Why Care?#26: Sámi Ben-Ali - Silencing the Echo Chambers
“Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not”
In Episode 26 I am joined by Sámi Ben-Ali, Vice President of Inclusion & Diversity at Wood, to discuss the importance of silencing the echo chambers, recognising that lived experience fuels individual perspectives, and how times of global crisis often put the focus on individual survival over the needs of the group.
Sámi’s interest in DEI started earlier in life than many of my guests. He grew up in a small town in the Northwest of England in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith household with his White Irish Catholic Scouse mother and his Arab Muslim Tunisian father. Diversity was always present and obvious in Sámi’s life, and this was only accentuated by Sámi going to university in America when he was 18 and feeling a lack of inclusion.
After spending some time exploring how these experiences have shaped Sámi’s view of what DEI should be - which is that of a holistic approach - the conversation moves to the importance of broadening horizons and actively trying to reduce the echo chambers we find ourselves in. These echo chambers are often restrictive and impact on our ability to debate and consider other viewpoints.
In times of global crisis, it often seems that people’s survival instincts take over and individual preservation is prioritised over helping out the group or wider society. This can often affect how people engage with DEI and undergo perspective taking. Indeed, we then discuss the power of perspective taking and understanding how lived experience impacts upon the viewpoints we develop.
We bring the episode to a close by discussing the importance of diversifying talent pools through the recruitment process. One of Sámi’s mantras is “Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not” and Wood certainly lives by this mantra too. Sámi talks us through all the brilliant actions that are being undertaken by Wood to ensure that the next generation of talent globally is diverse and included.
Links:
Sámi can be found on LinkedIn as: Sámi Ben-Ali
For more from Wood, you can visit their website at: https://www.woodplc.com/
To hear Why Care? episodes first, sign up to our newsletter here, and you can find more from us at Avenir via our LinkTree here.
Transcript
Sami Ben-Ali 00:00
I think sometimes with companies as well, especially from a DEI angle, companies tend to think it's one step from a PR disaster, everything in DEI needs to be a massive PR disaster, to then do something. A lot of the time, DEI and how companies can get it wrong, is death by 1000 cuts, is not making decisions, not standing for things, not listening, not actioning, not showing empathy, not giving everyone that sense of belonging, that's when companies start to get reputations. And you don't see it coming, because it's happened over long periods of time. That's what I mean by the death of 1000 cuts. And then you wonder why you can't attract people.
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:35
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organisational growth and success by inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organisations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organisation that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society 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 26 of the Why Care Podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo, and I am your host. In this episode, I speak to Sami Ben-Ali, who was recently listed as one of the top inspirational D&I leaders, 2022. Sami is the global VP for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Wood PLC, a global engineering consultancy. He has over 20 years’ experience in both recruitment and HR operational roles, leading and transforming teams across a variety of industries in engineering, energy and the built environment. Sami shares insights on how to build inclusive leadership in organisations through helping them expand their perspectives, and inviting alternative viewpoints. For him, this culture of education, which then leads to engagement and empathy is critical. Sami challenges the concept of a zero-sum game, that people have to lose out in order to create equity, and throughout is a theme of having authentic, balanced discussions, creating an environment where people can share and debate in a comfortable, safe space. This episode is packed with insights, stories and advice. Enjoy. Hello, Sami, it is wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me.
Sami Ben-Ali 03:13
Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:15
I'm excited as well. And we really just come across each other as a result of Julien Salvi, and his team Global Inclusion 22 conference in May, where we were both speakers, and then I hunted you down and politely sent you a message going, ‘Oh, I'd love to speak to you’. So, thank you so much for accepting the reach out.
Sami Ben-Ali 03:38
No problem. No problem. Thanks for reaching out, hopefully I don’t let you down.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:42
You won’t, I know based on everything I have heard and seen of you to date. So, I would love to hear a bit more about your career background, but also, how did you find yourself in diversity, equity and inclusion?
Sami Ben-Ali 03:55
Oh, so I get asked this quite a lot, and I think a lot of it is from my personal background. I’ll just give you a bit of context. So, my mother is a Scouser, she’s in Liverpool, she has a white Irish Catholic background, and my father is an Arab practising Muslim from Tunisia, that came over in the 70s, so maybe more than 40 years now. So, growing up in that multi-heritage multi-faith national background, and I grew up in a small coastal town in the northwest of England. So, it was all a lot of diversity just within our household as well as outside of the household, large families on both sides. And so that was always something that was apparent in terms of difference, difference from cultures, difference from family gatherings from that area. And then I was lucky and fortunate enough to be the first one to go to university, and then I ended up studying abroad in the US for a bit of that. And so I travelled a lot to Tunisia to see family, that was really the first time I had ever ventured off by myself as a young cocky 18 year old thinking I knew everything, and then I got to meet international students from all around the world, as well as obviously my American fellow students, and that was really eye opening to different… and I felt a lack of inclusion at times as well. So, that was really a surreal experience
Nadia Nagamootoo 05:12
What was it about your diversity character? And what particular identity did you feel you were in the minority on?
