Why Care?#33: Amri Johnson -Reconstructing Inclusion
“So when we introduce terms that I would consider almost protest, in opposition to long held social constructs, and in the case like Woman X, what most people consider biological realities, they will be fought against, tooth and nail, the results is not moving the conversation and our actions forward, but it rather leaves us stuck in a contentious reincarnation cycle that we can’t transcend because of all of the resistance of one group and the attachment of the other. So, if we are working with organisations, we can be in dialogue about the shared language we use for DEI, and we can use obscure words that have internal meaning. We can choose to use these words but imposing them on someone because of our passion, isn’t helpful and it is generally distracting. So, we have to be mindful about how we use the language. If we are going to use them, we need to come to some understanding around how we are using them, what context we are in, so that we can use them in a way that actually helps, and not get in the way of the transformational potential this work holds.”
In Episode 33, I am joined by Amri Johnson, CEO and Founder of Inclusion Wins, to discuss the dangers of being led only by emotion and not reason, the dangers of being led by passion and not skill, and what DEI practitioners and organisations need to do to sustain DEI efforts.
Amri’s DEI journey has spanned for over two decades and is based on his experiences as a social capitalist, epidemiologist, entrepreneur, consultant, inclusion strategist, a podcaster and author of Reconstructing Inclusion. It was his experience in management that steered him towards inclusive leadership, organisational development and organisational effectiveness. This experience made him realise that learning and leading go hand-in-hand, and that a true leader, listens, learns and cares for their people. As such, Amri has set out to create cultures from the hearts of individuals. His goal is to engage all people as leaders, to foster the opening of their minds and deepen their skill sets, enabling them to thrive and to consistently contribute their best to the organisation.
Amri shares his motives for writing ‘Reconstructing Inclusion’; how this was centred on the health disparities he witnessed in his work and on his mission to create, design and develop inclusion systems that will help bridge this gap, and in doing so, build organisations that are fit for change and creating the future. To achieve this, he warns us against being emotion-driven, but rather more reason-driven. He uses the narrative after the case of George Floyd to best explain this. There was a lot of reaction and not action taken, it was more on what people were feeling in the moment and not about what they wanted to create in the future. The danger that lies here is that there were demands made on the people whom were felt to be responsible. He relates this back to the DEI work, and how there is a lot about systems orientation but not a lot on what changing the systems require.
As he explains in his book, rightness will never transform anything. Being right might give us a certain level of moral superiority but it is not getting us anywhere, because if we want to create and transform our societies, superiority is not what we need, unity is what we need instead. If there aren’t people with diverse backgrounds in an organisation to challenge decision makers, it can be destructive for the company in the long run. Amri shares that we need to address these tensions affirmatively and with intention, to create something that is more sustainable. As Amri mentions, organisations tend to get things wrong when they focus solely on making DEI efforts and not on sustaining these efforts.
He offers advice on what organisations and DEI practitioners need to do to sustain these efforts:
1) Organisations: have to ensure that DEI is aligned with their organisational purpose, mission and strategy.
2) Organisations: need to consistently and normatively create the conditions for people to thrive in.
3) Practitioners: need to understand that they can choose to use certain, new DEI terms, but this must not be imposed on others, as this will in fact get in the way of the transformational potential this work holds.
4) Both: have to be constantly learning. If we are focused on othering somebody, we are not willing to be influenced by them, and as such, we can’t all thrive because it is that openness that creates possibility.
5) Both: need to get better in getting into people’s inner worlds. Empathy alone is incomplete and won’t get us there, but perspective-taking is the gateway to us understanding each other.
It is about not jumping to conclusions but about being curious because we are multi-layered, and the more curious we are, the more we understand those layers, and as this relatedness grows, so does the possibility for empathy.
Links:
Amri can be found on:
- Podcast
- Book
For more from Inclusion Wins, you can visit their website at: https://inclusionwins.com/
Transcript
Amri Johnson 00:00
The whole idea of this work is to build an understanding together so that we can get to someplace that we collectively believe creates the conditions for everyone to thrive. And if you don't believe that that's possible, then you'll be closed. I use a lot of definitions for inclusion. And one of them is a willingness to be influenced by the so-called other. Now, if you are othering somebody and you're not willing to be influenced by them, you're not really creating the conditions for people to thrive. You're not even creating the conditions for you to thrive yourself, because it's that openness that creates possibility, it’s not this notion that I know and you don't. I don't like to use the word ignorant too much, but that's close to your level of ignorance, because there's no way we can know all that needs to be known for us to do this work effectively, we have to be constantly learning.
