Why Care?#32: Sue Unerman - Belonging: The Key to Transforming and Maintaining DEI at Work
“I think this is a question for the world of work overall, which is challenge versus consensus. I think it is something you have to acknowledge as a leader which is that you might have three points of view in the room. If you go for consensus, you might be getting half good of all three of them. How do you get the very best? because if you’ve got those three opinions, everybody’s worked quite hard to build their case, what you need is for everyone to understand that the competition is outside the company, not within the company, and that you want to get the best answer.”
In Episode 32, I am joined by Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer and Global head of Relevance at EssenceMediacomX (EMX), to discuss the consequences of diversity fatigue, the significance in cultivating belonging, and the value of cognitive and demographic diversity.
Sue’s interest in DEI is evident in her career journey, which has spanned over three decades in digital, media, marketing, strategy, belonging and inclusion, client service and diversifying revenue streams. She is an expert in solving business challenges, driving growth, value and continuous improvement through times of change and digital transformation. She is a long standing ExCo board member, a fellow of the IPA and has a regular blog for Campaign magazine. Her sincere dedication to DEI has led to successes as the winner of the Cannes Lions 2022 competition, listed in HERoes as Champions of Women in Business 2022 and Female Lead’s 20 in data and tech, and the co-author of 3 best-selling books: Belonging, The Glass Wall and Tell the Truth. She has used her platform to challenge stereotypes as an advocate for gender diversity at work, create real change in DEI and to promote authenticity in marketing.
In our conversation, Sue shares her motivations behind writing ‘Belonging’, particularly, her desire to offer a point of view that emphasised with everyone, and pragmatic ways to overcome the barriers to an equitable and fair workplace. Her mission was to write a book that would help everybody become a champion of belonging. She explores diversity fatigue and its impact on those in the minority and those in the majority:
1) It affects the people who it is meant to help, who are tired of being invited as a poster person and are frustrated by the lack of real change in DEI.
2) It affects the majority who are in power, who are tired of constantly being accused and are afraid of making a mistake.
She speaks on the importance of cultivating belonging at work, and that this must be communicated through the vision, behaviour and the culture set by the leaders. As she explains, diversity in thinking and support from leaders is needed for everyone to embrace this. She explores the significance in organisations embracing adult to adult interactions, where we can all lead from our seat and make a difference, it is not about being bystanders but action-takers. The key here is that leaders need to make sure everybody is recognised, heard, and their opinion is valued, it is not necessarily that everybody gets to win, but that we are all trying to win as an organisation.
Sue explains that there is a real power in diversity, and this can be activated by adopting a growth mindset. It is not about a zero-sum game but an additional game -it is about adding value, not just numbers, to your organisation. Lastly, she speaks on the conflict between challenge and consensus that leaders face when making a decision, and that to bypass this, it is important to establish that competition is outside the company and collaboration is within the company.
Links:
Sue can be found on:
- Website
For more from Essence Media, you can visit their website at:
https://www.essencemediacom.com/
Additional links on her books are on her website above.
Transcript
Sue Unerman 00:00
One of the books that I read a couple of years ago is called Enchantment by a writer called Guy Kawasaki. And he says there are two sorts of people in the world. There are pie eaters and pie bakers. And organisations and people that are pie eaters go, ‘There is one pie, if you take two slices, there's less for me’. And the other organisations are pie bakers and they go, ‘Do you know what? We're just going to build a bigger pie.’ And my every experience of the power of diverse thinking and diversity of people. And I stress that as well because it is about making sure that, if all you have is people that think alike even if they look or sound different, that won't do either. You need people who are bringing their own lived experience, and their difference to the mix, which makes for an organisation that will grow, that will build bigger pies, and so it doesn't become a zero-sum game.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:01
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, Business psychologist, coach, speaker, and founder of Avenir Consulting, which creates organisational growth and success through inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organisations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organisation that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society by sharing life experiences and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have 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 32 of Why Care. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. In this episode, I speak to an inspiring business leader, Sue Unerman. Sue is the Chief Transformation Officer of EssenceMediacomX and Global Head of Relevance for EssenceMediacom Creative Futures. Prior to her latest book called Belonging, The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality at Work, Sue co-authored the book, The Glass Wall, Success Strategies for Women at Work and Businesses That Mean Business, and a marketing book called, Tell the Truth. In our conversation, we talk about DEI fatigue, not just from those in the majority who feel like they are no longer welcome in the conversation, but also those in the minority who are tired of the constant fight to address inequities. Sue explains that belonging can only be achieved if people lead from every seat. We talk about how a growth mindset is the only way to approach DEI and the importance of mindfulness in building the courage to champion a culture of belonging. Sue shares some powerful stories from her book, which creates such an important dialogue about what we still need to work on. Enjoy.
