Why Care?#30: Bonnie St. John - Fixing the Broken Rung for Multicultural Woman
‘With multicultural women, we see that most of the time they are like, I will be just like everyone else, I will be talented and work hard and my work will speak for myself. It’s not easy for these women to deal with these issues. Being intentional about getting the assistance you need, setting your goals and moving up …. How do you use your difference as an asset and leverage it as an advantage for your company?’
In Episode 30, I am joined by Bonnie St. John, CEO of Blue Circle Leadership Institute, to discuss the specific barriers and challenges that multicultural women face in climbing up the corporate ladder, building trust across multicultural differences, and engaging leaders to support them.
Bonnie’s interest in DEI has been shaped by her life experiences as an Paralympic athlete, a Rhodes Scholar, a best-selling author, a White House Official and an entrepreneurial businesswoman. For over twenty years, Bonnie has led seminars, workshops and executive coaching, and has circled the globe as a keynote speaker and Fortune 500 leadership consultant. Her desire to lead with the sincere intention to make a difference is evident through her journey to find her strengths and overcome prejudices. She was the first African-American ever to win medals in Winter Olympic competition, taking home a silver and two bronze medals in downhill skiing. Through her work as the CEO of Blue Circle, she has worked to deeply understand the barriers faced by multicultural women, designing a powerful development programme that gets to the heart of a much-needed conversation.
We explore five core components of the Blue Circle Leadership programme that support women to overcome these barriers: -
- Trust and informal networking: navigating across differences to create a sense of trust and comfort that doesn’t come as naturally between a senior white male and junior multicultural woman.
- Telling and selling your value: cultural differences for multicultural women mean that they don’t feel comfortable ‘bragging’ and explaining how good they are.
- Sponsorship: addressing the informal network issue, and ensuring multicultural women can equip others to speak out for them, making it easier for others to help them out.
- Strategic networking: moving multicultural women to the next level by equipping them with mentors, sponsors and a host of people who can make an introduction and open the door for them.
- Authentic Leadership: how multicultural women can understand what is unique about them and leverage it for their organisation.
Later in our conversation, we discuss her book, Micro-Resilience: Minor Shifts for Major Boosts in Focus, Drive and Energy, and the importance in using science to help teams be more resilient. The focus here is on the little things that we do that makes us more resilient immediately. As Bonnie shares, discomfort doesn’t only occur for white leaders who want to sponsor multicultural women, it happens both ways, even those who are from similar cultures feel uncomfortable due to expectations to stand in line and to adhere to cultural norms, almost more than the white male. As such, leaders need to move beyond discomfort and be intentional about providing support for multicultural women and working towards building an inclusive environment.
Lastly, Bonnie speaks on the internal struggles she faced when she made the decision to specialise in helping multicultural women become leaders. This was primarily based on her desire as a businesswoman to succeed on a broader stage, and not on a small market that focuses on multicultural women. Despite this, her sincere determination to help those like her is evident through her work, helping forge the path for multicultural women who are stuck at the entry rungs in their career due to their ethnicity and gender.
Sketchnote of this episode
Links:
Bonnie can be found on:
- LinkedIn as: Bonnie St. John
- Twitter as: Bonnie St. John
- Facebook as: Bonnie St. John
- Instagram as: Bonnie St. John
Bonnie’s book, Micro-Resilience: https://bonniestjohn.com/books/micro-resilience/
Forbes article on the ‘Broke Rung of the Career Ladder’: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2021/08/11/fixing-the-broken-rung-on-the-career-ladder-for-women/?sh=6a687884103f
For more from Blue Circle Leadership, visit their website at: https://bluecircleleadership.com
For more on the specific hacks for Micro-resilience:
- Resilience Overview (with "drink water" tip)
o https://www.dropbox.com/s/nyj15pgc8kmp4j0/Micro-Resilience%20Overview%20BSJ.mp4?dl=0
- Creating Zones of Focus
o https://www.dropbox.com/s/u1v0see3nzyhfeg/Bonnie%20St.%20John%20-%20Zones.mp4?dl=0
- Reversi - Flip the Script!
o https://www.dropbox.com/s/xsx1j76uz912y2w/Bonnie%20St.%20John%20-%20Reversi.mp4?dl=0
- Exercise in Small Bursts for More Resilience
o https://www.dropbox.com/s/u98qyl0y7e181yj/excercising_date_removed_1920x1080.mp4?dl=0
- From Pessimism to Optimism
o https://www.dropbox.com/s/0m905lwayi5h6sc/Bonnie%20St.%20John%20-%20PPP%20to%20CCC.mp4?dl=0
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
Bonnie St. John 00:00
So many multicultural women try to suppress their differences and for lack of a better term, act like a white male in order to succeed. And that's uncomfortable, they're going to be expending extra energy to do that. And the company is not going to get their best work, and the company is not going to get the benefit out of the fact that they've got diverse leadership. So being able to bring out the best in multicultural women and to help them see how they can leverage their differences to be a better leader, as opposed to just fitting in and trying to be just like everyone else.