Nadia Nagamootoo 00:54
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 33 of Why Care. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. I'm so thrilled to have fellow DEI practitioner and inspirational leader, Amri Johnson on the show. Amri is the founder and CEO of Inclusion Wins, and the author of the book, Reconstructing Inclusion, Making DEI Accessible, Actionable and Sustainable. He's a social capitalist, epidemiologist, entrepreneur, and inclusion strategist. And he's one of the few DEI practitioners I know who really works at the systemic transformational level that we need for true change. In our conversation, we talk about the state of DEI, the pushback we're currently experiencing as a field, and why. We also discuss what DEI practitioners need to offer and what we need to do in order to ensure DEI isn't a platitude. Amri entertains with his fascinating story of the monoculture of bananas, as an analogy of the need to be intentional about our DEI efforts. We also talk about the challenge of ever-changing DEI language, and the importance of perspective-taking, as a path towards empathy. I have to say, this is one of the most intellectually stretching, stimulating, and philosophical conversations I've had on Why Care to date. Amri is so engaging in his storytelling, and also, in how he so deeply reflects on human behaviour, and the patterns of relational dynamics. Enjoy.
Hello, Amri, I am absolutely delighted to have you on the Why Care podcast. Thank you so much for joining me.
Amri Johnson 03:53
So glad to be here, Nadia, I'm looking forward to the dialogue.
Nadia Nagamootoo 03:55
Well, it's not that long that we've met through the group that we're on, in terms of the global DEI network that Andre Darmamin set up. It's just great to have this conversation with you about your book. And I say this with the book in hand, Reconstructing Inclusion, I thoroughly loved it. And thank you very much for writing it. Just so that people out there, the audience who are listening, can get familiar with who you are, and your background, it'd be great just to hear about that from a professional perspective, but also, how you came to write this book.
Amri Johnson 04:35
Thanks, Nadia. How I came to write the book? I'll talk about that. But just a little bit about me. I was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas. For anybody that's ever been to Topeka or knows about the history of Topeka, Kansas, that history influenced me a lot. My father was a part of integrating public schools in Topeka. Topeka, as a lot of people don't know has demographics that are very close to the US demographics. So, for all intents and purposes, I grew up in a microcosm of America. And so, I was able to see its darkness and its light. And so, I love Topeka, but I also know that there are things about Topeka that have kept people from being able to thrive and fully manifest their potential. It's very much the way I see the world is that the world is always in this yin and yang dynamic, and we're going to see the dark and the light. And both are important. And both are really valuable for us to utilise in doing the work that we do. I left Topeka, went to school in Atlanta, and did a lot of different things before graduate school, including teaching in the public school system, which was the hardest job I've ever had. And then I started my public health career, and worked mostly in community-based work, I taught people in communities how to use epidemiological software. I did outbreak investigations, and eventually worked in community-based public health, working in low-income housing and substance abuse prevention. All of those jobs taught me that the community, the people always have a different level of intelligence than the practitioner. And the practitioner is always there to learn with and ask questions of those who already know. And so that's a perspective that I've taken into the work. I learned a lot through those interactions. I also, quite honestly, was really bad at being a manager.
I became a manager young in my career and I think that's what catapulted me into the leadership, organisational effectiveness, and organisational development space. And I got obsessed and ended up through my public health work and work in health disparities and health equity in the more corporate DEI space, combining that with my obsession about creating organisations that are fit for changing and creating the future. As far as the book is concerned, I guess I can go back almost to 2018. Because I've been doing this work for so long, I had a lot of things in my head, and I started a theory of change when I was still inside of the pharmaceutical company, Novartis. In the research division, I started up the D&I efforts there in 2009. Then I started framing the book, as I was exiting Novartis, my wife was pregnant, I knew I was ready for what was next, I knew I was going to exit from Novartis. And so, I started outlining the book in my head, the pre-framing, and then I did the outline really, in early 2019, before my son was born. And then I started really writing the book from my in-laws’ dining room table in Spain, in the summer of 2019. Their second home is in Galicia, Spain, so I was there in the summer of 19, early in the morning, getting up and writing the book.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:58
Oh, that's just picturesque. I'm thinking, wow, I need some sunshine when I'm writing.
Amri Johnson 08:03
It's awesome. And you can look out the window and see the ocean, Nadia, you couldn't have a better place. I felt really like a writer, I had writer's block and everything.
Nadia Nagamootoo 08:13
I know exactly what that feels like.
Amri Johnson 08:15
Yeah, you're in the middle. I'm looking forward to hearing more and reading your book as well. So originally, I aimed to talk about with a certain amount of depth, my theory of change that's at the heart of my work. That's creating systems, what I call inclusion systems, designing and developing those. Cultural intelligence and all that comes with that, including metacognitive skills, thinking about context, perspective taking, as well as understanding the dynamics of our identities. And then lastly, it was around building social capital. It was around social networks, it was around bridging social capital, social network analysis, organisational network analysis, and value network analysis.