Sami Ben-Ali 05:18
Interestingly, when I walked into the canteen, the scenario, because obviously we stayed in the halls, it was similar to those prison films where all the gang are sitting in their own section. I walked in, and that's exactly what it was like, it was really like, ‘wow, this is a bit bizarre’, and people from Hispanic culture, African Americans, the sports teams, and everyone sat in their own camps, and that was fine, that was like, ‘Oh right, this is what it must be like’, and the only table that appeared different, because obviously, we've got visible and invisible, the one that visibly seemed different was the international students’ table. And so that was really an eye opener. But interestingly, a lot of people will say hi to me on campus thinking I was Mexican, a lot of the Mexican population would invite me, I made some good friends there, and so that was a real good early experience, and then I ended up working in my career. Once I left university, I then went to the Middle East and went to live in the Middle East for a bit. And again, a huge cultural melting pot, quite interestingly, similar experience that I remember, I got stopped once in a meeting by an Emirati actually, client, who just looked at me really strange and put his finger up to stop me halfway through my presentation. And I was like, ‘Oh, okay. Yeah, can I help you?’ He was like, ‘Your voice does not go with your face.’ I thought it was really amusing and I was like, ‘okay’, ‘I just didn't expect you to sound how you look’. And I was like, ‘Yeah, it's a really interesting observation’. And so again, part of that whole DEI journey of realising that there's visible and invisible, that element of inclusion, not feeling included, and then I worked in recruitment resource and was constantly looking at finding talent from diverse populaions, whether it be industry, whether it be characteristics. And one of my favourite ever quotes is “Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not”.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:13
Yeah, that's really powerful. Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not, yeah.
Sami Ben-Ali 07:19
It's about how do you find that talent, and how do you enable that talent to flourish and shine? So, I met my then wife out in the Middle East, and back to the UK, lived in London for a bit. I joined what was then AMET and became a leader on the board, and I'm still with Wood for over 10 years, a national organisation, and worked in the recruitment resources and HR operations space. And then as with many organisations, we were able to do DEI a lot more seriously post George Floyd etc. There's a lot of things going on, but nothing really under that umbrella, and so they advertised for the first Vice President for Global DEI, and I applied for it, and luckily, I was successful. So, I've been doing that for a year and a half now.
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:04
What I love about that story is, of course, you have a professional background in HR, and I get that, but at the same time, apart from your lived experiences, obviously, you didn't have professional background and experience in DEI, specifically, before you got that role. Because it is a really young profession, there are many people out there who don't have a lot of experience specifically in diversity, equity and inclusion and move into that space. So, it's wonderful to hear that it's possible to move into diversity, equity and inclusion, especially a particularly senior role that you moved into, what was it that you were able to bring to the table at that point that demonstrated your competence, for example, in diversity, equity and inclusion that made you able to get that position?
Sami Ben-Ali 08:48
I think it was more from understanding, obviously, the social justice content and element of it, but also the business element of it, the business case of DEI which obviously you don’t hear a lot about. It's being able to fuse that together and say, Okay, there's a wide spectrum here, there are people out there, it's the right thing to do, and organisations should be doing it to be reflected in society, cultures, teams and communities within which we operate. Absolutely. And then there's the other side of the spectrum, where a scale should be set, where people say, ‘well, what's the business case? Why should we be doing this?’ And then it links to retention, traction and innovation. And so, what I was able to do is call upon my own personal experience, but also my experiences within HR when it comes to recruitment, to retention, to business strategy, to be able to say, ‘this is a key differentiator, this can be a competitive advantage, not just a ‘nice to have’, this is a need to have and this is how it can become possible, and this is how it can become a competitive advantage, a key differentiator, as well as something organisations should be doing.’ So, I think it's looking at it holistically. That's why I want to try and bring to the onset of that narrow focus on just one area, very much looking at it holistically and how it can all come together.
Nadia Nagamootoo 09:59
Yeah. I'm interested in your take on inclusive leadership. Let's talk about 20th century leadership for a moment. How does 20th century leadership align with the concept of inclusive leadership?
