Why Care?#35: Catherine Garrod - Conscious Inclusion
“So quite often I find all that DEI activities and initiatives is operating without a plan. People don't know what they're aiming for, right? They may have read something on LinkedIn, or they experience something in their previous organisation, or they've read an article somewhere and they go, we should do this. And it kind of ends up being this big shopping list of activity that people are trying to navigate through and find. To your point, even if they do make progress from that slightly chaotic approach, they don't know which thing it was that made the progress. So, it's just kind of scattered… When you're trying to do 100 things at once, sometimes it just feels like you're not doing anything very well at all, this is the same thing. If you can pick one thing that you can look back on in three months, or six months, or 12 months and be like, we nailed it, I feel really good about that.”
In Episode 35, I speak to Catherine Garrod, Founder of Compelling Culture, to discuss the underlying concepts in her book, Conscious Inclusion, the difference between positive action and positive discrimination, why organisations struggle to take a stand against exclusionary behaviour, and the data-led, systematic approach she takes to developing a DEI strategy.
Catherine’s passion for DEI is evident in her career journey, which has spanned for over 15 years in writing, consulting, organisational development, employee engagement and culture change. Her goal is to create a culture where people feel included, where their voice is heard, where they feel empowered and where action is taken to drive sustainable change. She was previously the Head of Inclusion at Sky, where she led them to become the Most Inclusive Employer in the UK, with 80% of teams increasing diversity.
Catherine speaks on why she titled her book as ‘Conscious Inclusion’. This refers to the shift from the unconscious, which controls 90 per cent of our decisions on a daily basis, to the 10 per cent conscious. She wrote her book through a motivation to help organisations turn knowledge and enthusiasm for DEI into practical steps that anyone can apply and adopt, regardless of their position, department, or background. She recounts her experience of toxic masculinity, in the interaction she had with a delivery driver. And this highlighted how organisations can be dismissive instead of being inclusive, and further reiterates the importance in building a culture where people feel safe, validated, and accepted.
As she explains, it is important that the difference between positive action and positive discrimination is understood. Positive discrimination is about hiring minority individuals because of their identities rather than their skills, whereas positive action is about recognising the underrepresentation, ensuring there is no bias in the process, and then creating a work environment that attracts them. Based on this, it is clear that over-representation is the problem and not the lack of diversity in organisations. As such, she addresses how organisations can be conscious about inclusion:
1. Leadership development programs - Equip leaders with the right DEI skills. Ensure that leadership investment is aligned to the organisation’s purpose and values and is generating the right behaviours in leaders.
2. Culture – Create an environment that is a safe place for people to learn how to be inclusive leaders; where they can share their fears, ask questions, be vulnerable and courageous.
3. Message and actions – Organisations should ensure that their messages are in line with their actions, both are equally important in assuring and reassuring their employees that they are committed to DEI.
4. Collaboration – Organisations should ensure that they are building with their employees and not for them. It shouldn’t be about command and control but about listening and protecting their employees’ rights.
5. Plan and use data - There needs to be a framework in place to deliver DEI, organisations should focus on one thing and do this brilliantly. Data acts as a guide to direct organisations on what actions they should take and when.
Links:
Catherine can be found on:
- Newsletter (Crown Jewels and Whoopsie Daisy)
- Book
For more from Compelling Culture, you can visit their website at: https://www.compellingculture.co.uk/
Transcript
Catherine Garrod 00:00
I think for a long time we’ve used, ‘we want to increase diversity’ as the kind of sentence, which puts the label and the problem on that group of people, the people that we haven't yet been currently attracting. Whereas I think the shift in talking about we want to address overrepresentation as an example, actually helps our minds understand the problem that we're trying to solve. It's not about those people, it's around, we've got an overrepresentation issue. So, if we want to build better products and services, if we want to be better at research and design, actually, we really recognise that we need to build some collective intelligence and have all kinds of lived experiences, be that industry experience, be that educational experience, be that your personal demographics and your lived experiences, actually addressing overrepresentation, some of the really biggest awful things in the world that have gone wrong. There have been really super smart, intelligent people who were involved, but they all had a really similar profile. So, when other people that perhaps weren't in that immediate bubble were speaking up and offering another suggestion, it just wasn't being heard. So, I think there's a real subtlety, but it's the overrepresentation that's the problem, not the lack of diversity.