And of course, building community beyond the bonds that are closest to us, or most familiar, and where we have the greatest affinities. So that was the original intent and that got in the book but not to the extent that it probably would have. What really pivoted for me and changed for me is during the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. I was here in another country in the middle of that pandemic, so it was a very different perspective that I had. And I might not have had the same perspective if I was still living in the US but I was listening to the rhetoric and I honestly became disenchanted with the tenor of the dialogue to the extent that I wasn't sure if I'd stay in the space. I doubted it, and I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do, if that's what the work was.
Nadia Nagamootoo 09:44
Explain that a little bit more. What was it about what you heard that made you question?
Amri Johnson 09:49
There's a poem in The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, and he talks about passion and reason. And there was a lot of passion. And emotions are a sense-making vehicle, we needed to have those emotions, the ground was shaking, and people were palpably feeling what was going on. And we weren't necessarily using reason to make sense of that, of what we were feeling. So that we could actually get to a point where we can use the passion and the reason in a way that had us thinking about what we wanted to create in the future, rather than what we are feeling right now and what we wanted to make demands of. And so, the result of that was, we made demands of people that we felt were the ones responsible on an individual basis or a group basis. And we started in a way, categorising groups, as if they were monolithic notions, just like we don't want people to do about the groups that as people of colour, we're a part of. And that to me was a little bit of a red flag because I was like, ‘we've been here before, and this has not really worked’. And so, I got quiet, I actually stayed a lot quieter on that front than I probably would have if I had been in the US, and didn't really get into the anti-racism, social, and racial justice work, as a lot of my colleagues did. Because I just felt something wasn’t clear. And it was a lot about almost playing out our emotions and our own trauma with clients, which is a little challenging, and maybe even a bit dangerous.
Nadia Nagamootoo 11:27
Yeah, quite a lot that’s provocative in your book, which is actually one of the things I really loved about it. But you do call out, in fact, this wealth of new DEI practitioners that are working in the space since 2020. And you say, ‘People have been using their lived experience to build personal brands with the intention of transformation. It is hard to understand what qualifies many of these emergent experts to lead organisations through the complexity.’ And I thought, ‘Yes, you know what? That is spot on’. So many DEI practitioners, people with real intentions, often, almost always have a personal connection to wanting to see change. And I get it, their lived experience alone isn’t necessarily enough to create the change that we actually need to see in the world. So, what is it that we need from DEI practitioners then, in terms of skill, in terms of qualities, in terms of their being, in order to actually warrant the amount that they're being paid?
Amri Johnson 12:29
I don't know if I can talk about what people are being paid. I mean, if a company was willing to give it to them for whatever reason, they were willing to give it to them. So, more power to them. What I think is a lot of this work lacks nuance and long-term thinking. And so, there was a lot of conversation about systems orientation, a lot of talk about systemic but not a lot of talk about what changing systems requires. And so, in too many cases, there was a lot of willingness, and a lot of passion, but not a lot of skill. And it's hard, it's a really hard thing to do. So, I had been doing this for decades, and I still don't know if I knew how to do it, that I was the expert, that I could come in, and I can make social justice and racial justice happen in organisational life, particularly for large organisations and even small ones. And there were people that were making this claim. And I felt like it was great personal branding but it wasn't necessarily being completely honest and having a lot of integrity behind it. And to me, when you do that, it’s dangerous. And what it does is it leaves you open to people seeing chinks in the armour, and then swooping in, in a way to exploit it for their own gain.
So, you see the silly politicians, that's what's happening now. So, it was almost like we were setting ourselves up for the level of attack that we're getting now. And now we're pushing back on the attack because we don't want to seem like we're wrong. But we're not necessarily doing the reflection about how we were causing the matter of why this attack is happening the way it's happening right now. Now, some people would argue with me and say, ‘Hey, that's just what systemic racism does.’ And they might absolutely be right. But if you were really trying to create the conditions for social and racial justice to come about, you take that potential backlash into consideration, and you plan with it, and you almost use it as almost like, “Oh, well, we can do this dance’, rather than constant resistance. That lack of willingness to be influenced by the so-called other, particularly those vehemently against what we call DEI. I think we miss something when we're not open and we don't automatically go on the defensive like politicians combating against their opposing party. I don't think that that's what a good practitioner, an effective practitioner does.
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:55
I completely hear that. Because I think one of the challenges as a DEI practitioner is, because it is personal, because there is emotion there, there's almost that element of needing to hold, recognise, reflect, understand where that's coming from so that you're not constantly fighting the good fight. And is that what you mean, when you talk about the attack towards DEI, that's very current now? Maybe you could expand a little bit about, what are you hearing in terms of the pushback on DEI. And where does that come from?