Sami Ben-Ali 10:13
This is where I think leadership is gone, or going, where I see now, compared to how it was from my early career. It's less of the command and control, having all the answers, being the smartest person in the room, having the experience, the years, the stripes, etc. and less of that vulnerability, and authenticity, and curiosity that you see now, in terms of today's leadership. Because the world, it may not have always been like that, it might have been heightened through social media, and how more collected that would be, but it certainly seems much more complex in terms of access to information, things that are happening, things that are entering into your general space that you would never have realised before. So, to really step into that space as a leader, you can't have all the answers, it's impossible. If we were good at everything, we wouldn't have teams. And so, if you've good at everything, you certainly could tell, so now it's about, for me, inclusive leadership is showing that vulnerability, showing that, do you know what?
I don't have all the answers, but I'm willing to find out, I'm willing to ask the questions, I’m willing to step towards that discomfort, I’m willing to put myself out there to say, ‘well, you help me, I help you, let's all help each other’. And not from a nice fluffy way, but from the point of view of, how do we improve? How do we get better? How do I show that what's important to you can be important to me as well? And I think it’s less around hierarchy, and more around, and there was a great comment from a gentleman that joined us, who was from an Indian background. He joined us in the Norway office, him and his family moved just before COVID hit, and he's got one of the best networks in the organisation, like 35,000 people, and he used technology. What he said was, ‘what I tend to not concentrate on is hierarchy but more of why hierarchy’. I think that shows the difference in generations in using email, using Yammer and chats, and getting on the internet and using technology to find things out, be curious, make connections, less around formal meetings, formal one-to-ones.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:18
Did you say why hierarchy?
Sami Ben-Ali 12:20
Yeah, exactly, why hierarchy instead of hierarchy. He was just literally emailing vice presidents, senior vice presidents, ‘hi, I'm new, how do you do’, and it was just great, so refreshing. Yeah, exactly. He was like, ‘ I don’t care what your title is, I want to know a little bit more about this company I’ve joined. So I was talking about the office in Norway, the guy’s got one of the best networks in the organisation.
Nadia Nagamootoo 12:40
It's so true, just like how we met. It was possible for me to contact you because I saw you there, I had your email address, and yeah, there was an element of boldness around my action, the worst-case scenario, you wouldn't have replied, and that would have been that. But it is possible now, these people who we see in the media, in book authors, they're all out there on social media, and we could extend our network so easily both within our organisation and beyond. And of course, we come to that concept, and I speak a lot about this around people's inner circle, and how to broaden it actively as an inclusive leader. And it's so critical, I think, because particularly exacerbated by social media, where you follow people who think similarly or are similar to you. And of course, then the brilliant algorithms churn out and say, follow this first person, this person, that person, then of course, they are all aligning to your worldview. So, what I love about what you've just said, is that it's so easy, because people often say, ‘oh, you know what, I'm at capacity, I don't have time to actively extend my circle’. And it's so easy to, even if you spend a couple of minutes just reaching out to people who you possibly wouldn't have reached out to in your organisation before, actually, it can be done.
Sami Ben-Ali 14:02
There's a great quote, it's one of the things I forced myself to do a year or so ago, I read somewhere else, is to follow people that think totally in the other extreme, whether it be political, sports, whatever. And I still follow those people, because I know that I might not necessarily agree with them 100% of the time, but there's about 5 or 10% of stuff that makes you think, ah, do you know what, I've never really thought of it from my point of view, then it makes your thinking. And that's what I said to a coach in our organisation, say, read a book that you would never even dream of picking up or watch a film you would never even dream of watching. Just watch it, give it a go, because I guarantee you'll get something from there. I think it will reconfirm your idea, and it will make you think that ‘do you know what that wasn’t that bad actually’. That made me think about some people watching Fox or follow this person, that curiosity. And one thing I didn't mention is empathy. There was some research recently around the scale of the future of the industry. But certainly, I totally agree about being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. And I think it's a real key to leadership.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:09
So, let's talk then about some of the barriers. You've mentioned a few words around what inclusive leadership requires. So, we've spoken about vulnerability, we've spoken about empathy, we've spoken about courage, I'm interested, what then acts as barriers for leaders stepping into that space?