Nadia Nagamootoo 01:20
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, a 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 through sharing life experiences and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe that once we have organisations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Hello, and welcome to Episode 35 of Why Care? My name is Nadia Nagamootoo and I am your host. I'm incredibly excited to speak to Catherine Garrod, founder of Compelling Culture, and author of Conscious Inclusion, How to Do EDI One Decision At A Time, which was published in April this year. Catherine was previously the Head of Inclusion at Sky, where she led the company to become the most inclusive employer in the UK, with 80% of teams increasing their diversity. In this episode, we discussed the distinction between positive action and positive discrimination, why companies don't address bias and exclusionary behaviour, how tackling wealth disparity could hugely accelerate progress in DEI, and why the terms overrepresented and underrepresented may serve us better than using the terms majority and minority groups. One of the things I loved about chatting to Catherine is her down-to-earth, straight-talking and practical nature. She shares so many stories and analogies which help break down the complexity of DEI. There is so much useful knowledge and advice in this episode. Enjoy.
Catherine, it is such a pleasure to have you on the Why Care podcast. Thank you so much for joining me and for everything that you're about to share. I'm incredibly excited to have you.
Catherine Garrod 04:04
Oh, me too. And thank you for having me. It's great to be talking to you.
Nadia Nagamootoo 04:07
I was reflecting on when it was that we last spoke. And whilst we're in the same spheres of DEI, the last time we spoke, you were still working at Sky, right?
Catherine Garrod 04:18
Yeah, a long time ago really.
Nadia Nagamootoo 04:21
It is a long time ago, so much has happened then with your own company, and of course, your amazing book, Conscious Inclusion. So, just to kick off, so that people can get familiar with you and who you are, if you wouldn't mind just sharing your background, but also how you came to write this book?
Catherine Garrod 04:39
Sure. So, I think, like many people, I don't necessarily have a straightforward or obvious career path. Even as a child, I just had this internal sense that the world didn't work fairly for everyone and wanted to do things to make that better. So, I actually spent my first 10 years in childcare and then I spent 15 years in HR. The consistent thread all the way through that was that for people to develop, grow and thrive at their own pace, whether they're very young people at the start of their lives or people in business and in the workplace, the environment has to be good. So, my work background has really been about people's experiences, finding out what the problems are, working out how to address them, and then communicating and bringing people together and listening. So, that's what drives me to it. And then actually working on inclusion itself was when I went to Sky, I was responsible for employee engagement, diversity and inclusion and the Sky forum. So, it was bringing all the worlds together, where we had feedback from employees to make the experience better for everyone.
Nadia Nagamootoo 05:58
What a beautiful insight into who you are and what drives you. So, I get it, I get why this work in DEI floats your boat, why you get excited by it, sounds very similar to me, and absolutely resonates. Tell me, what's the thought behind this book? Why did you decide, ‘I'm going to write this book’?
Catherine Garrod 06:18
Yes, I think I've had this really lovely, rich and varied career, working in lots of different organisations. And I find it fascinating because I'm always learning. But there's just this consistency across all of those different environments, that people are a bit scared of this stuff. They tend to fall into some of the similar traps. They're nervous about doing the wrong thing. They are committed, I don't see a shortage of commitment. Certainly, the organisations that have approached me to do some work together, they're really up for it, and they're just saying, ‘Help! How do we do it? We've got really committed and passionate people. We might be listening to our regulator, for example. We've done some really good things across the organisation, but we just can't yet bring it together and turn it into a plan that we've got confidence in so that we can track our progress.’ So, for me, I've read loads of books by brilliant people, and I've learned tons from them. But I felt like there was a gap. And that gap was, how do you take all that knowledge, enthusiasm and motivation, and turn that into really practical step-by-step simple things that people can do in any department, in any team and in any level? And that's really what the book was about.
Nadia Nagamootoo 07:34
And I love that. And I love actually how you framed the book in a set of decisions. Tell me the thinking behind the language, why not action number 1? You could have used a number of different terms, by way of reference of each of the points that you're making throughout the book, why decision?
Catherine Garrod 07:53
So, I went back and forth between decision and action, but actually, not too much, because the subtitle for the book, so the book is called Conscious Inclusion. And let me just explain that first, actually. So, the reason it's called Conscious Inclusion is because over 90% of our thoughts and decisions that we make every day to navigate our lives are automatic and it's really useful. The work of inclusion is about getting your brain into that more conscious state, which is the 5 or 10%, which recognises that, you don't know everything, it knows that you need to get some research and some feedback, and you need to ask more questions before you make those decisions. So, the overall title is Conscious Inclusion, but the subtitle is, how to do EDI, which is equity, diversity and inclusion, one decision at a time. When multiple people gave me that feedback, I was like, okay, this is the whole point of asking for feedback. I realised that actually, what they were looking for was even more simplicity. And I thought, there's this subtitle on the front called one decision at a time. So, actually, if I can break down those parts, even more, into decisions, it makes it more bite-sized and easier to refer back to later.