Amri Johnson 15:29
Well, there's a variety of places that the pushback comes from. On the access of silliness, it's about, let's go after critical race theory and say, make a bunch of false claims about it being taught in public schools in the US. And draw into a misunderstanding about what it is and what it isn’t, and use that for political gain and for people being indignant about their children getting taught about this, that, or the other. We can say that as well about the sexual orientation and the trans narrative right now. So that's one part, that silliness that's for gain on the political side. The other side I see is those who are advocates for DEI for the community that they represent, whether it be around race or gender, and not being fully honest about what that is either. I'll use racial justice, a lot of the racial justice conversation to me is about grievance and deficit. It's not about agency and possibility. I'm not saying that we shouldn't talk about history.
Absolutely. We need to learn about history. But there are also communities that are doing really well and don't necessarily have the same view of systemic racism as those who are practising social justice. Those views should be taken into account. There are people in the UK, and there are people in the US that talk about this and they get attacked. They don't get welcomed into a real dialogue, it becomes about protecting my territory, so you don't put any chinks in my armour. And I’m like, ‘Look, there are chinks in my armour, and there are going to be more, and if I don't see those chinks, and sometimes if I don't just let go of the armour, I can’t really learn to be engaging in transformation with the people that say that they desire that.’ That's the dishonesty I think that happens in politicians, sometimes it happens in practitioners. We see what's happening in the trans community, and those people that are trans that have been writing policy around trans for decades, have a particular really well-thought-out understanding of where we are. And then somebody who might have become trans in the past 5 or 6 years, they become the predominant voice about that. I don't think that that's the right balance, I think it should be a real dialogue about the pros and the cons of some of the narratives that are coming out.
The pushback has been a certain amount of silliness on the politicians, the incompleteness, and sometimes moderate dishonesty amongst practitioners. But that third place that I feel like we haven’t entered into is to have a real dialogue, instead of standing on our particular positions and saying that we're right. And I say this in the book, and I say it a lot, Nadia, rightness has never transformed anything, and it never will. And if we continue in that space of being, having the desire to be right because it either scores points on social media, or makes us feel a certain amount of moral superiority, we're lost. And when I talk about platitudes, those things bore me honestly, they're not getting us anywhere. And we can really, as I say in the book, DEI can die a death of 1000 platitudes, simply because we haven't gone any deeper than the recurrent narratives that keep pulling us back to contention, not with an intention of transformation, but with the intention of being right and therefore being stuck.
Nadia Nagamootoo 18:59
Yeah, that’s spot on. And I am concerned that the space in which we need to be working in is so huge, and we're working in a tiny, tiny little corner of that space. And it's just not enough. And this is what I got from your book, right? It really expands the systems approach. As a DEI practitioner, I really appreciated that. But also, through some great storytelling. I have to say, I love your sense of humour, and I love the genius analogies in your book. And one of them, which I have to say stands in my mind even now and I'm sure it will forevermore. So, you relate DEI to bananas. Just for the listeners, can you please explain your banana story?
Amri Johnson 19:45
Yeah, I probably should explain it. Well, maybe I shouldn't, just go buy the book. Because I'm just wildly curious, I'm reading about a lot of things all the time. And I started thinking about a lot of people who have seen diversity as almost a nice to have. And I wanted to acknowledge that that's a perspective. But I also wanted to acknowledge that diversity, managing the tension of similarities and differences is a little more difficult to deal with. It's not as easy as dealing with people that are mostly like you. And I'm talking both cognitively and by identity. If you address those tensions, and complexities of similarity and difference affirmatively and with intention, it creates something a lot more sustainable. And so monocultural orientation in the growing of bananas has led to blight. So, these bananas don't have any variety. And if one gets a particular fungus, they all get wiped out. And they can get wiped out across the supply chain.
So, it's not just happening in one place, it just eventually happens at all the places that are growing that particular strain of banana, it's happened in the past. And we're still in the space of cultivating the same Cavendish banana all over the world. It's very monocultural. It's working. But in the 1950s, it was working too with the Gros Michel. And so, the same dynamics in organisational life can happen just as with the banana plantation, metaphorically, that if we don't intentionally curate, or cultivate a greater understanding of what diversity looks like and how we have greater sense-making as a result of it, we could create that monocultural dynamic and it will hit you when you least expect it. Nobody thinks they're going to get blight, organizationally, or metaphorically, but you can, oftentimes without knowing it. Let's think about some companies like Arthur Andersen. Arthur Andersen didn't have… You remember Arthur Andersen; they were part of the Big 5. And they were very focused on profit, and things that a lot of organisations are focused on.