Sue, it is an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the Why Care Podcast show. Thank you so much for joining me
Sue Unerman 03:48
Well, thank you very, very much for inviting me. It's a great podcast.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:52
Oh, thank you very much. I am absolutely honoured to have you as one of the co-authors of Belonging, The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality at Work, on to my show, to talk about some of the key concepts that I found fascinating in your book. The word belonging is something that has entered the DEI space not that long ago if you think about it, it was initially diversity, and then we spoke about equality. And then we thought of the distinction between equality and equity, and then we added inclusion. And I think it feels like belonging came after that. So, I'm really excited to explore what belonging means and how you portrayed it so beautifully, actually, in your book, and thank you for doing that. So, my first question is, just because I ask this of all my guests. If you could give us just the low-down, your background, how you came to write the book with Katherine Jacob and Mark Edwards?
Sue Unerman 04:55
So, I've worked in advertising for a very long time. When I started out in the industry, there was a woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, I wasn’t necessarily a fan of hers, but she was a woman and she was running the country. And my first boss in my first job in advertising was a woman. And this is in the 80s, it seemed obvious to me that very soon every other boss would be a woman, because why on earth not? And I got on with my career and worked and everything. And around 2014, I went to my boss, who's still my boss, actually, Nick Lawson, and now my global boss. And I had written a previous book on marketing called, Tell the Truth, Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool, it had been quite successful. I went to him and I said, ‘I'm thinking of writing another book, a follow up to the previous book, is that okay with you? Will you support it?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ But slightly unexpectedly, he said, ‘But that's not the book you should be writing.’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ And he said, ‘I’ll tell you what you should be writing, you should be writing a book about women at work, gender equality.’
And Lean In would not have been a book for me in my 20s, because I'm quite an introvert. And I think Cheryl Summer (?) has acknowledged this subsequently, is very much for driven extroverts, that phoned everyone, got out all the time, and use your lists. I felt like, it wasn't really a book that I would have personally found helpful. So, I went to a friend of mine in the industry, Katherine Jacob, and I said to her, ‘I'm thinking of writing a book about women at work and why it is that every other boss isn't a woman.’ She's a CEO, so she's an unusual woman CEO in our industry. ‘Will you write it with me?’ She said, ‘Yes, of course.’ And we wrote a book together, it's a bestseller called The Glass Wall Success Strategies for Women at Work and Businesses That Mean Business. We gave over 150 talks pre-pandemic, all in real life. And as we were giving these talks, we noticed that a question kept coming up at the end of them, which was whether there would normally be mainly women in the room, whether they would be for the fast track women or the Women's Network, or it'd be International Women's Day.
And towards the end of the Q&A session, which was always very lively, a woman might put her hand up and she'd go, ‘I've got a question, but it's not actually for Sue, or Katherine, my co-author, it’s for the organisers of the talk.’ She'd looked around the room and she’d go, ‘Can I just ask, where are all the men?’ The organisers of the talk will go, ‘Well, it's the Women's Network’, or ‘It's, International Women's Day’, or ‘there are only 100 chairs, and we knew we had 110 women that wanted to come.’ And then she would go, ‘It's happened more than once. Okay, but if we only talk to ourselves, how is anything going to change?’ And this really started resonating with us and stuck with us. And then we started also to explore intersectionality, other exclusions from that boardroom, that boardroom that's still mainly largely populated by one kind of person. And if you look at the FTSE 100 and FTSE 350 stats, you find that yes, there are more women now on boards, but they are largely non-Executive Director women, they are not executive directors, and there are still very few.
We are a long way from every other box on the FTSE being women or indeed a person of colour, or indeed not a white man called Steve. And so, we actually started to think about the things that we'd written in The Glass Wall, and how actually, there are all kinds of people that are excluded. And we decided that what we wanted to do was write a book, although The Glass Wall had not specifically been written for women, it was for everybody in the workplace. It was largely bought and read by women, and we wanted to write a book that was absolutely for everybody, that everyone would pick up. And that's why we also invited my husband, Mark, who is a professional writer, to write it with us because we wanted to include a perspective from a straight white man. And so, the point of the belonging book is to look at those exclusions in the world of work, talk about case studies, shared experiences, pragmatic ways to overcome the barriers to a more equitable and fair workplace, particularly at senior levels, and to have a point of view that empathised actually with everybody out there.
