productions for editing this podcast and Jenny Lynton for getting it out there on social media.