Sami Ben-Ali 15:27
There are a few things. One is obviously fear, fear of making mistake and mis stepping, we certainly hear more on this cancel culture and people getting piled on. I watched a brilliant video of Trevor Noah the other day about Lizzo, when she brought that song out with the word, it did a great video around the balance of it, because she obviously went and made the change to that word that was found offensive, but then people continued to pile on and use that as an excuse to virtually signal. So, I think if we get to that space, it's really dangerous, because then people are afraid to make those mistakes, so they just won't step towards any sort of dialogue or learning. So, it's about that for me, that psychological safety of saying, ‘we will make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. And we're always learning, no one will ever complete DEI’, we don't turn around one day and go, ‘I know it all, it's all gone, it's all finished, I get it.’ And so, it's about presenting that platform, ask a question, because some people don't care if it's a silly question, as long as you ask the question, sometimes that's just the heart of inclusion showing that interest. For some, that's easier than others. Some people want to be really confident about asking something before they ask it. And so, in turn, sometimes never do. And so what we try to do is certainly create a culture of education to say, here's something we can talk about, here's a subject that you might not know a lot of, but do it in a way that creates engagement, not doing it in a way that will create barriers to make it more difficult.
What I mean by that is, I attempt to use the analogy, if me and you were talking about rocket science in a room, and we had this really complex equation upon the wall, someone walks into that room, and we’re there scribbling away, that's not a very welcoming room for someone to come into and learn about rocket science. We've not done anything wrong; we're just talking about it at a real complicated level, yet someone could come in the room that has not that level of understanding. So, for me the inclusivity piece with them is to be turned around and say, ‘Okay, what do you know about rocket science?’ And even let's get a detergent bottle and talk about simple basic physics. It's meeting people at the right entry point to say, ‘Okay, what is your understanding? What is your way of learning as well?’ And to take people along in that journey with you, because if you're constantly, ‘this is how you must think about this subject, this is what you need to know as the minimum’ and you start setting the ground rules, or become quite aggressive in the topic, all you're doing then is really preaching to the converted, creating echo chambers, and everyone's really happy in their echo chamber, everyone's high fiving each other, ‘oh we're doing a great job, this is great, isn't the world brilliant?’ And then you've got a silent majority or load of other people outside of the proverbial room going, ‘that room isn't for me, even though I want to get involved in it, I don't feel part of it. So, I'm going to take the easy route and step away from it and let them continue.’ And again, that creates that ‘us and them’ mentality
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:17
As you're talking, I'm starting to think of an example that I came across fairly recently in one of my workshops, where she wasn't only with regards to her ethnic background, it was an inclusive leadership programme, so inevitably, we dial up their curiosity, we dial up their open mindedness. And so, the rest of her colleagues were starting to be more curious about different lived experiences, but also, they're going out in the world and thinking, ‘Oh, I just said that, is that okay?’ And then going to her to check in with it. How is it possible to strike that balance between creating a culture where people feel safe, you mentioned psychological safety there, so safe to be able to ask a colleague, ‘you know what, I'm thinking about this, and I'm not quite sure’. And to allow that expression, and that ability safely to say to someone, ‘I know this is just your perspective, but what's your view on this particular language’, versus using that particular person as highlighting their onlyness, I keep going round and round in circles on it, because it only emphasises her onlyness, the fact that now her colleagues are going to her, asking her views, asking her opinion, asking her to share more, which is what we want, but then might have a detrimental effect too
Sami Ben-Ali 19:36
Definitely, I think it's a great point. And what I should always try and say is do the work. And what I mean by that is before you start approaching people and say, ‘what do you think of this?’ It's better to come from an angle of, ‘I've read about this’, ‘and I saw this’, ‘my opinion is this, but I'd love to know your take’ because then it's not a free flowing all up on your shoulders, it's not like when we do Hispanic Heritage Month, or Black History Month, we're very careful not to say well, okay, let's roll out all our African American colleagues and put it all upon them to tell. It's like no, this is about learning for everyone. So, for example, when the mass race issue in Buffalo, that happened, I was very conscious of how our African American colleagues would be feeling at that moment in time. And the last thing I wanted was for those individuals that are, certainly, a lot of them within the network that I'm very close to, I think one of them thinking that it was on them to say something, and it’s same with a whole host of other topics, that could be the same. So that's where allyship comes in, it's aligning with groups that are different from your own, that's truly what allyship is. And so, you can sometimes feel you're doing a type of allyship by going to that person and saying, ‘oh you tell me all about this because you must be our resident expert in x’. And I get it's about positive intention, absolutely, but at the same time, do the work yourself as well.
Nadia Nagamootoo 20:58
So, what I heard there was that, a bit of reading, a bit of thought behind it, approaching someone with your perspective on it, and inviting their view. So, not saying, ‘Oh, this happened? What should I do?’ As if they're the all knowing, all being African American person who will know the answer to this or whatever. That makes sense. So, what do we do about this backlash issue? Because it does happen in organisations, and we see it, I hear it quite frequently, where there's quite a lot of concern from the DEI HR professionals, who are leading some initiative and getting to know, I keep getting particular people who these programmes aren't for them, they sit in a majority group of whatever nature. What do we need to do as DEI professionals, do you think, to help people get over that zero-sum mindset?