Nadia Nagamootoo 09:16
Well, I have to say, I loved the chunking down into decisions, I thought it was incredibly digestible and really accessible. And I could see practically how anyone could pick it up and dip in without feeling overwhelmed. Because I think that there is something, particularly as inclusive leaders, and I work with obviously a lot of leaders who are feeling this sense of, ‘I don't know where to start’, as you’re saying, like, ‘I'm scared. I’m fearful. Am I going to say the wrong thing? Am I going to do the right thing?’. And I really love your storytelling in the book as well. So, quite early on actually, it sits with me, this story of a delivery driver who came to your house and was a bit leery for want of a better word and made you feel uncomfortable. I'm curious about that story. Maybe you can share briefly that story. But what is it that means that organisations allow people like that to get away with inappropriate behaviour?
Catherine Garrod 10:16
So, just to set the scene with the story in brief, this was a regular delivery driver, I’ve spoken to them many times over a period of time. But there was one occasion when I was washing the car on the drive, and the driver had asked me why I didn't take it to the local carwash. And I said, ‘Oh, it can be a little bit intimidating. There's lots and lots of men coming toward you. Sometimes you get a look or a comment, and it's just a bit uncomfortable. So, I just choose to do it at home.’ And that turned quite quickly into what he thought about what I look like and what he'd like to do. And it’s just bizarre. It was really bizarre, frankly. And I was like, you've literally just asked me why I don't do something and then you've done the thing that I've told you is why I don’t go and do something. I was really shocked, and I just focused very much on washing the car and disengaging. They went off on their rounds and then my neighbour came out and I jumped. And there was this short exchange, she said, ‘Are you okay?’ And I said, ‘Oh, this has just happened’. She was like, ‘Oh, that’s not good’. Anyway, I forgot all about it, because you get on with your life. The next time that person knocked on my door was to deliver a parcel, and I was wearing shorts. And their response was, ‘Oh, look at those legs’, as they took a picture of my legs and not the parcel. And then showed me the device and said, ‘I'll be keeping that one’.
Nadia Nagamootoo 11:32
Like I was annoyed when I read the book, I'm even more annoyed hearing it directly from you. So, you challenged them, right? So, at that point, you said, ‘No, this isn't okay, I'm going to contact the company’.
Catherine Garrod 11:43
Initially, I actually responded to the delivery worker. And I just said, ‘That's not okay. You're turning into one of those men that I avoid, that you asked me about last time.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I am one of those men’, and laughed and walked off. And in my rage, I texted my next-door neighbour the exchange that had just happened, which turned out to be quite useful evidence later. She came around and knocked on the door and just said, ‘That's awful, that’s sexual harassment’. She validated my experience, which is really powerful. It's something I've really learned in the work that I do, validating somebody's experience can be very helpful. So, initially, I went to the company and reported it through their usual customer service route. And I just got this, ‘Oh, we're looking into it, it takes us 14 days or something’, type of response. And I pushed quite a lot, you know, in my background, the work that I do. And I was like, ‘I don't think that's appropriate in this circumstance. This person knows where I live, the behaviour has rapidly escalated from the first occasion to the second occasion, what's going to happen next time?’ And I was obviously speaking to somebody who didn't have much power or influence in that organisation. So, they were being kind and friendly about following their process, but it was inadequate.
So, I took to LinkedIn, and I found the senior people and went on Google, and I sent some messages to senior people. And again, initially, I was ignored. So, I kept escalating, I got all the way through to the CEO’s office, and there was an investigation and all that stuff. Meanwhile, the delivery worker kept arriving not only on my street, but I shared the driveway with my next-door neighbour, so, actually, outside my front door. And I always ended up putting trousers on every time somebody knocked on the door after this, because it just kind of shook me. Anyway, long story short, their own internal processes were failing, left, right and centre. So, in the end, I did report it to the police and the police took it really seriously as a safeguarding issue, because obviously, this person knew where I lived and the escalation.
But to come back to your question about why this might happen. A really honest answer is, I don't know. But maybe the people in charge haven't experienced things like this before, so they don't fully understand the kind of fear that that created for me. And so, they just say, ‘Oh, if we ignore it, they'll go away’. Or maybe they're more interested in shareholder value, or the product or the service they deliver than actually the people that they employ, or the product or service, or the people that they're delivering to. But I think there's perhaps a more traditional culture in the organisation of command and control, then maybe they're just not very good at listening. You know, when people speak up and say, there's a problem here, and it's not working, because I was coming at it from a, 1, I want to be protected, but 2, there's some reassurance that is needed here in terms of your staff awareness of what's appropriate when they're going to people's homes, what's the wider implication for everybody in their house, or somebody knocking on their door kind of thing. So, it's very much trying to address the root cause because that's what drives me. But I think maybe if as an organisation you’re not very good at listening to people, then you end up a bit stuck.