This is because what we found was a huge incidence of diversity fatigue, and this was different from when we were writing The Glass Wall, and from when we were writing Belonging. The interesting thing about this diversity fatigue is it affects people in two ways. It affects the very people who it's meant to help, who are tired of, ‘it's International Women's Day, come and speak on the platform’, or ‘it's Black History Month, come and speak on the platform’. And then the rest of the time nothing changes. So, they are tired of that and of being invited to be a poster person for whatever they are, or they’re asked to represent. But also, diversity fatigue affects the men who are in power, who are tired of having the finger pointed at them, who are so fearful of getting something wrong and making a mistake. More than one of them said to us when we were doing the interviews for the book, it feels like a witch hunt out there for people like me. Like, well, it's not a witch hunt, though, is it? This is because this was about menopausal or middle-aged women across Europe.
Nadia Nagamootoo 10:31
Yes, if we really go back in history, I think you'll find this.
Sue Unerman 10:34
It’s women who wouldn’t do as they were told that were largely the victims of witch hunts. So, it's not a witch hunt, but that's how they're feeling. While the people who are sitting in the boardroom seats are feeling that, things are not going to change. So, the ambition was to write a book that would help everybody become a champion of belonging.
Nadia Nagamootoo 10:53
And what a brilliant purpose to start with, to have a book that has that purpose of bringing everyone together. Let's unpack it now. One of the early things you say, actually, in the book is that ‘the secret of belonging is it must belong to everyone.’ And I love that. So how do organisations achieve this? And I appreciate that that's a big question in itself. But what are some of the things that maybe you've seen organisations do to achieve it? It seems like such a huge goal, that it must belong to everyone. How do you measure that, then?
Sue Unerman 11:27
Well, it is measurable. And we do measure it at EssenceMediacom, which is a company I work for worldwide and across WPP. And in fact, there is a survey for our industry that's just about to come out, it’s the second year of results called the All-In survey, which is for everybody in the advertising and media industry. And asking people do they feel like they belong in their organisation is one of the key questions. So, it is something that you can ask, and you can measure, it’s something that we believe needs to belong to everybody. If the CEO of the company says ‘It's important to have a sense of belonging, but I'm outsourcing this to my HR person’, however wonderful the HR person is they cannot achieve this on their own. If a junior person in the company goes, ‘If they don’t sort themselves out, I'm out of here’, you have to play a part in sorting things out, it has to be something that everybody actively does. So, I think obviously, vision and behaviours being set from above, we've done a lot of training around things like microaggressions, we have a set of behaviours that are about offering to help people, being inclusive, all these things matter.
But I think culture isn't just about a set of words, culture is about how everybody behaves daily and how they interact with each other. And I have worked in situations where I have felt awkward, as I'm sure many of your listeners have, and perhaps you have, and it's horrible. It's sometimes very intangible as well, you just feel you're not welcome, for whatever reason. But what we do know is that diversity within organisations strengthens them. And that's not just diversity of appearance, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender, it's also diversity in terms of thinking. And so, having an open and inclusive culture means that you don't necessarily get consensus about everything all the time but you have to be creative, perhaps about how you get teams to work together. And one of the things that we talk about… So, Karen Blackett, who is OB, who is the UK president of WPP, who I've worked with for more than 20 years, she is fabulous. She was very young when she started working but we've worked together for a long time, and she wrote one of the two forewords for the Belonging book because we asked Karen to write it, but we also asked a man to write a foreword as well, to have two perspectives.
And one of the things she says in it is about her Avengers Assemble theory of teams, and I'm a bit of a superhero fan, and so is her son. So, we share that. And she talks about the Avengers, in that you've got a team that doesn't necessarily get on together day to day, that can sometimes argue with each other, that is very different, but that when they have a common aim and a common goal, they are invincible and they have a superpower. And I think that Avengers Assemble's attitude to teams is just really, really important. And everybody can play a part in this. Everybody needs to ensure that everybody in the room or on the call feels welcome. Everybody needs to just pick up and be an ally to people. There are a lot of techniques about that in the book, because actually if all of us stopped being bystanders, the cultures would change. And that's something that we can all do something about. And sometimes it's very difficult, but opting to do something positive, I think is one of the key things. And that has to come from every part of the organisation.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:09
Yeah. I suppose when they think about it coming from all parts of the organisation, do you think it's ever possible to create a multinational company that has a sense of belonging throughout?