Sami Ben-Ali 21:48
Zero-sum mindset in essence is, for Nadia to prosper, it means Sami has to miss out. So, it's that, okay, we're doing these things for Nadia, so that means I'm going to have to miss out on that. And I'll give you an example of when we mentioned around our agenda goals a couple of years ago, in an engineering and technical organisation, as you can imagine, quite mathematically analytically inclined, we had a lot of the population, say, ‘hold on, I’ve just been to the org charts, and that means then if we're going to say 40% senior female leaders by 2030, by my calculations, that means 90 roles now need to go to females’. And so straight away, he was looking at what exists now and replace it. And so, the conversation, which is, it was good that they felt a sense as individual to, this is my concern, because that's really important and we need to hear that. And so, the conversation then moved on to, ‘well, think about the mindset of, why does it have to mean replacement? Why can it not mean growth?’ So, what I mean by that is, the org charts you’re looking at, why can't the org charts then become bigger, with more boxes on them by 2030? Because we end up growing and be more successful as an organisation, because we have more diverse teams, we have a more inclusive culture, we’ve become more innovative, we have better retention and traction. So again, it's taking the tactics, linking them to strategy, but understanding how DEI can weave throughout that, so that everyone, or it's absolutely a key issue and key topic, because sometimes you can be looking to do inclusive initiatives that in turn are exclusive.
So, you have a population that says, ‘Okay, well, that's not for me’. Okay. But where's the root of that? Why do you not think it's for you? And then how do we treat the conversation, that sense of belonging to say, you still play a key part in that. You might not be a member of the LGBTQ+ community for example, when you are an ally, you want to learn more. So, we might be doing something for the LGBT+ community, but that doesn't mean we don't want you to be part of it, part of what we're trying to do, part of the learning, help be an ally. And what we also look to try and do, and why I see a lot of, is not necessarily, because I think the original point was around pushback and people lashing out in terms of it, is not necessarily calling it out but sometimes calling it in. And so sometimes what we're trying to say is, think about the situation, is it the right time to call that person out in front of lots of people? If the intention is positive, if that person is obviously being crass, racist, etc, then obviously, absolutely, I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is in terms of someone making a misstep, someone saying something that you just say, really, what are you talking about? There are the learning points, there are the signposts in the road for that person's journey, we can either get them to carry on and really engaging in DEI initiatives, or that is the point where they really close up and then say, ‘yes, this isn't for me, I knew it all along’. And then you just remain a sceptic.
And so, examples of if someone says something in a room, that's probably not the best time to go, ‘Oh, my God, I can't believe you said that, you just massively offended me, that's just ridiculous that you say this’. And it's like, okay, well, for what end? Why would that have been the best? What about taking it to the side? What about having a conversation as a one to one, whether it be online or have another call, ‘and by the way, just wanted to put you up on something, just wanted to let you know, this is how that made me feel, and why. I'm telling you this one to one because I know that your intention wasn't to do that.’ And we've had lots of instances from people in their personal lives and they're like, ‘I said this once and then that got a lot of people at a party jumped on me, and I've never bothered talking about it since’. And then what we're doing is, again, we are creating lots of echo chambers, either purposely or consciously or unconsciously, that isn't inclusive in itself. We've lost that ability to debate sometimes, certainly in social media that exacerbates, we have to be on one side of the fence or the other, and one extreme to the other, in no way shall we meet in the middle. That's where things go wrong. It's about that ability to agree to disagree sometimes as well.
Nadia Nagamootoo 25:52
It does feel like that, there's so much in what you just said, but it does feel particularly with what's going on in the world. Let's just take a step back for a moment and look at the bigger macro-economic environment pandemic. Okay, so that was massive, and had a huge impact from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective. Obviously, the political instability, I mean, we've had a prime minister recently resign, obviously, in the UK, and with Brexit before that, and things in America with Trump and obviously, Russia and Ukraine, and the war, and the impact of that on the rest of the world. Gas and oil prices, the cost of living increasing and how that's really polarising conversations around the haves and the have nots. Changes in legislation, you look at America and Roe vs. Wade. I mean, I'm just reeling off a few here. This is just the tip, isn't it? Of the iceberg?
Sami Ben-Ali 26:50
Yeah.