But are you understanding your role in the greater ecosystem of the world? Not just business, but of the world? And how many different systems you're interacting with and how you can impact them if you're not doing your business with a level of integrity that's consistent. And you don't have people in your company from these diverse backgrounds, that are going to challenge some of the wisdom, if you can call it that, that's being put forth amongst the decision makers of that organisation. You don't have people challenging your decision-makers to make sense, you're just passing down tasks to take action. Those actions over time from those decision makers that weren't being challenged, and doing sense-making with somebody with a different perspective, created a lot of destruction for a lot of people. And so, we can prevent that monocultural thinking, those monocultural ways of being, by being very intentional about our DEI efforts in their grandest sense of the term DEI.
Nadia Nagamootoo 22:54
Yeah. Your stories always have a really powerful point. And I found the storytelling so compelling in your book. Let's move on to language and DEI, because I hear from so many leaders, when I'm facilitating workshops, that it’s probably one of the main things that holds them back. There's a fear that it's constantly evolving, it's constantly changing, and there seem to be new terms introduced all the time. You do raise this in your book, and you've mentioned the term, women x. And that's a term that's introduced to be more inclusive, so anyone who identifies as female. How do we strike this balance of offering new terms when it's clear that it will be more inclusive versus as a DEI practitioner and just adding all these new terms in, and just people switching off because it's just too hard?
Amri Johnson 23:47
I think DEI class of humans; we have a tendency to do stuff for each other. Like we're trying to like, ‘Oh, that's a deep word’, right? And so, the people that we really want to engage with, they're like, ‘Oh, should I say that?’ And then they go out to the regular world of people, and they're like, ‘Well, that's weird’. Here's the tension. We actually need specialised language. It's important. It takes people into spaces that they can't go to when the language is more generic. And so, when we introduce terms as what I would consider almost protest, in opposition to long-held social constructs, in a case like women x, what most people consider biological realities, they'll be fought against tooth and nail. The results would not lead us to more conversations and move the conversation and the dynamics and our actions forward but it might leave us stuck in a contentious I'd say, reincarnation cycle, that we can't transcend because of all the resistance of one group and the attachment of the other.
So, if we feel like organisations, if we're working with an organisation or inside of an organisation, and we feel like we can be in dialogue about the shared language for DEI, and we can use obscure words that have internal meaning. Even words that have been introduced by those in the field, we can choose to use them but imposing them on someone because of our passion, isn't helpful, and it's generally distracting. So, we have to be very mindful of how we use the language. There's no wrong language. I mean, we're making up words all the time. And if we're going to use them, we need to come to some common understanding and sense-making around how we're using them, what situation and context we're in, so that we can use them in a way that actually helps, not gets in the way of the transformational potential that I think the work holds, if we're aiming for that at least.
Nadia Nagamootoo 25:49
Yeah. And I think even as a DEI practitioner, often it's hard to keep up with this evolution of language.
Amri Johnson 25:57
Absolutely. I feel old, honestly. Somebody said, ‘If you don't know this word, you're not worth your salt as a practitioner’. I was like, ‘Oh, I better look that up’. I have no idea what that means. So, I went, and I was like, ‘Oh, I know what that means, I just didn't know what that acronym was.’
Nadia Nagamootoo 26:16
Yeah, the term, ‘woke’, it’s not that long that it's been out there and people have been using it. What's interesting and fascinating is that it then ends up having negative connotations to it. And is that a result of people not understanding? Is it a result of the emotions that it evokes? Or is it another example of the backlash on DEI?
Amri Johnson 26:43
Using the woke one is one of those examples of, it got kind of usurped. Being woke was just a certain amount of awareness about things that we should all be mindful of. We should all be mindful of when there's gross injustice in the world, that's not something that we should not be woke about. If you're not woke about that, you're probably just not very humanist, you're not very interested in humanity. When humanity is suffering, we all need to be woke about that. And if you're not, you either just don't care or you don't think it impacts you, but it's a threat to everybody. So that's where the original notion was. And yeah, words get taken all the time. But what happened with the wokeness was people started saying, ‘I'm woke, and basically, they're not. They need to wake up.’ Like they were sleeping, we were the ones that were way more awake than the others because we're social justice warriors or whatever. There's a level of depth that even if you're a social justice warrior, you probably haven't necessarily gone to the level of depth that you could go to.
And so, do you really think that you're so much wiser and so much deeper than somebody else that doesn't necessarily share the language, understanding, beliefs, and practices that you share? But the reality is, they're at a place that you're not either. And the whole idea of this work is to build understanding together so that we can get to someplace that we collectively believe creates the conditions for everyone to thrive. And if you don't believe that that's possible, then you'll be closed. I use a lot of definitions for inclusion. And one of them is a willingness to be influenced by the so-called other. Now, if you are othering somebody and you're not willing to be influenced by them, you're not really creating the conditions for people to thrive. You're not even creating the conditions for you to thrive yourself, because it's that openness that creates possibility, it’s not this notion that I know and you don't. I don't like to use the word ignorant too much, but that's close to your level of ignorance, because there's no way we can know all that needs to be known for us to do this work effectively, we have to be constantly learning.