Sue Unerman 15:20
Well, I hope so. There are 10,000 of us at EssenceMediacom, we have a strong ambition to create a sense of belonging for everybody. The differences that it takes to create that is in all of our hands. So, I am an optimist about it. I do not underestimate how difficult it is, but I am an optimist about the possibility.
Nadia Nagamootoo 15:48
Because one of the things that you say in the book, which I love is exactly what you've been saying now, leading from every seat. And that's about everyone taking responsibility for belonging. And you say in the book, ‘Every organisation needs the right leadership. But if everyone is always waiting for those leaders before they act, then the culture is in turn too dependent on a pyramid peak.’ I'm wondering, do you think, in reality, that people in an organisation would actively work towards inclusion unless they saw it as something happening at the top? Where does it need to start?
Sue Unerman 16:25
Yeah, somebody sent us a quote, while we were doing the research for The Glass Wall, which I had not come across before, which is, ‘A fish rots from the head.’ I think it's an Eastern European saying.
Nadia Nagamootoo 16:33
I can't say I've ever heard of it.
Sue Unerman 16:35
And what they meant was that you do have to have that leadership. If you haven't got a leadership that’s focused on inclusion and belonging, then it is very, very difficult. However, one of the things we talk about in the book that you might or might not remember is something called transaction analysis,
Nadia Nagamootoo 16:50
That’s Eric Burn’s work, right?
Sue Unerman 16:53
That's right. Yeah, I find it so useful. It's in every single interaction, you have a choice. You can be adult to adult, or you can be parent-child, or child to child, or parent to parent. And what you want to aim for at work is adult to adult, we are all grownups, we can all make a difference, and we can all have an impact on the workplace. And what I was chatting before we came on, I just changed jobs after a long time of being in one organisation, and the kindness, generosity, the openness of people to this newbie at my current agency, EMX, and the global division of Creative Futures.
The friendliness, the warmth, and the reaching out to make me feel included, have been a wonderful experience. And that hasn't come because the boss said, ‘Make her welcome’, that's come from the day that I walked in the building, and somebody noticed that I was new, and I didn't know where I was going, and they reached out. And I think it's that everyday kindness. One of the things that we say, as you say is, you must lead from every seat, and you can lead from every seat, and not wait for the organisation to tell you what to do but actually live by your own values. That shouldn't be a radical thing to say, some organisations take that as a radical thing, but I think leadership from every seat, and kindness is genuinely treating others as you would like to be treated yourself just makes all the difference.
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:21
Yeah. And it's amazing, isn't it? That what you've just articulated there is belonging in action, it's someone walking over to you, noticing something that might help you, offering a hand to say, ‘Oh, is there something I can do to support you here?’ And it's amazing, just being seen, being noticed, that value that is placed on you as a human being, it's just demonstrating humanity.
Sue Unerman 18:47
And if there's one thing I do know is that everybody wants to be heard, everybody wants to be recognised. And I remember seeing a video of Oprah Winfrey talking about this. And she said that everybody that sat on her couch would lean over to her after they stopped filming, they could be a president, they could be an ex-president, they could be a movie star, and they'd lean over and they'd go, ‘was that okay?’ And she said, even Beyonce, Beyonce is onstage being Beyonce, and then she leans over to say, ‘Was that okay?’ ‘You’re Beyonce, of course, it was okay.’ She wants that bit of recognition, to be heard, to be seen, and to know they’ve come across okay.
Nadia Nagamootoo 19:23
Yeah, it’s so true. Just that validation, that sort of, ‘Am I doing the job that I would like to be doing?’ And we look to each other for that, it’s like our benchmark. Exactly. An organisation that has that empathy, that kindness that you’re talking about, the ability to connect at that level, and to recognise each other and see each other at that level.
Sue Unerman 19:45
As opposed to being judgey or it not being good enough, I don’t know Nadia, do you think that's good enough? It’s that sort of dialogue which is part of some organisations’ and probably too many organisations’ cultures. It’s very, very hard to navigate. And if everybody rises, the organisation rises, if you rise within the organisation by pushing other people down, which is how some cultures at work do behave, then it's first of all, tougher to survive. But secondly, if everybody's rising, if everybody's lifting each other, then you can see how you would float high.