Nadia Nagamootoo 26:51
Particularly from a psychological perspective. For me, I always go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And as soon as you start getting lower and lower, and people feel more threat to survival, as we lower down the fundamentals that we need to survive, like human behaviour typically just goes a little bit skew, let's call it. As diversity, equity and inclusion specialist professionals, do we need to be thinking about, what additional things should be on the cards that we're putting in place, action we should be taking, things that we should be just reflecting on?
Sami Ben-Ali 27:28
I think you hit the nail on the head around survival. I think a lot of it boils down to survival that certainly I've seen play out over the past few years of having these conversations, talking around initiatives or taking actions, the automatic response then is, ‘okay, what does that mean for me?’. Irrespective of who you are, ‘what does that mean for me? I've got a wife, children, boyfriend, girlfriend, house to pay’. You're threatening that, if you're perceived as someone who is threatening that, then you are going to act and behave in a certain way. So, what I always try to do and think with a lens of, this action, what will that mean for certain parties, and what angle will they come from? And I think what we're trying to do is have that balance is an easy thing to say, but it's a really hard thing to do is to have balance in discussion, balance in communications, balance in terms of, for example, Roe vs. Wade. Yeah, lots of organisations, including ours, bang backwards and forward, ‘Okay, how do we tackle this? What do we say? How do we say it? Where do we say it?’ Because what I'm not a fan is being performative, far too many organisations and individuals try to be performative, and don’t really scratch beneath the surface, and all of a sudden, there's not much below the layer. So, it's about I think again, going back to the inclusive leadership, it needs to be authentic, it needs to be felt.
Nadia Nagamootoo 28:44
I guess, yeah, performative versus authentic, maybe expand a little bit on how then you can demonstrate as an organisation, your authenticity.
Sami Ben-Ali 28:53
I think it is action. So, what actions are you taking? Instead of making a statement, okay, anyone can make a statement, what actions are you taking? And then understanding those actions are not going to be received well by everyone, acknowledging that as well to say, ‘Listen, you might not agree, and we understand that, we understand that you don't agree, but this is the reasons why we are taking these actions, because of XYZ’, it's again that I agree to disagree. And I try to describe it at the very start of my DEI profession saying, ‘this is about everyone has a seat at the table’. And some people might not agree that everyone should have a seat at the table, or even a voice at the table, but that's your prerogative. But this is what we're saying it is, everyone has a seat at the table. And then it's about creating that culture to say, ‘Okay, why do you not feel that everyone deserves to be at the table?’ If that isn't for you, then maybe it's best elsewhere, or you have those conversations.
And so, it's about almost having the non-negotiables as well, but having that debate to say, we're not going to agree on everything all the time, and that's fine. The staff in my company, those that I don't necessarily agree with all the time or my boss and vice versa with me, and that's fine, that's life, same with my relationships, personal and professional. And so, we need to get comfortable in that space of not going… and I think that's where we've lost a lot of it. And it's easy to do, certainly behind social media, like you said, the algorithms, they prosper off conflict, they prosper off disagreement, yeah, that's how they work. And so, we fall into that trap of, ‘no, Nadia, you've said that, and that's completely wrong, and I'm not even going to budge’. That's a loss for everyone. That's a loss for me in terms of my thinking, and my mindset, and same for you. And so, it's about, let's have the discussion and go, ‘do you know what? Okay, I understand why you made that decision, I understand why you've come up with that statement, and you've been clear. Okay, I don't agree, but you're not threatening me, you're not threatening my survival. And it's not personal against me when you take an action because of x, y and z principles.’
Nadia Nagamootoo 30:54
So, some really clear lines that the organisation sets around what their expectation is, and being open and saying, ‘this might not be something that you agree with, but this is our line as an organisation’.
Sami Ben-Ali 31:08
More than ever, I think we've got the most generations in the workforce ever. And so, what that brings with it is a level of complexity, as well as the intersectionality of all the different characteristics, specialist groups, etc. What we're seeing more than ever, and what I'm certainly talking to our senior leaders about is more than ever, individuals want to know, what does that company stand for? What does their manager stand for? And companies now are a microcosm more than ever of what's happening outside of organisations. Gone are the days of, ‘I’ll leave my thoughts, feelings and passions at the door, and I'm coming in, and I'm going to be Sami in work today, and when I leave, I'll be Sami out of work’, those days have gone there, the sands have shifted, that is really difficult for where a company to be at, and as a leader as well, or that is what people expect now, that is what employees expect. And again, you won't all agree, but at least you stand for something, at least you're putting the line in the sand of, ‘okay, this is thoughts and feelings and ideas and why’. And then people can make up their own minds. Because I think sometimes with companies as well, especially from a DEI angle, companies tend to think it's one step from a PR disaster, everything in DEI needs to be a massive PR disaster, to then do something. A lot of the time, DEI and how companies can get it wrong, is death by 1000 cuts, is not making decisions, not standing for things, not listening, not actioning, not showing empathy, not giving everyone that sense of belonging, that's when companies start to get reputations. And you don't see it coming, because it's happened over long periods of time. That's what I mean by the death of 1000 cuts. And then you wonder why you can't attract people. That's why you wonder why people are leaving their jobs or you've got a lack of representation in certain areas.