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:37
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organizational growth and success via inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organizations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organization that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society through sharing life experiences, and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organizations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Hello, and welcome to episode 30 and the season three finale of The Why Care Podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. In this episode, I'm truly honored to be joined by the incredible and inspiring Bonnie St. John. Bonnie’s story is one of resilience, overcoming bias, pushing barriers and innovation to do what has never been done. Despite having her right leg amputated at age five, Bonnie became the first African American ever to win medals in the Winter Olympic competition taking home a silver and two bronze medals in downhill skiing in the 1984 games. In addition to her sporting achievements, she graduated from Harvard University and won the Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. She's a best-selling author of seven books, an ex-White House official, a highly acclaimed keynote speaker and leadership expert for the fortune 500, a television and radio personality and entrepreneur, owner of Blue Circle Leadership. Bonnie shares the Leadership Programme she is designed to support the challenges faced by multicultural women in the workplace. We talk about the patriarchy in society and how it plays out in women waiting to be asked for promotion, and the cultural expectations that overlay this. She generously shares the core concepts of the programme, and why it so successfully supports multicultural women to overcome the barriers in their progression. She also shares insights from her book, micro resilience minor shifts for major boosts in focus, drive and energy. This is such a powerful episode packed with learning and advice. Enjoy.
Bonnie, it is an absolute pleasure. I am super, super excited to have you on the Why Care Podcast Show. Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Bonnie St. John 03:40
Nadia, I am so glad to be here. We've been collaborators and friends for quite a while now and really excited to be on your show and be talking to your peeps.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:51
I know that we're going to get so much from this session today in our conversation and I'm excited to leap into it. But before we do, I think everyone's going to be really excited and wanting to hear a little bit about you. And I've talked to you and we've shared stories as well. And I've watched your talks and everything that you've done, but it would be great for the listeners to hear from you. Just because you've got this fascinating personal story.
Bonnie St. John 04:19
It's a really crazy story. So I grew up in San Diego, and my leg was amputated when I was five years old. It was due to a birth defect, the growth was stunted in my leg when I was born.
And my father left my mother while she was pregnant with me and I have an older brother and sister but so I had a single mom, who was a school teacher, which is not a huge salary in the US and raising three kids and one of them disabled and it was a hot mess, right. The one thing you wouldn't expect is that the one-legged girl in San Diego from a family that didn't have a lot of money would become an international skier you just didn’t see that coming. A friend of mine at high school invited me to go skiing with her family and in order to go, I needed special equipment. So, I contacted other amputees I found, you know, and it makes that sound so easy but it was really hard.
Nadia Nagamootoo 05:14
I would be looking at the friend and going, really?
Bonnie St. John 05:19
No, I really wanted to go, I really wanted to try it. And she's a really neat person. But anyways, I found this special equipment and I went on one trip with other amputees to kind of try to figure out what was going on and I went with my friend Barb Woremath and went skiing. And what happened I guess is when I contacted other amputees to get the equipment and figure out what I was doing. At that time, a lot of other amputees went to national championships for skiers for when they get skiers, because it was just like a big reunion for everybody who was into skiing, any disability, not even just one legged but any disability. And so, it's like a mecca that everybody would get together. And so, I thought, well, I really want to go to that and see what it's all about. And when you went to national championships, you could either take a lesson on how to race or you could race. So anyway, I thought I want to go but let me try to get a little practice before I go and make some progress. And I've got a little bit coaching I trained myself up a little bit. And lo and behold when I went to national championships the first time I qualified for the top racing group by like tenths of a second, I just barely made it. So instead of being in the Hey, just go to a clinic and learn how to race or oh well maybe a little bit of coaching to get a little better, I actually got into the top racing group the first time I went and did pretty well. So, I thought wow, I could be a racer and that's what set me on the journey to get sponsors and get more coaching and I moved from San Diego to Vermont and when that I started seeing summers on a glacier you know I’m just kind of a all-in kind of a person. So, I ended up being on the US team winning silver and bronze medal. So, I won bronze in the slalom, bronze in the giant slalom and then silver for overall performance. I think I might have been shaped by frontline medals gear.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:07
Oh, wow. I love that you just keep it in a drawer like just can casually kind of bring it out.