Nadia Nagamootoo 20:26
I'm wondering about the courage that's needed within organisations to navigate some of the complexities and also some of the knotty and messy conversations that need to be had. There's that fear that I hear when I'm speaking to leaders and within organisations, where they fear that if they look at the top and say, for example, it is mainly men, that are working on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. It means that if we continue down this path of supporting DEIB, then that inevitably means that, the makeup of whoever's at the top will have to change. And so those men are out of a job or will have to be moved on at some point. So how do we get over that and still achieve a sense of belonging for those men or those people at the top, who might now feel like actually, they're not as welcome, they don't belong as much in the organisation that has a belonging endeavor?
Sue Unerman 21:23
So, I think there are two answers to this. One is that every organisation is on its own path and on its own journey. And things sometimes don't, and can't change overnight. But the second thing is believing in the real power of diversity. So, we tell a story at the beginning of the book about when the first women doctors were licensed, and the lead organisation in America said, 50% of doctors will be women soon, and that will mean there's an awful lot of men out of a job. And of course, 50% of doctors are women, but there are 10 times the number of doctors, and the profession has grown and grown. If you've got a growth mindset, you're not thinking it's a zero-sum game, but an additional game.
And one of the books that I read a couple of years ago is called Enchantment by a writer called Guy Kawasaki. And he says there are two sorts of people in the world. There are pie eaters and pie bakers. And organisations and people that are pie eaters go, ‘There is one pie, if you take two slices, there's less for me.’ And the other organisations are pie bakers and they go, ‘Do you know what? We're just going to build a bigger pie.’ And in my every experience of the power of diverse thinking and diversity of people, I stress that as well because it is about making sure that, if all you have is people that think alike even if they look or sound different, that won't do either. You need people who are bringing their own lived experience, and their difference to the mix, which makes for an organisation that will grow, that will build bigger pies, and so it doesn't become a zero-sum game. It might be a different role; it might be a horizontal role for some people but it's about having a growth mindset. It feels to me as though things are not changing fast enough in that respect.
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:25
The problem I think, here, and I'm completely in agreement with you, but I think what people struggle with is that it's so intangible. What we're trying to get them to do is imagine a different reality, it's imagining that something will happen in a reality that doesn't look like their own. And so, there's a trust there, there's a bit of taking a leap of faith, and people don't like taking a leap of faith when it's about them and their future and their kids’ future. And because I had it in one of my workshops, I'm really fearful for my three white blue-eyed boys when they come into the workplace that it won't be a place for them.
Sue Unerman 24:05
Yes. On a very, very basic level, we've got a lot about breathing techniques and mindfulness in the book, we've got a lot about how you build up your own courage, how you let go of those things and move forward. And our advice to anybody in that position is, the way through this is to become a champion of belonging yourself because then you will have a seat in the business room of the boardroom of the future.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:33
Yeah. That's absolutely it, not in the sense of, ‘If you can't beat them, join them’, but similar to that, ‘Be allies, stand alongside people and you'll find that they welcome you’.
Sue Unerman 24:45
And also, just to add, if your only value to the organisation is that you're blonde with blue eyes and not a woman, that feels like it's not a great career plan anyway, does it? If you actually really just knock it down to that, so I'm sure there are all kinds of value that you bring from experience, from capabilities, from your own quirkiness and geekiness, and that's the basis of moving forward.
Nadia Nagamootoo 25:13
There's a story that you offer actually in the book around a transgender woman, and it really hit home to me. You talk about this rhetoric, bringing your authentic self to work. And I think I've said it before, I think many of us have probably said that diversity, equity, and inclusion mean being your authentic you. In the book, you explain that she makes it feel like she has to share aspects of who she is when she might not be quite ready to. And so, it made me think, ‘Okay, so what's the balance that we're trying to strike here with belonging? Should it be that the organisation is aiming for people to feel like they can share anything and everything about who they are, and that's what belonging is? Is it possible for us to hold on to our personal stories and not share everything, but still feel like we belong?’
Sue Unerman 26:01
I think it's a very personal individual answer. First of all, just about, ‘bring your whole self to work, bring your authentic self to work’, nobody actually means that by the way. They don't mean you are on a bad day when you don't want to get out of your pyjamas. Normally, actually, what people mean is what the late Great Vivienne Westwood called your best self. So, bring your best self to work. Should you have to hide aspects of that? No, I don't think you should. But how much of it you share or you feel comfortable with sharing, I think is entirely up to you.