Nadia Nagamootoo 28:52
Yeah. Thank you for expanding on that, I completely agree. It does seem a challenge with human nature, to be looking at what I have and what you don't have or what you do differently. That comparison, always benchmarking, my level of wokeness compared to your level of wokeness, it just doesn't seem helpful in any way, and it doesn't even seem relevant also.
Amri Johnson 29:16
It’s the biggest reason we suffer, Nadia. If you think about why people suffer, comparison is particularly potentially the biggest reason we suffer. And so, if I'm comparing myself, even comparing myself now to when I was 20-something, like the things that I could do fitness-wise, I can't do them the same way I did them back then, for example. That comparison can create suffering when we get attached to our rightness or our belief system or our passion or what we think our identity is at any particular moment, even sometimes that can even get in the way. That's a deeper conversation but it makes things harder when we stay in comparison mode.
Nadia Nagamootoo 29:56
Agreed. In your book, you deconstruct to then reconstruct, right? That's the principle. So just to shine a light on something you deconstructed, which I found particularly fascinating, which was encouraging people to have empathy as a way of understanding someone else. So why is that problematic? Because actually, a lot of the work that we have been doing as DEI practitioners is to try and to have that empathy through understanding someone else's perspective, by trying to listen to their story and walk in their shoes. So, what do you suggest instead?
Amri Johnson 30:33
Now, I want to be clear, empathy is important. And so, it's important when you can manifest it. And so, a lot of times we think we're getting at empathy because we have listened to the experiences, the embodied and lived experiences of people, and we've become more related, or we had an upgraded relationship with somebody because we can empathise. And so that's important. But I think it's not so easy. Because we have our own biases and experiences that intersect with them. So, even when we're thinking we're empathising, our own experiences and emotions in context is playing a role in how we empathise. So, I don't think it's like, ‘I can empathise or I can't empathise’, it's like, ‘I can empathise, but recognising that that empathy is likely incomplete as much as we think we understand or feel’. So, you might feel something but do I know exactly that I'm feeling it the same way that this so-called other is? So, empathy is important when you can get it. But I think perspective-taking, allows us to learn how we can get to empathy in a way.
So, we're always generating hypotheses about people, but we're rarely going from hypothesis generation to testing and asking questions to better understand where people are coming from. I say, work with empathy when you can. And it's really hard. And know that despite all one's desire to empathise, it's not always, at least not immediately accessible. So, I like to take note of what's emerging, both mentally, cognitively, and emotionally, and then generate questions to be curious about where this person is and where they're located at a particular point in time, which usually can get me a little closer to empathy. But I still keep generating hypotheses, and I keep being curious because we're multi-layered. And the more we get curious, the more we can understand those layers. And then as that relatedness grows, the possibility for empathy is, to me a lot easier. So once I spend more time with somebody, I take this perspective, I ask these questions, I don't jump to conclusions, I come to conclusions with the so-called other rather than on my own because I feel a certain way, even though I know that that feeling is incomplete. So, perspective-taking could be a gateway to empathy. Once you've developed that relationship, I think you have a better chance of being more consistent and being able to empathise in a meaningful way.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:05
Yeah. And I love that because we talk about empathy as if it's just something really easy to achieve. Like you just listen to someone and then you can empathise. And what you've just said, is actually not that simple. And just simply listening doesn't necessarily mean that you can truly empathise with their position.
Amri Johnson 33:27
It's a contextual thing, Nadia. I think we spend a lot of time on content more than context. So, you hear something and you think you've understood a context. You could look at me, I'm a black man, I have on a Muhammad Ali T-shirt. Why do I have that Muhammad Ali T-shirt? A lot of times it’s because of my dad. Because my dad was my hero, and Muhammad Ali was one of his heroes. My dad would oftentimes have certain expressions, my dad boxed. I don't have a T-shirt of my dad, I can't find a picture that I would really want to put on there, maybe generative AI will help me with that, I'll work on that. But that context leaves me saying, ‘Muhammad Ali fought for justice, but Muhammad Ali was a Universalist. He was extremely passionate about the black community, but he was also compassionate about humanity.’
And so that perspective, can you empathise with Mohammed Ali from the stories that he's told? To some extent. But there are things that you just could never really fully understand from being a global icon, that you couldn't empathise with Muhammad Ali. You could think you could, but until you were in a more direct relationship with him, having conversations about some of his inner worlds, asking him questions, and being curious, you wouldn't fully understand. That’s what I feel like we can do better, is get into people's inner worlds with each other. Because we're influencing each other all the time, and we're influencing the ecosystems that we exist in together, and then we still don't fully understand, because we've changed. I'm a black man living in Switzerland, the way that I occurred to myself in the US is different than the way that I occurred to myself here. So contextually, things changed for me in the way that I think. And the way that I see the world and interact with it is different here. So, I can change, when I go back to the US, I shift. It's pretty fascinating.