Bonnie St. John 07:13
Whip it out. Just pull it out. Actually, I had them on my wall for many years like framed in a poster and then I realised when I go out speaking I like to wear them and to show them to people and catch them. And so now I keep them in a case that I travel with. .
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:29
I love that. I'd be taking them shopping, I'd be taking them to the school ride and I just be like, Yeah, I'm just wearing my medal, I’m just wearing my Olympic medals because I can.
Bonnie St. John 07:37
It was quite a journey. And it helped me to get a lot more comfortable with myself as a person with one leg, as a person of color and really find my strengths and overcome as a black person in skiing. You know, I'm actually the first African American to win a Winter Olympic medal for the US. But yeah, there's not very many African Americans who have won Winter Olympic medals. And Cool Runnings, bobsled, we all know the movie.
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:09
Do you know what, that just popped into my head? The Cool Runnings movie. Gosh, that takes me back. What an amazing story.
Bonnie St. John 08:15
Oh, and then I went to Harvard and Oxford and started my own company, all those things, right?
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:22
How does that happen? How do you get from being a Paralympic medalist, very well studied, to being invited, I assume it's an invitation to be a White House official?
Bonnie St. John 08:33
What happened was as a kid with a disability, I was a real nerd. So, a lot of times, other kids were out running around playing, I was studying and reading. So, I used to read on the playground, but I couldn't play hopscotch with the other girls, you know. So, I was very studious, I was very hard working, and that's actually what made me so successful in skiing. Because if you are just an able-bodied athlete, a lot of it is if you’re really good at it, people pick you up and it takes you to the next level. There's a circuit, you know, but for one legged skiing. 25 years ago, it was much more I had to be entrepreneurial, I had to get funding. So, I wrote proposals, I got funding, I had to hire coaches and book planes. And so, the fact that I was a nerdy kid actually really helped me to be successful, and to be able to pull together the resources to make it happen. So, I was very nerdy, and went to Harvard on scholarship, and then Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. I was very driven, and I had to be very smart and applying myself in those ways. So that actually helped me to succeed in athletics, because of the fact that I needed that. And then I went on and continued to be able to make a difference in other realms.
Nadia Nagamootoo 09:46
You've just spoken there about working really hard. Have you ever felt that because of your ethnic background and because of your gender and because of your ability, that you've had to work harder in order to prove yourself?
Bonnie St. John 10:00
That's such an interesting question. In the past, I think I've also answered it by saying, Yes, I do. But I also think a white male has to work harder to succeed, too. If you really want to reach the top of your profession in what you do, you do have to work harder than everybody else. Do I have to work harder than the best white guy? I don't know. I don't know. I guess my answer is yes, you have to work really hard if you want to innovate. And I had to innovate, you know, to be the one-legged skier that won, I pioneered new ways of skiing, I trained with two legged skiers, you know, I did really innovative things. And I think anyone who wants to break through and better whatever is out there has to do that. To be the top, you have to work really hard, I don't care what color you are, I don't care what gender you are, you have to innovate, you have to do whatever. But it's more the middle level, right. And that's what I see is to achieve a lot and to do well in the workplace, or at school or anything in the middle level, I do think it's harder as a woman or as a person of color than not, maybe there's an unfair advantage that if you show up at the middle level as a woman or minority, you're less likely to be able to be accepted and given the same props.
Nadia Nagamootoo 11:19
Yeah. But then I assume, though, because of that middle level, acting as potential barriers, that then it might filter out people who could potentially get to the top.
Bonnie St. John 11:31
That's true. It's certainly challenging. And you and I both do work to make a difference in corporate America for women and minorities to be able to.
Nadia Nagamootoo 11:42
Yeah, and that's a nice segue, isn't it, into blue circle your company. What was your reason for setting that up?
Bonnie St. John 11:50
Well, I was asked to do a lot of speaking, even when I was training for skiing, people would say, come and speak to this group. You know, when I was a kid, and I was like, oh, hi, I'm a skier. And I learned over time how to use my experience to make a difference for other people. At first, I didn't understand, it's like why doesn't everybody do what I'm doing? Oh, I don’t know. I had to really understand the audiences. And as I was able to do that, and give speeches to motivate people, to understand what their reality was, I loved doing it. So, I've been doing motivational speaking for decades, just love it and just love to be able to have the impact and I love doing it. During COVID, I was doing a lot of virtual speaking too. But back in 2014, or so we as a company started really looking at training for women's leadership and for leadership in general, and we ended up getting asked to do leadership development specifically for multicultural women. And so that's become a specialty of our company, as well as being able to do that, we looked at a lot of the research, I interviewed a lot of heads of human resources, heads of diversity, to really say, you know, what are the unique needs of multicultural women? Here's what I see, here's what I think but what do you think and so we ended up coming up with a programme that really address the unique needs of multicultural women. Even now that we run more courses to that are for all women, I think what we're able to do is do a course for all women, but addressing some of the needs for multicultural women in that context, in a way that I think people often don't. If you haven't focused on that, and you just run a course for all women, you often are not meeting the needs of the multicultural women in the room.