Nadia Nagamootoo 14:54
It just riled me so much to hear that story and to know that such minimal attention and action was placed on something incredibly serious, actually. And whilst obviously, we’re shining a light on this particular delivery company, fair enough, but actually, there are many companies out there that are led by people who aren't taking the time to learn about other people's experiences, learn about other people's realities, and then really turning around and saying, ‘Well, I don't think it's a big deal. You're making a big deal out of it.’ The work around inclusive leadership is so important here. So, in thinking about the organisations that are doing something, that are taking action. Now, there are a lot of positive action programmes, there are a lot of organisations that are saying, ‘Right, well, we recognise that there are fewer women in certain places or that ethnic minority individuals face certain barriers over others.’ And I think you talk about this in your book around the benefits of such programs. But there are also some downsides as well of organisations launching into that sort of positive action in order to create an inclusive culture. So, maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Catherine Garrod 16:10
Yeah, for sure. So, I think it's worth just spending a little bit of time talking about the difference between positive discrimination and positive action because they often get mixed up. So, positive discrimination bluntly, is illegal. That is hiring me just because I'm a woman and because you want more women. I mean, organisations would fail if they were doing that, you need to hire me because I've got skills and experiences that are relevant to the job that you're looking for. So, that's the first point. Positive action is more about recognising. Let's just stick with gender for this example. We would like to attract more women into these types of roles. So, it might be technology or engineering, or that kind of thing. And we recognise that what we've been doing so far, perhaps hasn't been working. We might have looked at the language in our job adverts, we might have looked at where we're recruiting, but we just don't see the number of applications. So, what positive action does is it goes further back in the process, and goes, how can we share with women what it's like to work in this organisation? How can we create some informal networks and introduce people to come and meet people in our organisation, so that they can learn about this environment or the particular skill sets that we're looking for?
So, insight sessions might be getting a group together on Zoom. You can very deliberately market a session for the group of people that you haven't yet previously been attracting. You can also build relationships and partnerships with external organisations who do have a really strong network with the people you haven't yet previously been appealing to. And that positive action is all about, you think about sports, you don't wait for a player to get injured before you find their replacement, it's everything you're doing in advance so that you've got this incredible potential reserve bench of talent at the point when you next interview. And then when you've got vacancies for the types of jobs that you've been talking about, you open up that process to everybody. So, you don't say, ‘You can't apply because you're not a woman’. You open up that process to everybody, and then it is a fair and open process. But what you've done beforehand, by warming more people up to your organisation, that perhaps weren't looking at you before, you've just created a greater mix of your likely applications when you do have a vacancy. So, that's just the distinction between positive discrimination and positive action.
In terms of where I've seen it be a bit flimsy and a bit wonky, is when organisations go full steam on trying to address the overrepresentation and increase diversity, but they haven't done the bit that goes, what's the environment like when people turn up? So, if the environment has been predominantly male for a long time, or predominantly white for a long time and you do all of this work to bring people in, that’s great, but you haven't talked about this with all of the people that work in that world, why you're doing it and why it's important. And importantly, how people can help you and get involved to achieve the more inclusive teams in the environment. Then all the previous people, the risk is the message, ‘Well I'm never going to get a job or get promoted again because all they want now is people who aren't like me’. So, always, one of my big messages in the book is whatever you're trying to do, build with and not for. Don't try and solve it all on your own, involve the people who know the environment or the jobs or the industry or whatever it is, share the challenge, get a rich mix of people involved in research and design, and then start to build your solutions.
Nadia Nagamootoo 19:55
Yes. And you talk about the backlash that's potentially there, that is there, that exists in many organisations, having put in place quotas or being just really explicit that we're after more women. And I think that there is what you've described so clearly there that, it's the work that you're putting in beforehand to make sure you've got diverse people in the application process, that you're feeding in potential into the system, whilst also working with the current system so that they know how to receive this.
Catherine Garrod 20:25
I think there's a really important point to be made here that, inclusion is about everybody. So again, the risk is we want more women, and people hear, we don't want any more men. So, actually, in terms of making sure you've got an inclusive environment, it's working with the men and working out what it is that they need, as much as it is around what you need to get more women in as well. So, with inclusion, a big risk is inclusion can become exclusive if you just focus on one group or another group without pulling everybody in together.
Nadia Nagamootoo 20:54
One of the things that stays with me in your book is you share a statistic that the CEO incomes are worth 351 times as much as a typical worker, okay, 351 times the amount of a typical worker. And I love that you bring in how the world economy is related to inclusion, and actually some of the discrepancy in pay. What do you anticipate organisations doing with that? Do you anticipate that CEOs should be reducing their pay to accommodate this discrepancy? Or how do we even start repairing that?