I know, in this particular case, the person that I spoke to in confidence, felt as though she wasn't ready for the amount of attention that she would get because it's still in the industry she was working in, it was an unusual story. If we think about how things have changed for women, it's not that long ago, probably 50 years ago, if you got married in some industries, as a woman, then that was your retirement party, that was your resignation, I’m getting married, ‘oh, sorry that you're leaving.’ We once did talk, an amazing talk for women in the armed forces. And there was a woman in the room who remembered when she wasn't allowed to wear anything other than a skirt on a ship. So, she was in the Navy, and she had to wear a skirt. These things are not far away, those things have changed. I used to, when I first came back to work after having kids, my area was decorated with pictures of the babies. And I didn't have to feel that I had to cut them off in terms of my experience.
And I think that being integrated is very healthy. So, integrating your work self and your home self, which is something that I probably did much less before I had children, and then I did much more of when I had children. And the business that I worked for allowed that and it encouraged that, which felt both healthier, but also there were compromises both ways. In the sense that, if I had been at work and taken a call that one of my children, I mean, even now, if my children call me and they're all grown up, I would say, ‘Sorry Nadia, I’ve got to go, hope you don't mind’. And you would go, ‘No, I don't mind’. In return from that, I was also able to accept that if it was one of the days that I wasn't working, and my boss really needed me, really, really needed me, he could call me and I could have a conversation. And there's that balance, that was my experience, and I was comfortable with that. Not everybody is, but I do think that blending work and life is probably a better way of thinking of it than balancing, as though these are two things at the opposite end of a seesaw.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:05
Yes, absolutely. And what I'm hearing there is that you felt able to share something that was going on for you, that you had children and visibly around you for people to notice, and that was part of your identity. And to know that it wasn't going to impact how you were perceived
Sue Unerman 29:25
Having said that, I will give Katherine’s shared experience now as well. So, my co-author for The Glass Wall and one of the co-authors for the Belonging book, she is the CEO of Pearl and Dean which is an advertising cinema company. She is frequently asked, ‘How do you manage to be a CEO and be the mother of two?’ And she has frequently pointed out that no one ever asked her husband, also a CEO, ‘How do you manage being a CEO and a father of two?’ So, these perceptions do still hang around, but we are all allowed to wear trousers to work, I'm wearing trousers today. I would remark, while we’re on this, which may seem slightly at a tangent, I have yet to be in more than one meeting, I think in my career where I have been in a meeting with a man in a dress or a skirt. So, it's weird how those things are. That's very sticky, right? So, I am wearing trousers today, in the 1920s, they would have gone, ‘Oh, you’re cross-dressing’, right? But probably if I was to look at the lovely women that work here, or even the people that assign these women, there's probably at least 50% of them who are wearing trousers. What percentage of men are wearing skirts today? Zero. Isn't that weird?
Nadia Nagamootoo 30:39
It is. And you're going to take me off on a tangent as well, which is a passion of mine. Why do we have to create gender frameworks about what boys should dress like and what girls should dress like? And of course, that just comes from just deeply embedded views and stereotypes in society. And also, sadly, it's okay for a girl or a woman to act more masculine. That's more acceptable and she'll be called a tomboy, she'll be labeled. But that's okay, it's almost cool. But actually, if a boy was to show more feminine traits, or if a man was to wear a skirt, as you've just said, that actually, we really struggle with that in society. And it says, and for him, who's showing those more feminine traits or wearing more feminine clothes, the marginalisation, ostracization, and discrimination that he would face are far greater than if a woman stepped into a more masculine role. And so, what does that say about our view of men and women and the value that we place?
Sue Unerman 31:41
Because that's one of the points that we made in the book, which is that if things get better for 50% of the workforce, the women in the workforce, they will be better for everybody. I mean, if things become more equitable, they're better for everybody. There's this little story about the Titanic, which is that the sinking of the Titanic was so devastating because there weren't enough lifeboats, because the rule was, they only had enough lifeboats for the women and the children. And so, there weren't enough lifeboats for the men. And one of the campaigning slogans of the suffragettes at the time was, ‘Boats for women, boats for men’ because they made a point that they would have regarded that as a ridiculous piece of old-fashioned patronising gallantry. And of course, you need enough boats for everybody. And I think, the weirdness of the fashion thing, because again, the stories that you tend to see is, ‘I bought my daughter something that had robots on it, and it was supposed to be for boys’, and fewer, fewer, fewer stories that go, ‘my son wanted to wear something with princesses and fairies on it’. So, it's very deep-rooted in society. And of course, as far as the colour pink is concerned, it's a Victorian construct, because it used to be…
Nadia Nagamootoo 32:57
The other way around. Yeah, pink for boys, I know. And this is something quite fundamental in our society, in our schemas, and are deeply embedded stereotypes in all of us, that needs to be overcome in order for people to feel that they can be their best self, which could be a man wearing a dress or a skirt, why not? The number of times my husband has just sweated in his suit or his jacket and just looked at me in my light floaty cotton dress on the way to work or something. And he's just like, ‘I really wish I could wear that’. And he could, of course, not that he would fit in my particular dress, but he could wear a dress. But what would be the consequence?