Nadia Nagamootoo 13:37
And that's so fascinating, I think for me, because a lot of the clients that I've worked with and know about, they do just tend to run female career progression development programmes.
Bonnie St. John 13:49
Well, it's for all women, so it should work for all women, right.
Nadia Nagamootoo 13:52
So what is that intersectional need, right that you see, I'd love to hear some of the themes. What makes the multicultural women…
Bonnie St. John 14:02
And it's interesting, you know, you're saying the world because we run virtual courses, we run courses that include women in Asia, women in Europe, even women in Australia, we had a course recently that had a woman and she was aboriginal in Australia. So really, we are embracing the world and the kinds of ethnic issues that crop up are very different in different parts of the world. What happens in the US is very different than the way some of these issues are perceived in Asia?
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:25
Because there's different history. Right? So, you've just talked about an aboriginal woman. Of course, there's different history in Australia. And that still plays out, the disparity in Australia, having visited the country is so apparent still in South Africa, it's still very apparent in America, it plays out in a different way in the UK. So that's really fascinating as you pull these global programs together, despite the differences in where people are in the world, and despite the history, are there any themes that still come out time and time again.
Bonnie St. John 15:01
Well, we start out the course talking about why, why do you want to get ahead? Because it's about women's leadership, it's about setting them up for success to climb the ladder and stating why it is important to have a program for women or for multicultural women and getting into letting them talk about that. And what's interesting is the first unit that we cover is on trust and informal networking. And for some women, if you say, have you been discriminated against, or do you have trust? Can you rely on other people?, they may say, oh, yeah, it's all fine. Everybody treats me just fine, I'm great. And then as we start to unpack, and as they start to listen to other women, often they start to realise, people are often careful with multicultural women. So, like a white male, a senior white male, may be concerned that he could get sued, or that he could offend her, you know, there's me, and then there's racial issues, and there's all this stuff. So, if he's got to take somebody out for a drink, and mentor them, he's less likely to pick a multicultural woman than to pick a white male, because he's so much more comfortable with the white male. He's going to be polite, he's not going to be mean, he may not discriminate against the multicultural woman at all, but he's a lot less likely to take her under his wing. And so that's one of the challenges around trust. And so, we have an honest conversation about that at the beginning of the course. The challenge is most of the senior people that can take you under their wing and help you get ahead are white males, you're a multicultural woman, if you don't know how to cultivate that relationship, you can't just wait for the right multicultural woman who looks just like you to wander your way, you know, there just aren't that many of them. So, learning how to navigate across differences to create that sense of trust and comfort that would come naturally, much more naturally, between a senior white male and a junior white male.
Nadia Nagamootoo 16:50
So, what I'm hearing there is that affinity bias or the similarity bias that we know…
Bonnie St. John 16:54
It's not a meanness, it's not a I hate multicultural women, you know, not at all. It's just to create the level of trust, you need to really be mentored by somebody and sponsored by somebody and pushed forward by somebody, you might have to be very intentional about that. And so, it's fun to see the light bulb go out, that's one of the first things we talk about. And then telling and selling your value is a lot for multicultural women, they feel like they're bragging. You know, and we have a lot of cultural things against bragging. Asian women do not brag, don't stick yourself up, don't move yourself forward. And black women, Hispanic women, we all have different things in our culture that tell us don't get ahead of yourself.
Nadia Nagamootoo 17:37
And it's so deeply embedded culturally, isn't it in that those particular cultures value in women. What does it mean to be a woman in this culture? And it's so fascinating talking to you about this, because, you know, as a Mauritian woman born in the UK, but my parents were both born and brought up in Mauritius, there is that real struggle almost that I've had to navigate in British culture, what's expected of a woman here, and what's acceptable, compared to if my parents hadn't chosen to come to the UK. But if I was born in Mauritius, I know that there would have been different expectations of me, it is fascinating. So that will all play out in what's expected of women as they enter your programs, that sense of, I don't know how to navigate this struggle internally within me, of my cultural heritage and what's expected of me.