Catherine Garrod 21:33
Yeah, it's a big question. And I think the distribution of wealth is the real inclusion challenge. Because actually, if you look at who benefits the most, and who benefits the least across society, as well as in your organisation, that cuts across every single demographic. So, actually, the more that you've got this huge wealth divide, the more disparities there are in people's lives. And obviously, if you've then got people from diverse groups, it's just worse and worse and worse, it just goes on and on and on. But if you think about the one thing that cuts through everything, I think it is wealth, opportunity and standard of living. There was lots of uniting during the pandemic, in terms of we were all going through this massive global thing together. But it really highlighted the differences and experiences in people's lives and their standard of living. So, I'm not going to pretend to have the answer here, it blows my mind, it’s huge. But one of the things that I encourage, one of the decisions I encourage in the book is, to start tracking your CEO to average worker pay ratio.
Nadia Nagamootoo 22:43
Yes, because a lot of organisations wouldn’t know it, or would they? They wouldn't have calculated it necessarily.
Catherine Garrod 22:47
No. And then use that to influence your pay policy. So, when you're thinking about pay and bonus, and benefits, and all of that, like the total package and the offering that you give for employees, it’s deciding who you're about really, what does that look like? And what are the decisions and the choices that you might make? And it's not about you’re awful, it's terrible, but I really genuinely think data helps people understand what the problem is. If you can be tracking things like that year on year and using it to influence policy, it just drives a different conversation in the committees that are making decisions and choices, back to that word decisions again, around what you might do as an organisation.
Nadia Nagamootoo 23:31
I can imagine that's quite threatening for a CEO, potentially, right? That all of a sudden now the light is being shone on them about how much they're taking home, their take-home pay, and it could end up really backfiring on them. If they give the go-ahead to work out this pay ratio, people are going to be in arms about how much they're taking home, and therefore, feel really disgruntled.
Catherine Garrod 23:58
Yes, I think it is really confronting, you're right. But I think step 1 is to do it in private. I'm not necessarily saying go and post it on your website, but do it in private. As the people leading or governing that organisation, just make that one of the things that you check year on year. And then when you've got to the point of going, ‘Actually, this is the decisions and the choices we want to make, and this is why’. Then you might choose to go more broadly. But step one, do it in private.
Nadia Nagamootoo 24:25
Yeah. This links in a little bit with decision 10, which is around redefining what a good leader is. Because for me, that CEO needs to be another level of good leadership. The CEO needs to be open, humble, really purpose-driven for inclusion. And I don't know how many there are out there quite honestly, who would go that far. And we know that the foundation of leadership is patriarchal. We know because of history, and because of all the research that's been done on what an outstanding leader is, typically, it's been done on men, because the potential subjects of research have been men. So, how do we go about redefining leadership?
Catherine Garrod 25:14
I just want to say as well that I think we've not equipped leaders to do this stuff well, and I think we need to acknowledge that. If I think about the amount of money that gets spent on leadership development, and your top, you know, however many people in the organisation, if being an inclusive leader hasn't been a part of that, then we've not been equipping those leaders to be successful here. So, I think we just have to acknowledge that all of the messaging that leaders are perhaps having until a point in time hasn't included being inclusive. So, I can’t blame the situation that we find ourselves in today. So, that's one thing I want to mention. I also think when you think about, whose careers are people sponsoring? Who's getting nominated for the leadership programmes? We're looking at external norm groups or global norm groups, for example, is that what a good leader looks like in your organisation? Actually, maybe take a step back, look at your own organization's purpose and values, and then really closely look at whether or not your leadership investment is aligned with that, and is generating the right behaviours. So, it's as much about what you need to deliver, of course, but also how you're going to deliver it as well. And I don't see many bonus structures that talk about the day-to-day culture and experience of the people in the organisation or building inclusive teams as an example. So, this is a maturity point, right?
I think that 1, equip leaders with skills, knowledge and a safe place to learn about how to be an inclusive leader, if they haven't had that investment before, we absolutely need to do that. Then some other steps are to look at who gets nominated for leadership programmes, whether it's self-nomination or leadership nomination. Is it more of the same every single time that nomination period comes around? And if that's true, change your marketing, change your approach, set some guidelines for ratios of what you'd like to achieve and then segment your marketing accordingly. So, it might be that you still nominate the initial 2 or 3 people in your team, but now you nominate another 1 or 2, because you recognise, ‘Oh, hang on a minute. Let's do that.’ And then I think you need to track things like career progression.