Sue Unerman 33:36
It's still a joke or something that people would mock, or it's a big statement in a way that me turning up in trousers is not. And so, all of that is quite interesting. And I think we can't solve it, but it's just interesting to observe, I think.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:50
Yeah, so what I'm hearing there is that there are some sticky areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which mean that still no matter how much we create an environment of belonging, and we show that kindness and that empathy, and we reach out the hand to allow people to feel that as much as possible that they belong, that because of people's individual identity characteristics, for example, if they are transgender, or that they still might cover, they still might hold on to aspects of themselves. That it’s just societally, not necessarily about the organisation, but societally it is not acceptable for them yet to feel like they belong more broadly. Is that what we're saying?
Sue Unerman 34:36
Well, I mean, I think there's just a lot of work and you need to be very precise and very careful in language and inclusion. And one of the things in the book was about someone who'd organised, who had stopped the fancy dress rule for a party because the fancy dress rule for some party at work was ski chic. And she went, ‘Not everyone has a ski outfit’, the organisers go, ‘Everyone's got a ski outfit, it will be really great, everyone will turn up, it will be lovely’. And she kind of went, ‘No, that's a very middle-class thing. Let me tell you, not everybody has a ski outfit, they're very expensive, and not everybody goes skiing every year’. So, there are all sorts of times and moments. And I think we can just, if we're all awake to it, and I'm trying to avoid using the word woke, because that's become a disproved term. But if we are conscious of it, we can all make a difference. It is our job to, from any position of privilege, and I sit in a very privileged place here. I think, whatever your place of privilege is, whatever your background’s been, wherever you are now, it is your job to reach out to open the door.
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:48
And that leads me to what you say in the book around signposting exclusionary behaviour and calling out microaggressions. And you also mentioned finding a wing person, someone who can make that stand or speak out and say something that they might have seen or heard. So how can leaders make it safe for people to do that? So how can we create that culture where people actually are all right and say, ‘You know what? This is what I heard, even if it comes from a senior leader saying it, how do we create that in an organisation?
Sue Unerman 36:20
Certainly training, I think, makes a difference, and role play within that training. So, I've done quite a lot of training, the most useful thing, and I haven’t done very much of it, actually, but this is stuff that really helped was the roleplay. Because it is hideous if you're the person that has to speak up and say something. If the person that you're saying it to is maybe your line manager or the person that's going to decide if you get promoted, or the person who's deciding if you're going to get a pay rise, it's very, very difficult to do that. Of course, it's difficult to do that. And does it have to be you? Does it always have to be you that speaks up? Do you always have to speak up every time? All of those things are very difficult. So, I think role-play training, has made a big difference to me. And I've done some training that's stuck with me more than others. And we've done a lot of it across the organisation but I think it's when leaders themselves exhibit those behaviours that it makes a difference. And it might not be the most important person in the room, but it could be somebody else in the room.
So again, one of the stories in the book, and this really happened. So, we were doing a Glass Wall talk, and then we included it in the Belonging book. And we were doing a talk for a conference of Women Legal General Counsel, so quite a senior level. And we did our talk and then a woman put her hand up and said, ‘How would you have handled this?’ She had just joined a new organisation. She was the only woman on the senior leadership team, she arrived to a meeting slightly late because she was on a client call. There were seven people in the meeting, including her, there were only six chairs. She just had that moment where she walked in, looked around, and went, ‘Oh, there's no chair, and I’ll go and get one’, in a slightly flustered way, because you don't always know where to get a chair from. And the CEO of the company slapped his knee and said, ‘Don't worry about that Nicky, come and sit on my knee.’ What would you have said?
And we talked a bit about it and what she could have said and what she could have done. And the thing that was really most disappointing was that the other members of the senior leadership team didn't do or say anything. So, from the, ‘take my chair, I'll go and get one because I know where they are’, it isn't a gallantry thing, through to the beefy chief financial officer said, ‘Oh, David, I'll come and sit on your knee’, made a joke out of it. That would have been a great way of detracting from it. Nobody did. And I can remember talking to one senior man about this issue. And he went, ‘Oh, I bet they all thought, ‘Good, she won't last long’. I bet it's the sort of organisation where people are climbing over each other. And she's come in and she's new, got a great reputation. And they're thinking, ‘Oh she's vulnerable’.’ The answer to the question is back to that everybody has to take this on as their job. It's not somebody else's job. It's everybody's job.