Bonnie St. John 18:30
One of the things I realized that as we were researching this, and as we started rolling out these programs, and this sounds really silly, but this kind of goes to the core of it, in most cultures, women don't ask men to marry them, they wait. If you ask, there's something wrong with you, or you're odd or something, you know, what man is supposed to ask you?. So how that plays out in corporate America is for a promotion, there's a subtle expectation in women that we shouldn't be asking for a promotion, we should be asked if we're worthy, somebody will ask us, Hey, we're gonna promote you, hey, we're gonna do this. And so, we don't talk about that a lot. But I think that's one of the things we're overcoming, it is helping women to understand how to make the case and to enlist the support they need, to get the promotions they need. And you know, it's interesting, it is one of the reasons we position our course at a certain place for different companies in the career ladder, for multicultural women, it has to be lower than where it is for white women. So, our course has to occur earlier in the career for multicultural women because they aren't reaching escape velocity, there just aren't as many multicultural women higher up the ladder, they tend to get stuck at the sort of entry rungs. There's a whole article called The Broken rung on the career ladder, you know, multicultural women tend to get stuck in the pipeline earlier than white women. And it makes sense when you think about it, because they have double headwinds, right. They have the gender headwinds, and then they have the ethnic headwinds and so they get stuck earlier in the career ladder. So we have to position our course where they're getting stuck, and so that they can reach escape velocity. And so, talking about these things like the informal relationships that you need to build, and how you tell and sell your value, and how you enlist others to tell and sell your value to. I think when people start looking at it in a really practical way and they see how to do it, it's really fun, because you see the light bulbs going on in this course for women. I It's like you're driving at night, without headlights on, it's really hard, you can turn the headlights on, and it just gets so much easier, but they're disabled to do that. Then enlisting sponsorships, so then we talk about having sponsors, and you can't just start with Hey, you should go get sponsors. We address the informal network issue, you need to have that strong informal relationship in order to have a sponsor, right, and to be able to equip that sponsor to help you. So, you need to be able to tell and sell your values so that they can tell and sell your value, right? Not expecting them to be mind readers but equipping them to go out and go to bat for you, is really important.
Nadia Nagamootoo 21:12
That's really tough for some women to be able to talk about themselves in a self-promotion way that feels genuine, and doesn't feel like they're bragging, as you say, or playing the political game.
Bonnie St. John 21:25
I started using that phrase, which is help them to help you. And that resonates a lot more with multicultural women because we're saying help them. We always want to help other people, right? If we're making it easier for other people to help us that makes sense to women. Bragging about yourself, or telling people how great you are is really uncomfortable for most multicultural women but you can't expect that person be a mind reader, you can't expect that person to do all the work to help you, you've got to make it easy for them to help you. And people, they get that and so, it just opens up a lot of doors. Then strategic networking is another topic and that just takes it to the next level. So, you've got your mentors, your sponsors, and then you've got a host of other people that could just make an introduction, open a door, do that for you, too. And then we talk about authentic leadership. And that's an area where we get into how can it be an advantage that you're a multicultural woman, we've talked about some of the disadvantages, and some of the problems. And all along the way, we're using data and studies. You know, we're not just waving our hands and saying this, and I think that makes a big difference, because these are smart women, so being able to show them studies and the facts about what's going on, I think it also helps change behavior.
And then authentic leadership, how can you take what's unique about you and use it as an advantage as a leader, not just a disadvantage, and as you rise higher, that becomes something that you can really do. And we have some interesting case studies and interviews. And that's another thing, if you're a multicultural woman, you have so few role models that you're looking at who are accessible and so being able to share readings and videos and interviews. I did a whole podcast because I just needed more source material. So being able to bring that to the table is just so enriching for people because often as a multicultural woman who's rising up the corporate ladder, you're the only one, it's lonely.
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:19
Yeah, I get that. And that, I suppose speaks to the power of having a program for multicultural women, because actually, how amazing for them to be surrounded by women who are similar to them. Of course, they're not exactly the same for those themes that you're speaking about. You know, and I run programs for women, there's almost this sense of relief, where they get this moment of what are the stories that you're sharing with this other participants in the room, ‘I get that, that resonates with me, no one else has said that to me before, I thought it was just me’, it is so powerful.
Bonnie St. John 23:55
We see that when we make courses just for women, absolutely, but then you also see it when you do it for multicultural women on another level too. And our company Blue Circle Leadership makes sure that we have a significant cohort of multicultural women, so that you're hearing all the stories and so the white women are hearing the stories of the multicultural women, and we're bringing that out. Whereas if you aren't intentional about that, and you have all women and in the course, often the voices of multicultural women are not heard and the unique needs of multicultural women are not addressed. But because we've run programs for just multicultural women, even when we run programs for all women, I think we're able to really help these themes come out and we use readings that are written by multicultural women. So, we are bringing those themes out more too.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:39
Well what I'm really curious about is that there is some, I suppose, personal things that they have to navigate, for example, their own societal expectations or cultural expectations. What is it from an organisational perspective that they're needing to navigate that's different to white women?