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:31
It's so complex, isn't it? That's just one individual. We're just talking about you, let alone anyone else that you come across, and the world. I mean, that's the challenge as a DEI professional, that we're trying to support leaders in organisations to navigate the complexity of who they are as individuals, and the complexity then of that system, because they are part of a system, and therefore every single individual that they come across has their own little bubble of complexity that they're walking with, that interacts with your own. And when you've got 23456 more people in a room, that's a huge amount to navigate that complexity of who we are as humans, what we're carrying, our values, our beliefs, the way that we see the world, and what we're feeling.
Amri Johnson 36:19
Lots of patterns get formed. And there are patterns that you just have to make sense of together because you can't see them all. Some are more relevant than others. And those interactions, they're always projecting something that we can't see. And the only way we can start to see it is together, we can't do it without engaging together. So, you can do all the empathising you want, but you're not necessarily going to be accurate.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:41
Yeah. You give an example, actually, of working with a particular team, in your book. And I loved it because you took a long-term approach. And the approach was primarily observation, observation of that team, the system that they're working in, the decision making, offering them feedback to help build their awareness of the system, so that they could see the invisible. I suppose, making it visible through your observation, through offering that feedback. I wonder how, as DEI practitioners, when you have an organisation, whether you're an external practitioner, and it's a client, or whether you're working internally, and it's your senior leaders, they want quick wins often, they want some DEI training. Yeah, let's just train everyone up. How do you influence, I suppose is the question, towards a long-term approach, one that we know will have that sustainable, longer-term value around DEI, but the organizations may not necessarily be willing to go there?
Amri Johnson 37:45
Yeah, that's hard. Because even if you might remotely believe that just doing training, full stop doesn't help, it's hard to understand something that your paycheck depends on you not understanding, that comes from Upton Sinclair. So, that tension is one where you have to lean into your relationship-building skills, and you have to have a contract with your client very clearly about what you want to create. And so, when I did a long-term approach, there was a contract with them. I said, ‘Hey, look, I'm going to come in and sit down and observe. I'm going to try to be as objective as possible, but the minute that I observe you, you're going to change.’ So, knowing that I'm going to show what you're doing and not doing, and let you process what it means, and what the people that, for example, came in to present to you process what it means with you. So, this is multiple loops in their overall collective learning. Now, this was an internal intervention, so it's a little easier. When you're doing this with clients, if you're doing learning, you have to have a contract about what that learning looks like. We all need education, but training full stop, it doesn't work in many places, unless you're learning a discrete skill, maybe like CPR, or something.
So, training works in those situations. But when you're trying to learn relational dynamics and skills, you can be very clear that it doesn't work. And it doesn't necessarily serve you in the long term, and in fact, many times get in the way. So if you're clear that DEI training in that sense, we're going to do something one-off doesn't work, and what we're trying to get to in terms of a set of capabilities and skills, that would allow you all to consistently and normatively create the conditions for people to thrive, regardless of what changes come about in the organisation, I think you have a lot better chance of gaining your client’s trust and having a more sustainable business. And if they don't want to do that, you have to be like, ‘Hey, look, here's what my experience is’. I'm going to tell people upfront because it is hard but if you're not honest with your clients about what this can create, not to make them wrong or to get more business, but just to say, ‘Here's what I hear you want, and here's what I think this will give you, and there's a disconnect. What do you really want? How can we get there?’ That's usually my job to put up those mirrors so that they eventually can hold the mirrors themselves.
Nadia Nagamootoo 40:05
Yeah. And you use a star model in your book, where you offer, strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and people. So, just explain that star model. And how do you use that in your work?
Amri Johnson 40:19
Well, this is from Galbreath’s Star model in organisational design. So that's really where that comes from. I don't own that. And there are lots of different organisational design methods. I think the most important thing, and I talk about this in the book is, if you want to sustain your efforts, they have to be aligned with organisational purpose. That can be a mission, that can be a strategy, but your strategy should be about creating your purpose and actually creating what you need for the future. And so, the star model, when you look at it, you'll see that if you embed and look at inclusion and diversity, equity in your strategy, then, everything else will follow. So, the way you structure your organisation, the way you interact and share information, there are equitable dynamics. And that is the way you reward intrinsically, and how do you motivate intrinsic rewards, so that people see that this is something beyond what I'm going to get on the outside?