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:50
I'm totally with you. And I love that signposting to organisations. That fear of diversity, equity and inclusion, and having a line, that's what's going to be your downfall, not actually having a line and standing by it. I'd like to touch on your Wood virtual background, which says, educate empathise and engage. And we've spoken a little bit about this anyway, with regards to what you're expecting from inclusive leaders, from their behaviour, their proactiveness in educating themselves, being empathetic, engaging with different people. Have you seen through the work that you've done, either in Wood or even outside of Wood, but have you ever come across a leader who's done a complete U turn in their beliefs? They've suddenly got it, you mentioned cynicism before, they were the cynic, and then all of a sudden, something's dropped, pennies dropped for them, and they're totally with you.
Sami Ben-Ali 33:47
Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen anyone completely 180 U turn. Because I think when we get to our age and experiences, when you pass your teens and 20s, I think it's hard to suddenly 180 in the belief element. However, absolutely, I start to see pennies dropping and light bulbs going off with leaders across the business inside and outside, when they start to put the pieces together, and the dots together, realising this isn't just about gender, or this isn't just for one underrepresented group, or this is about alienating one group over the other and acknowledging equity and equality. I think when you start pulling together of how it's needed, how it links to business, as well as, again, I go back to that scale of the right thing to do on one side, or the way to business performance on the other side. What is their entry point? What's going to hook them up as an individual? What drives them? Because there's no point in me talking to someone who's not had the same lived experiences on a level of mine, because you don't know what you don't know. This is part of what we say. So, you can't hold that against someone if they've never had exposure to it. Why would they necessarily think about it in the same or certain way as me? So, for me, I've seen it where someone's gone, ‘ah, do you know what, I never even thought of that’. And then it's about not making them feel bad for the fact that they've never thought about it. It's about saying, ‘Yeah, well, why would you?’
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:12
Absolutely, I've had so many conversations like that, it was just like, ‘I just never thought about it that way before’, it's like, ‘and that's okay, you shouldn't feel guilty about that. This isn't about making you feel guilty or ashamed of something you've said in the past or done in the past, but now you can do something.’
Sami Ben-Ali 35:30
Exactly. So, acknowledging that, and then doing something different with it as you go through it. One example that did stand out was on one of our live webinars, it was a video from the US. And one of our senior VP from the US, he's a white middle aged male, he wrote, and it wasn't an aggressive tone, by any stretch, he just said, ‘this isn't the America that I know’, he was watching this video unfold, it was around the unconscious bias, it was around, called the look. And straight underneath his comment in the chat, came from an African American lady who said, ‘this is absolutely America that I know’. And so, it wasn't around either them are right or wrong, it was that, that was their experiences, they ended up then having a reverse mentoring relationship, which has been great, that's prospered. And so it's understanding, because they never, certainly from the male point of view, had never had the experiences, and why would he? Of his African American colleague. And so, it's about him saying, ‘I didn't even know you have these experiences, hence my comment around that’. And saying for her, ‘I've never had your experiences’.
So again, it's that empathy, putting ourselves in each other's shoes to go, ‘do you know what, not necessarily saying mine's better or worse than yours, or right or wrong, but it's been different’, but at least acknowledge it and take an action as to why we are taking action, so why we are looking to diversify the talent pool. The mentality around diversifying the talent pool, sometimes people think that is diluting the talent pool, and you’re like, ‘where's that coming from?’ Car insurance, do you stick with the same car insurance provider over the year? No, why not? Because I want to get the best deal possible. So, how do you know you're getting the best talent possible, if you're not diversifying the talent pool, for example. So it's again, it's those analogies, storytelling, getting people to click because, again, going back to that rocket science, if you're talking at a real high level, some institutional level research, you're totally missing your audience. Hence, why empathy, in terms of educate, but do it in a way that creates engagement and creates empathy, and that's why we have the three E's,
Nadia Nagamootoo 37:25
The three E's. Yeah, and I'm completely with you. Just towards the end of our conversation now, but before we close, I'd love to hear, given Wood is in the STEM industry. And we know there's a huge number of challenges, STEM related industry challenges, and I'm interested in a little bit of insight into what you're doing, some of this maybe successful initiatives you've put in place from a DEI perspective, that has allowed Wood to progress in some of those challenging areas.