If I think about the leadership quotes that have been put up on a screen or printed in a handout over my time, it's Henry Ford, Richard Branson, etc. They're all white men, right? So even just that subtlety in your materials, change that up around who you're holding up around what a good leader looks like. Because otherwise, the subliminal message, if you find yourself in a leadership development programme that your organisation has invested in, and you are somebody that is underrepresented in that group, you're one of the few, the message is, ‘you're lucky to be here’. And the message to all the other people in that room is that actually, this organisation isn't that serious about diversity and inclusion, because we're putting this investment into developing people and equipping them in their careers, but most of the room looks a little bit similar or have similar industry and background. So, it's not ripping it all up and starting again, but it's looking at what you've got, and the investment is good, but let's really set those leaders up for success that haven't had that so far. And then look at, 2, who are we choosing to invest in? And is that adding up to what we're trying to achieve as an organisation? And quite often that's all disconnected at the moment when I start working with organisations.
Nadia Nagamootoo 28:43
It is so complex, isn't it? Because as I'm hearing you speak, I'm thinking, okay, so of course, they want to bring in different people onto these leadership development programmes, so that redefinition we're talking about around leadership is that you may not have seen yourself as a leader because maybe currently, we don't have leaders that look like you in the organisation. But we absolutely see your potential and we'd like to invest in you and embrace the leader that you're going to be. As opposed to moulding you into the leadership mould of the current group, which would be pointless. The complexity is that organisations want a quality of leadership or consistency in leadership in terms of, what it means. That's why we have leadership frameworks, for example. We want similar behaviours to be demonstrated that are aligned with organisational values and what have you. But equally, we want everyone to lead in a different way. I wonder if organisations are slightly confused as to how they achieve that.
Catherine Garrod 29:47
Yeah, again, I would come back to build with, not for. The team that is doing the leadership development investment, or design and delivery, or working with external partners, if that team will share a similar demographic profile, and they're trying to change the experience and the materials and the non-groups, and all of those things that are helpful. I'm just suggesting they’re perhaps not as inclusive as they could be, but they want to adapt and evolve them to better suit what the organisation is trying to help people build their careers, and set people up for success. Then don’t do it in isolation, do it in collaboration.
Nadia Nagamootoo 30:24
I'm interested in a quote from your book in the section about how to create an inclusive culture. And you say, ‘To create the movement, that is culture change, do one thing brilliantly until it sticks’. And I love it because I feel like it gives people permission to not just try and go for everything and hope that they will hit a target and something will work. But there is a lot of pressure in organisations to get a lot of stuff done quickly. It does feel like particularly after 2020, now even more so in 2023. So, how much time should organisations spend creating the plan for DEI versus taking action?
Catherine Garrod 31:11
I love this question because I think that quite often gets missing. So, what happens when I turn up to organisations is, they've got all of these brilliant people that have been contributing and sharing, and maybe doing comms and events, and programmes and initiatives. And that's all wonderful if you've got people like that in your organisation. If you haven't got that, stuff's really, really hard. So, quite often, I find all of that activity, but it's operating without a plan. People don't know what they're aiming for, they maybe read something on LinkedIn, or they experienced something in their previous organisation, or they've read an article somewhere and they go, ‘We should do this’. And it ends up being this big shopping list of activities that people are trying to navigate through and find. And to your point, even if they do make progress from that slightly chaotic approach, they don't know which thing it was that made the progress. So, it's just this kind of scattered.
So, I think there's a really, I certainly find it with clients, when I do their full diagnostic and planning with them, there's a moment and a sigh of relief, when I almost say, ‘Well, why don't you pause for the next few weeks? I'm going to work with you to research all of the things that you're already doing, and all of the different things that are happening. And I'll plot that out for you and tell you what your strengths are and where your actions for progress are. And then we'll validate that with all of the people that have taken part, and we'll prioritise where to put your energy for the next 12 months’. And I see these collective shoulders just go down. So, I'm like you don't have to do everything at once. And you'll know just as an individual listening when you're trying to do 100 things at once, sometimes it just feels like you're not doing anything very well at all, this is exactly the same thing.
If you can pick one thing that you go, do you know what, if I were to look back on this, in 3 months, or 6 months, or 12 months and be like, ‘we nailed it, I feel really good about that’. That's the thing you should focus your energy on. And actually, if you can continue doing that, that one thing brilliantly, no matter how many people there are in your organisation, the culmination of all those one things brilliantly actually add up to quite significant change, and you go further faster. So, if you've got leaders leading different departments, or regions, or however the makeup of your organisation is, if you want to equip those leaders with the skills to be a more inclusive leader, you can give them a bit of data to understand what's happening in their own world and the choices and the decisions that they're making. And you can say, ‘Don't worry about all of the hundreds of things that we need to do as an organisation, this is what I think the one thing brilliantly is in this world. Let's just go for that.’ That's so much more inspiring and empowering for leaders, and it leads to much faster, bolder results.