Bonnie St. John 24:57
That's fascinating. Again, when we talk about this, a little bit already is building trust with sponsors, so most of the sponsors are going to be white males, white women may have those relationships, they may be going to the country club. Oh my gosh, I remember this a real story, I think it was a woman of Indian descent, who was a member of the country club. And she ran into a senior leader from her company, and he looked at her and he said, when did you become a nanny, because she was at the country club with her children who were very light skinned. And he looked at her and he saw a nanny, he did not see a professional woman who was a member of the club with her own children. And I don't fault him. This is where we go culturally, is that he thought she had left her corporate job to become a nanny. That was his first thought. That’s the most logical solution. And actually, thank goodness, he blurted it out because he could be corrected. If he didn't blurt it out, he would just assume this, and the next time he saw her, he'd be kind of confused, like, is she a nanny or a corporate leader? I don't really understand. My goodness, anyway. So, it's important to forge these kinds of relationships and challenge expectations, isn't it?
Nadia Nagamootoo 26:15
Yeah, absolutely. So, what I'm hearing there is that there is some additional layers of bias or whatever you want to call it, where we have these stereotypes of what black women or Asian women or multicultural women do, and are, and that stays with us. And so, there's more things for multicultural women to overcome when they go seemingly against the grain, and they are rising up the corporate ladder. Is that right?
Bonnie St. John 26:41
It's true. Okay, so I have one leg, one of my legs was amputated. And I tend to go through the world acting as if I have two legs, I walk and I do sports, and I do all these things, you know, but there are times when I do need to acknowledge what I have been like, so that I can address it and make it work better. I cycle a lot, I go on these cycle trips for 30 miles a day, for a week or so around the world, which I love to do but in one way, I had to take into account that I had one leg and wear my bike shorts differently because of that, I had to become conscious of it. And I think what we see with the multicultural women is that most of the time they try to move through and just say I'm going to be just like everybody else, I'm going to be talented, I'm going to work hard, and my work will speak for itself. But there are times when unpacking some of these issues that we talked about are important. And you were sort of flipping it and say, Well, what do the executives on the other side of the table need to know too. I think it's understanding that it's not easy for these women to deal with these issues, and that a lot of the women are not sort of militant, oh, I know I'm being discriminated against. A lot of them put blinders on and just try to push through, so having programs like this, where they can surface some of these issues and deal with them, is important. And I mean, our approach is not to whip up a lot of anger or frustration but the opposite to say putting a little bit of attention on this, being intentional about getting the assistance you need and setting your goals and moving up is going to change your world. And that's what we see, we see huge results. We were measuring set of promotions after the programme. And we realised we had to start measuring promotions during the programme because it's like an eight-month programme. We're finding some people were starting to apply what they learned in month two and three, and by month six, they already were getting an offer for a promotion and so to measure the impact of our programmes, we had to start measuring anything, any promotion got due to the programme, not just after the programme.
Nadia Nagamootoo 28:47
I love that concept, the authenticity, that they need to embrace what makes them different, and allow their organisation to see them for who they are, not pushed down, not push away.
Bonnie St. John 29:02
Yeah, we talk about that too. How do you use your difference as an asset for your organisation? Because they want that, they don't want you just to be the best white male you can be but actually leverage your differences as an advantage for your company.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:20
And what would you say to any leaders listening to this in terms of what they can do to actively support multicultural women?
Bonnie St. John 29:28
I think being intentional about it and creating those informal relationships. There's some discomfort there. It's not a natural act to have a mentor who's different than you, a mentee that's different than you or to sponsor somebody for a promotion who's different than you. We did some research on people getting rebuffed. So, if you're a senior white male, for example, and you try to take a black woman under your wing, she may actually push back because she's uncomfortable too. So, knowing that that could happen, don't be offended by that, and being able to sort of push through that, it's probably going to be more work to build that trust and comfort across differences to be able to do that. And if you're a white male, taking a white woman under your wing, there's a little less barrier to do that. Even if you're a multicultural male, who wants to take a multicultural woman on your wing, there's actually often some discomfort there. Because say, for example, an Indian woman with an Indian male, he's going to be more likely to want her to sort of stand in line and be docile, the cultural norms, almost more so than a white male. So, he's got to notice his own biases and his own behavioural cues that's going on in order to overcome that. And a black male with a black woman, there's often tension there, you know, there's history there, and an Asian man with an Asian woman. Being the same ethnicity doesn't necessarily help you to do this better, either. It's sort of leaning in against our unconscious behaviours, then you will be able to do this. And so, it's a great course to be able to do that. And when we run the course, we talk to the managers of the women in the course to and give them a little bit of training and some insight into what's happening, because we don't want them to just ship them, just send the women to us, we'll dip them and then send them back all fixed, you know. So, we enlist the help of the HR and diversity professionals, we enlist their managers. And I think that it not only helps this woman who's in our course today, but the experience of the managers and the HR folks is likely to permeate and help other women in the future too.