Nadia Nagamootoo 39:09
Yeah, that story makes me feel sad. Is that really what is built on an organisation’s success? They have people who are fighting and vying for a position to the detriment of others.
Sue Unerman 39:20
But it happens right from the beginning of some organisations. So that thing where companies will take on 100 graduates, and say to them, ‘Only 30 of you will be left in two years.’ What does that say to you? It says, look around you because there's two people who need to come over if you want to stay here.
Nadia Nagamootoo 39:41
Sort of how many organisations set up a competition, but not healthy competition. Don't mind a bit of healthy competition to show that we're all striving for more continuous improvement, but not if we're climbing over each other. And I can see how that's counterproductive to belonging. We're almost at the end of our conversation, I have a final question that I do like to ask many of my guests, which is around the book that I'm writing called Beyond Discomfort. And I'm interested in, what's the most uncomfortable thing that you've had to manage in yourself or address or have a conversation about as an inclusive leader?
Sue Unerman 40:23
I'll be honest with you, I'm far from perfect. And there are many things that I get wrong. This is a question for the world of work overall, which is challenge versus consensus. And I think it's something that you have to acknowledge as a leader, which is that you might well have three points of view in the room. And if you go for consensus, you might be getting half good of all three of them. But how do you get to the very best? Because probably, if you've got those three opinions, everybody has worked quite hard to build their case. And as you say, what you need is you need everyone to understand that the competition is outside the company, not within the company and that you want to get to the best answer. And there's the concept of that dialectic. I say, ‘I think the paperwork should be yellow’, and you go, ‘No, no, no, no, I think the paperwork should be blue’, and we go, ‘Okay, we’ll just go for green’.
And I think sometimes how you arrive at that, and how people feel about having their yellow or their blue rejected, that's quite a nuanced thing, in a situation where you're hoping to include everybody because what you don't want is smudge. So, I've picked colours that go quite well. But if I'm insisting on green, and you're insisting on brown, and together, they just look like, smudge, it doesn't work in the same way. And so, I think that's the thing that on an ongoing basis, to try and make sure everybody is heard, and everybody's recognised, but not necessarily gets to win, because overall, we're trying to win.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:17
And that's uncomfortable, isn't it? As a leader, when you are really trying to create that inclusion, so aware of inclusion, if you've invited people to have their say, there's almost a framing piece that needs to happen upfront, where you have to acknowledge that at some point, I need to make a decision on this. However, I really would value all of your opinions so that we can close down on the right and the best way forward but it might not be everyone's version of what should be is what we do.
Sue Unerman 42:44
And I think under pressure is when that's difficult. It's great when there's time and scope when it's things because we will work in situations that sometimes get very pressured. I think that's when those things can be uncomfortable. And it's about people having confidence in the leadership and knowing that their opinion is valued. And just because blue didn't win this time, it doesn't mean that you're wrong, it just means that people thought that yellow would work better in this instance, it is something around that.
Nadia Nagamootoo 43:14
Yes. Thank you so much, Sue, it has been an absolute pleasure to take a deep dive into your book, even though we've only skimmed the surface of it, I feel because there’s so much in there. If listeners out there have not read your book, I highly recommend getting a copy. How could they reach out to you? Where are you? Are you on social media?
Sue Unerman 43:35
I'm @SueU on Twitter, it’s probably the best place. So yeah, the @ and then SueU.
Nadia Nagamootoo 43:42
Brilliant. Well, the links as always, to everything that Sue and I have spoken about are going to be on the usual page, Avenirconsultingservices.com under podcasts.
Sue Unerman 43:53
And I'm excited about your book, when is it out?
Nadia Nagamootoo 43:55
Oh, thank you. In theory, if all goes well, with me handing it to the publisher in a couple of months’ time then it will be March or April next year.
Sue Unerman 44:03
Fantastic. I look forward to it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 44:04
Thank you so much, Sue. Take care. That concludes Episode 32 of Why Care. There is so much to take away from this conversation when it comes to naming the deeply embedded societal stereotypes that prevent belonging, and what organisations should be doing to create collective ownership and accountability. Do let Sue and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn, Insta, and Twitter with the handle @Nadia Nagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast by leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening to and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks to Kenji Productions for editing this podcast and Glory Olubori for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