Nadia Nagamootoo 33:59
Yeah. How do they then balance off the pressure? It may be externally as well as internally. How do leaders demonstrate that they're taking enough action to satisfy the rest of the organisation? How do you get rid of that feeling of it’s overwhelming, that there's too much to do and not enough time?
Catherine Garrod 34:19
It's a fair point. So, when clients work with me on the longer-term inclusion diagnostic, they end up with about 50 actions off the back of working with me, but it's not about going and doing that all on a Thursday afternoon. That detail gets structured into a one-page plan. There's a vision, there are 3 pillars, there's a bunch of commitments, and importantly, how that will be tracked. And again, that one-page plan isn't about delivering that all in the next 3 weeks. It is a long-term plan and it's completely transparent. It's shared with everybody that took part in the process and wider stakeholders, and actually, anybody who is interested in the organisation, transparency is a big thing that I encourage. Being able to say, ‘Here's where we're going to focus for the next 12 months because we recognise, we can't do all that at once’, people are okay with that. Because if they can see, ‘Okay this is a really robust plan, we appreciate that it's not all going to happen overnight. I can see where we're putting our energy this year, let me help or let me contribute if you're okay with that.’ What they're not okay with is, ‘we don't know what we're doing. We don't know if it's working. I've told you this 500 times, and it doesn't feel like anybody's heard me.’ That's where people get frustrated.
Nadia Nagamootoo 35:36
It's so true. And I think sometimes leaders and senior leaders don't give their employees enough credit. So, they just think, ‘Oh, no, we have to because they're asking for it’. Actually, if you talk to them, if you communicate with them, if you explain and you demonstrate that there is thought behind, ‘we've heard you, we've listened to you and this is now the plan for the next 3 years or whatever.’ A lot of people appreciate that honesty, as long as they then see something different, they're committed to supporting the organisation in that endeavour, as opposed to feeling miffed that things aren't happening quickly enough. Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Catherine Garrod 36:15
I think it's a bit like if you're waiting for a bus and the bus is running late if you get a little message saying it will be here in 3 minutes, you just feel a bit more relaxed than just the bus is late.
Nadia Nagamootoo 36:25
Yes. It's the psychology of it, isn't it? Yes, something's going to happen, this bus will come. I love the shift in language between majority to overrepresented and minority to underrepresented. So, just briefly explain how, again, we're talking of psychology, which is why I'm linking it to the last conversation. What's the psychology behind shifting that language?
Catherine Garrod 36:53
So, I think for a long time we’ve used, ‘we want to increase diversity’ as the kind of sentence, which puts the label and the problem on that group of people, the people that we haven't yet been currently attracting. Whereas I think the shift in talking about we want to address overrepresentation as an example, actually helps our minds understand the problem that we're trying to solve. It's not about those people, it's around, we've got an overrepresentation issue. So, if we want to build better products and services, if we want to be better at research and design, actually, we need to build some collective intelligence and have all kinds of lived experiences, be that industry experience, be that educational experience, be that your personal demographics and your lived experiences are actually addressing overrepresentation, some of the really biggest awful things in the world that have gone wrong. There have been really super smart, intelligent people who were involved, but they all had a really similar profile. So, when other people that perhaps weren't in that immediate bubble were speaking up and offering another suggestion, it just wasn't being heard. So, I think there's a real subtlety, but it's the overrepresentation that's the problem, not the lack of diversity. And I know they sound like the same thing, but it's very subtle.
Nadia Nagamootoo 38:17
It's very subtle and that’s what it made me think. I read it and I thought, actually, that's a really helpful shift in language. Because as you say, we're not talking about the majority, which is people, we're talking about fixing an overrepresentation issue, which just depersonalises it, and it feels less threatening. Because decision 78 is around shifting the power dynamic. And you say most diversity emphasis has been on fixing the underrepresented, instead of equipping the overrepresented to create an environment where everyone can succeed. So, what can organisations do to equip the overrepresented?
Catherine Garrod 39:00
So, there are the learning experiences, bringing people together to a safe place to share their fears, ask questions, like literally show up to learn, be a bit vulnerable, be courageous, but then give people really practical actions, to think about their daily habits when they're talking to people. So, really setting people up to hold a conversation, to ask questions, to encourage respectful disagreement, to create that psychological safety, to be aware that not everyone's experiences are the same and you won't know unless you create the space for people to speak up. So, there's one bit there around the really practical things.
The other bit is around data. I'm a huge fan of data. So, whether you're looking at employee experience or customer experience, recruitment or customer retention, or your supply chain, whatever it is that you are doing, that you have an influence on or your marketing or your building design or your tech infrastructure, who is it working for? Who isn't it working for? Who are you appealing to? Who aren't you appealing to? Who's having a good experience? Who's having a bad experience? So often we look at the total aggregated score. And if you've got big groups of over-representation, they will be masking the experiences of people that are from underrepresented groups. So, the more you can break that data out to really understand the differences in people's experiences, you’re literally equipping departmental leaders, whatever it might be, with valuable information about the work that they're already doing and they're already skilled and experienced in delivering, you're literally just helping them to do it in a more inclusive way.