Sami Ben-Ali 37:56
Yeah, like you said, there's massive challenges. I mean, we do a raft of things, because what works well in the UK might not work well in Australia, might not work well in Canada, etc. So, we do different things. There are amazing organisations that we partner with, one of them the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers. So, give a shout out to Ollie Folayan and Maggie Folayan they did a brilliant job of that organisation where, for example, we did an activity with them of a mock interview and a mock assessment. And what was important to do before we did that was with our hiring managers and our internal people to say, you might not have an understanding that if you don't, for example, the research shows if you don't have an Anglo Saxon sounding name, you have to send 8 more CVs just to get a response. Again, it was like, wow, I never knew that. Yeah, why would you? You wouldn't, but now you do. So, a lot of these individuals that you're going to be doing mock interviews and mock assessments with, this might be their first ever experience of doing that, maybe for a long time, so, let's make the most of it. Again, talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. So, it's about, right, so, this is an opportunity to help and reach areas that we might not necessarily get to as organisations.
And it's again, it's going wider than the usual universities, wider than the colleges, it’s going into primary schools, we do a lot of work with indigenous populations in Canada, getting them into the construction industry, we do things with coding for technology in Melbourne, we've even got a stem network as one of our employee resource groups, which we are really trying to get our arms around all the great things we do out there as an organisation, but we just don't know about our targets, all these things go from, I didn’t know any of that, but it's going out into our communities and showcasing, this is what you can do, this is what you can be, this is where a STEM career can take you. But I've got a lot of friends and family that are teachers, and we obviously all know that we need to engage much earlier going into the primary schools and colleges. So that's what we do, we have toolkits to go in to be able to do exercises, that type of thing, but for me, it's also partnering with organisations that are doing some fabulous things in those areas to say, we do videos, for example, we did one last year for International Women in Engineering Day, where it was, guess what job I do? It was showing the ladies of certain parts of our business, showing these women, they were doing their own activities away from work saying, can you guess what I do? And then it showed them at sites, showed them in a wind farm, on the gas petrochemical site as well in the office. So, again, it's just they're busting those stereotypes and myths. And that's why representation is important, it's really important. People don't understand that if people look up at an organisation, or look into an organisation and don't see someone that looks like them, that has a big impact.
Nadia Nagamootoo 40:39
It does have a big impact. Absolutely. We're just coming to the very end. I have a final question for you, if you are able to answer in like a minute. I think it's quite a big one, actually. So, apologies. Let's see, any insight as to what's coming up next, in the DEI space? If you're a DEI professional out there, what ideally should you have your eyes on that you might not be already in the next 12 months?
Sami Ben-Ali 41:07
I think massively cultural intelligence. So, what I mean by that is DEI has been very much a UK, US centred in terms of nomenclature terms, etc. And so, what necessarily works well in the US and in Europe, might not necessarily work well in other parts of Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa, South America. So, for me, that's what's coming, it's about understanding what does inclusion and diversity look like in those areas? There's a whole raft of complexities in lots of different other countries. So, there's that and more alignment for me to ethics. I think there'll be a big alignment to ethics as we go forward. So, for me, the big area is about, I think similar to, without going off on a tangent about climate change, it seems that discussion has been very western centred, and not really hearing the voices from developing nations saying, ‘Hold on a minute, you've been on the industrial journey for hundreds of years, and now you're giving us climate targets to hit, saying that were the biggest emitters and producers yet we haven't actually for many years’. So, it's about having, again, that balanced discussion, absolutely changes that there's a massive issue 100%. And same with DEI, but what it looks like for one part of the world in certain countries is different elsewhere. So, you need to have that balance discussion, to really, really embrace what inclusivity looks like, because otherwise you're just putting your own lens on someone else's.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:27
Thank you so much, Sami for all that you have shared. I mean, this has just been a down... I could talk to you all day, because there's just, every time you say something, I'm like, I'm connecting it to so many different things, and I could just easily have a conversation with you ongoing. So, thank you for everything you've shared, really enjoyed our time together today.
Sami Ben-Ali 42:51
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:54
That concludes Episode 26 of the Why Care podcast. “Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not”, I love this quote, and it really speaks to the inequity in our society, but also what organisations are missing out on by not taking action. Please let Sami and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter with the handle @NadiaNagamootoo. 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 Kenji, for editing this podcast, and Jon Rice for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