And then of course, all your people processes from the moment you touch somebody in the candidate experience when they hear about you, all the way through their employee experience when they exit the organisation, that should be informed by principles that you consider creating the conditions for people to thrive. So that's how I use the star model with clients in a truncated version. But I think the most important thing is, where does DEI live in your strategy? And if it doesn't, why doesn't it? And is it prioritised to such an extent that the organisation says that it must be? And if it's not, it's probably not unambiguously prioritised, even if it's prioritised with a star that has a platitude at the bottom of the page. Because that’s oftentimes what happens if it's ambiguous, it's just a nice thing to look at on the wall, but nothing of substance.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:08
Exactly. Amri, we're coming to the end of our conversation. And I've got so many more questions to ask you, but…
Amri Johnson 42:16
You can bring me back.
Nadia Nagamootoo 42:19
I can, and that’s the beauty of having a podcast show. You will absolutely be back on at some point. So, as you know, I'm writing a book and it's called Beyond Discomfort. I'm interested in something that's been uncomfortable for you in working in this DEI space. As a DEI leader, what has come up for you? And how have you navigated that?
Amri Johnson 42:40
Well, I'm probably a little more conservative than most people know. I grew up in Topeka, Kansas as I said earlier. My mother was a, I like to joke she's a card-carrying Republican. My father was a business owner. So, he was a lot more of a, I would say independent business owner. They both voted for Reagan, I can say that now. My dad used to say, ‘When the Republicans are in office, my business does better’. And I was like, wow. And my parents are very devout Christians. My father has passed now, but my mother is a devout Christian, very highly educated. I've been extremely privileged. So, the way that I see the world sometimes, and the way that some of the rhetoric around DEI comes up, I think it's just incomplete. It's very deficit oriented. And I've just seen greatness in my family. And I've seen greatness in a lot of communities of colour. And I don't think we talk about them enough, almost like we don't feel comfortable talking about them, we'd rather talk about marginalisation. And if I was to look at myself as marginalised, maybe I've experienced racism. I'm a black man, of course, I've had people do little silly stuff towards me. But I also have enough agency to be like, ‘Oh, that's silly stuff’. And so, I just overcame it.
And I think that's a narrative that needs to be woven in and through for the next generation to believe that they can work through this, just like a lot of people in history have worked through it. And that this is a nihilistic world, that you're not going to win because you're from a particular group, or you are a particular skin tone, etc. So that's where I struggle. I struggle a lot with the way a lot of the racial justice work has been done. And I don't always talk about it, because I don't feel safe to do it, even amongst colleagues that I know in the past at least, some even family members that I know have cared for me, but they're not willing to have a real conversation about the pros and cons of a particular way of looking at the world without a more robust framing. And so that's my biggest challenge.
Nadia Nagamootoo 44:47
Thank you very much for sharing it with me and all the listeners. I do have one final question to spring on you, which is, I'm just curious, has your wife now watch The Wizard of Oz?
Amri Johnson 44:59
No, she hasn’t. My son's only 4. It's a little scary, so he can't really watch it. And she gets scared of stuff, too. Don't tell her I said that, Oh, this is on a podcast. But she doesn't like violent stuff, and some of that, even though it's relatively light, given when it was filmed, we just haven't gotten to it. I think I'm going to start with The Wiz with her. The Wiz has music and she's into music, so I might start there. But no, she hadn't watched it. I'm going to tell her you asked though.
Nadia Nagamootoo 45:32
You can. And then the next time you're on this podcast, I'll ask again. So, Amri, for people who are interested in getting hold of you, you're active on social media, I know that. What channel’s best to get hold of you?
Amri Johnson 45:46
LinkedIn, Amri Johnson, as well as Inclusion Wins. You can go to inclusionwins.com, there's most of the content there. I also have a podcast, The Reconstructing Inclusion podcast, as well as my sub stack also by the same name. So, lots of channels, lots of space, lots of opportunities to engage, and I hope everybody does. And then of course, if you buy the book and read it, share it on social media or share it actually on the platform that you bought it, or give a review, the good, the bad, the ugly, I'm not immune to criticism or praise.
Nadia Nagamootoo 46:20
Thank you so much. I highly recommend it to anyone out there who's listening, please buy Amri’s book. It is insightful, intelligent and just a fresh perspective is what I found. So please do reach out to us. The show notes for this episode are going to be available on the usual page, Avenirconsultingservices.com under podcasts. Amri, I was a huge fan, and I'm even more of a fan if that's possible of you and your work. So, thank you so much for sharing this time with me.
Amri Johnson 46:52
Thank you, Nadia. It was an absolute delight.
Nadia Nagamootoo 46:55
That concludes Episode 33 of Why Care. What an incredible mind Amri has. I feel so privileged to have received his insights and powerful thought leadership, and so pleased to share it with you. I love that he doesn't shy away from saying the hard stuff that people don't always want to hear. Do let Amri and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter with the handle @Nadia Nagamootoo. As always, I appreciate your support of this podcast by leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening to and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Huge thanks to Mauro at Kenji Productions for editing this podcast and Glory Olubori for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