Nadia Nagamootoo 31:41
Absolutely. It's a whole system approach, not just working with the people who are experiencing the barriers.
Bonnie St. John 31:48
You get the system right, and we're all in a system. I don't blame anyone. I don't blame the women, I don't blame the managers, it's enough to make you crazy. The subtle pressures that are at work make it difficult for women and minorities to be able to navigate the career ladder.
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:04
Yeah, and they all really subtle aren’t they. Particularly if you don't experience them personally, white men, for example, who might not experience personally, what it feels like for these barriers to play out for them, it is so intangible. It's so subtle, it can really be hard work to explain to them why a different type of leadership is necessary to support these women.
Bonnie St. John 32:25
I think the leaders who put a participant through kind of do get to be a fly on the wall and to hear some of the conversations and some of the things going on, and I think it's really eye opening. I think most people mean, well. And it's funny, I see this with my disability as well is sometimes by meaning well, they just never want to mention it. Don't talk about it. Don't say anything, okay. You're just like everyone else, you know, and that works to a point. And there's a point past that which it's not helpful. It's the opposite of how it is. Let's just pretend like you're not different.
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:57
It's not, yeah, and I get that it's tricky, striking that balance, but maybe even asking permission. At times people won't be offended if you say, I'd really like to ask you a question related to your missing leg. Would you be open to me asking you and some people will be like No, actually, I'd rather you didn't. If you're comfortable then say it.
Bonnie St. John 33:15
No. People would say that. I wouldn't say that. It's interesting, you know, and people try to be careful. And people try to be polite, I find most people try to be careful and polite. But yeah, at some point, we do need to talk about things.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:25
Now, I can't not speak about your books, right. So, I can't spend 45 minutes with you and not talk about your books. I would love to hear more about your latest book, really, which is the Micro Resilience Book Minor Shifts For Major Boosts, which you wrote together with your husband. That's right. What inspired that focus or topic , and what do you think is behind the attention that you've got from it?
Bonnie St. John 33:57
Wow, I think I wanted to write on resilience because this is what people are drawn to me for. I've been really resilient in my life to overcome disability, to be the first African American to win Winter Olympic medal. I've had to overcome a lot and my family wasn't rich. So, I've been very resilient. It's interesting now because I've written a number of books, and they're inspirational books, and a lot of them have been about my story. People wanted to know more about my story. But this micro resilience book is really more about research. It's very research based, and looking at what is the science behind being more resilient. So, some of it is based on my experience of being resilient myself, but a lot of it is based on research about what's out there and what's working to help yourself and your teams to be more resilient. And it's funny the timing it came out just before the pandemic hit, and so of course the interest is skyrocketing. You know, people are interested in resilience. And again, worldwide people are interested in resilience, the book has been published in Japanese and Korean, there's a translation into British. It’s got a different cover, it's got an orange cover, from a publisher that published it in Britain. And of course, you know, you have to change the S and Z. And yeah, the British publication was the one that went around the Commonwealth to Australia and New Zealand. And so anyway, it's been around the world really, getting this conversation going about how can we be intentional? How can we use science to help us and our teams be more resilient? It's not just about picking yourself up over and over again, because you get exhausted from doing that, but being able to use science. And we call it micro resilience, because it's tiny things that you can do get more sleep, eat, you're gonna be more resilient if you do those things over the long term. But these are things that if you do it now, we are more resilient for the rest of the day, it has an immediate effect. And so we called it micro resilience, because it's little things you do that make you more resilient immediately. Now, I do think there's a cumulative effect of doing small things but it's nice because it gives you that immediacy.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:05
And you practice those?
Bonnie St. John 36:09
I do. And it takes a while, I think, to create them as habits. So, you can read the book, and that's great but we have a lot of little videos to just say, here's how you do this, here's how you do that. And I think if you focus on one of the techniques for a week and practice it, you know, and get better at it, and then pick another one to focus on, so you can build the habits. And it's made a huge difference for me, and a lot more of it is habit now than it used to be.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:34
Well, congratulations on the book, firstly, and thank you, because actually, the world does need practical tips for resilience for sure.