Nadia Nagamootoo 40:38
Yeah. I think it's so important to be able to have that data, for leaders to feel like they've got, well, firstly, evidence and proof that something needs to be done differently but also that they've got something to speak about and communicate, and that there's a reason behind why we're doing something.
Catherine Garrod 40:59
Yeah, it's really compelling, I think, as a leader, you see big gaps in experience, you’ll be like, ‘Well, that's not what I wanted to create. I didn't wake up this morning and think how can I create a worse environment for one group of people and a better environment for another?’ I don’t believe that. When you see that that's true, you go, ‘Oh’, there's a bit of personal feeling and emotion attached to that, and people are compelled to change it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 41:23
Absolutely. We’re very quickly coming to the end of our conversation. I am asking a final question to all my guests, which is related to the book that I'm writing, which is called Beyond Discomfort. And I'm interested in the most uncomfortable thing that you've had to navigate or manage in yourself or a conversation you've had to date that's pushed you or stretched you as an inclusive leader.
Catherine Garrod 41:51
This is another big question. Do you know what? If I may, quickly, I'm going to share 3 things. So, one is a personal thing. So, I'm somebody with pale skin and blond hair. And if I'd done something a bit silly or not thought something through, I used to say, Oh, I'm being a bit blonde. And someone challenged me on that years ago. And I was really defensive at the time. I didn't respond in the way that I might respond today. And I was like, ‘Oh, don't be so silly. It's not that serious.’ And brushed it off. But actually, now I was like, Oh, I'm giving permission to people to suggest that me and other people that look like me are stupid. So, that was a big personal lesson for me. It wasn't massively discomforting, but my reaction was because I was really defensive, and that's the bit that stayed with me. I wasn't open to the feedback at the time, I am now, I've got much better. This version of me is a much more evolved version than that version of me. And then I guess, just in terms of probably speaking the truth to people in power, that can be quite uncomfortable. So, whether that's something that somebody most senior has said or done to me, or has said or done to another woman or somebody from an underrepresented group, I've had to do that a few times in my career. Sometimes it's been handled brilliantly, other times, not so much.
And I recognise I am in a position of privilege here, I made a commitment to myself about 10 years ago, that I would always have enough money in the bank to walk away if an organisation no longer matched my values, or I didn't feel safe or protected. And I have done that on a couple of occasions. So, those occasions are quite uncomfortable. And I recognise not everybody can do that. If you are in a position to do that, have a look at your outgoings, because actually, it's quite liberating, not being stuck somewhere, to just saying, this doesn't make sense to me anymore. So, yeah, loads of experience, it is quite hard to pinpoint one. But I think if you know who you are, what's important to you and what you stand for, then you can really stand by that, even the most uncomfortable circumstances can just be a little bit less uncomfortable.
Nadia Nagamootoo 44:02
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing everything that you've shared today, Catherine, it's just amazing to speak to you and to hear such practical (advice). What I love about your book and everything that you're doing is that it's so digestible and practical. If people want to get hold of you, are you on social media? Are there other ways to get hold of you?
Catherine Garrod 44:25
Yeah, so go ahead and find me on LinkedIn. I tend to post stuff fairly regularly on there, super practical, simple stuff, that's my thing. If you want more, want to know about my services, my website is compellingculture.co.uk. And then the last bit I would mention, some people really love this, I publish a monthly newsletter. I'm often asked about which organisations are doing a really good job, so my newsletter is called Crown Jewels and Whoopsie Daisy. So, the crown jewels are great examples that I've seen in organisations that month, just a couple of sentences and the link if you want more. And the Whoopsie daisy is one example where it's not gone so well. But importantly, what we can learn from it. I think a lot of people just scroll to the whoopsie daisy; they seem to really like it.
Nadia Nagamootoo 45:08
I love that. It's very British. I love it for that Britishness. Whoopsie Daisy, I did something a little bit exclusionary there. Brilliant. Well, the link to everything that Catherine and I have spoken about today is going to be available on the usual show notes page, Avenirconsultingservices.com under podcasts. I've absolutely loved speaking to you, Catherine. Thank you so much for your time.
Catherine Garrod 45:30
Oh, my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Nadia Nagamootoo 45:33
That concludes Episode 35 of Why Care. I loved Catherine's data-led approach to better understanding how different people experienced their organisation, and then involving them to create inclusion. Build with, not for, she says. Do let Catherine and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn, Insta and X, formerly 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 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.