Bonnie St. John 36:43
If you connect with me on social media, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, definitely, I put out these hacks over time too, you can get some of these videos.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:56
We'll put some links up on the show notes page so people can get access.
Bonnie St. John 37:00
I just want people to have some practical things they can do. That'd be great.
Nadia Nagamootoo 37:03
We’ll have my guests. And that's because I'm writing the book Beyond Discomfort this year. And I'm curious as to something you have personally had to work through because of your discomfort when it comes to leading inclusively.
Bonnie St. John 37:20
It's interesting, having a course for multicultural women leaders was actually kind of a discomfort point for me to do that. Because as a business person, that's a small audience, right? So I thought no, I should be doing leadership for all people, for all women, and you know, that these are bigger markets to go after. And that just makes more sense. And focusing specifically on multicultural women felt very narrow, you know, why should I have to do that?
Nadia Nagamootoo 37:51
Because you identify personally, as well?
Bonnie St. John 37:57
As a multicultural woman?
Nadia Nagamootoo 37:58
Yes.
Bonnie St. John 37:56
Oh, no, I do. There was a little bit of a struggle about it because I felt, why should I be forced to go after a really small market and have less income. Doing that, versus doing a broader audience. Shouldn't I be able to teach all women leadership or all people, I had always looked at myself in a broader way that I could succeed on the broad stage, why should I be forced to go to the narrow stage, but I wanted to help multicultural women. I started looking for partners, I'm a small company, what's a big company that I could partner with that would do this, and really found that big companies weren't interested in doing it because it was a small market, right. And so, we really did this Blue Circle Leadership and really pioneered this back in 2016, not just looking at multicultural women who were near the C suite, because that's what most people want to do is near the C suite. And really figuring out, you know, we've got to go further down the pipeline, and we'll do it virtually so that we can reach that broader audience at a price point that will work at that level in the company, because people won't spend big dollars on that part of the pipeline. So leaning into doing that, and I think we thought, Oh, well, we'll just do it because I want to, it's sort of a passion project. But in the meantime, I'm going to work on resilience, and I'm gonna work on these other broad topics. But it has become a really important part of what we do.
And I said this earlier, but I'll just reiterate, even when we do a women's leadership course, which we do, we do a lot of women's leadership courses, we are able to weave in this element of the multicultural women, and it's good for any multicultural women who are in the course. But it's also good, I think, for the white women who are in the course to understand how to be allies to other women. And so, we have these really rich courses, whether they're strictly for multicultural women or for all women, where we're really addressing the needs of multicultural women. So, you say what's hard to do, and people might be surprised to hear that as a multicultural woman it was hard for me to say I'm really going to specialize in this and I didn't expect it to be a big part of my business, but it has turned out, it has really grown. I mean especially when we had the Black Lives Matter movement and the Asian bashing that went on, and there were some things that happened during the pandemic, that really drove this business to grow. And so, we've got a huge practice in doing this around the world, and I find that really gratifying. But it was a discomfort for me to say, I'm going to aim at this tiny market that I didn't think would be a viable market, and most people didn't think it would be a viable market. As it turns out, it was the right time and the right thing to do.
Nadia Nagamootoo 40:31
Thank you so much for sharing everything that you shared today, Bonnie, it's been amazing, chatting to you, hearing your stories, learning about the work that you do, and some of the barriers that multicultural women face and what you're doing to support them. Thank you so much.
Bonnie St. John 40:50
Happy to answer questions. If people want to connect with me on social media, and ask questions that are uncomfortable. A lot of times the questions are really uncomfortable, right? No question is stupid, happy to do that.
Nadia Nagamootoo 41:02
Amazing. Well, the link to everything that Bonnie and I spoke about today is going to be available on the usual page at Avenirconsultingservices.com, under podcasts. I've loved speaking to you. I could carry on we could do a part two at some point. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bonnie.
Bonnie St. John 41:20
Thank you. And I'm so glad you're providing this information to your audience. It's so important, and I just love working with you.
Nadia Nagamootoo 41:28
Thank you, Bonnie. That concludes season three of The Why Care Podcast. What a way to end another brilliant season. There's so much of what Bonnie shared that resonated with me as a multicultural woman myself, particularly navigating cultural expectations and learning to leverage the difference we bring rather than being the best white man we can possibly be. Do let Bonnie and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter with the handle, @Nadia Nagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of his 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 his podcast and Glory Olubori for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
