Gathering for Inclusive Leadership this September

Join us next month for a new workshop with Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson.

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Next month, Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson will lead a new workshop in the MAP Community: Gathering for Inclusive Leadership.

The workshop builds on the ideas that Elizabeth introduced in her MAP & Tell session this spring (full recording below) and will offer a nuanced understanding of how to create more inclusive and equitable interactions in museums. Over the course of four weeks, participants will learn the core concepts of Inclusive Leadership and apply what they learn in their own workplace. This workshop lives at the intersection of our community’s most popular themes: Leadership and Gathering. 

If you are a Sustaining or Museum Member, there is no cost to register for this workshop. You can RSVP for sessions here. The one-time registration fee is $125 if you're not a member. Register here. 

I hope to see you there,

Kyle

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Watch Elizabeth’s introduction to Inclusive Leadership

• Session Summary

  Summary (via Poe):

  • Dr. Dickinson discussed research showing traditional DEI training often backfires, citing sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev's analysis of over 800 U.S. firms. Mandatory, one-off, compliance-based efforts tended to demotivate people.

  • She highlighted thought leaders like Lily Zheng, Irshad Manji, Amri Johnson, and Chloe Valdary who are questioning customary DEI and proposing alternative approaches.

  • Inclusive leadership starts with self-awareness around identity, communication style, blind spots, strengths, etc. It develops emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, critical thinking, and a learning mindset.

  • At the organizational level, inclusive leadership weaves DEI into all operations - hiring, promotion, recognition, data analysis, public engagement, etc. It's a comprehensive strategy.

  • Dr. Dickinson walked through applying an inclusive leadership lens to specific practices like recruiting volunteers at a museum. This involves considering accessibility, privilege, onboarding through a DEI lens.

  • She emphasized that inclusive leadership takes time, effort, and specialist expertise. It's about understanding your organization's specific goals and needs, not a one-size-fits-all solution.

  • There was discussion around how inclusive leadership empowers everyone to be agents of change, though systemic inequities mean the lift is heavier for marginalized groups.

  • Measuring belonging for all groups, not just focusing on 'gaps,' was suggested as an inclusive leadership approach. Full participation for all is the end goal.

  • Dr. Dickinson stressed that mistakes are inevitable in this complex terrain, but proceeding with nuance, humility and openness to growth allows for collective progress.

• Full Transcript

  Kyle Bowen: Elizabeth is going to be leading us through some of her work around DEI and inclusive leadership. I want to encourage everybody to use the chat. I'm going to be keeping an eye on the chat. I am Kyle Bowen. I'm the founder of MAP, and as you all already know, Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson is our guest today. I've been looking forward all season to introducing you all to Elizabeth. I also want to give a special shout-out to Kenzie, who is one of our community members who actually pointed me in the direction of Elizabeth.

  She said, "Hey, Elizabeth's doing this cool talk at FEDTalks," right, Elizabeth?

  Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson: Yes, that's correct.

  Kyle: I watched the recording and I reached out to her and I was like, "Oh my gosh, our theme this season is leadership. What a perfect guest." I was able to connect with Elizabeth and I'm so happy to introduce her to you all today. Our plan is to have a deeper dive into these concepts with Elizabeth. In a few months, the coming season in MAP Summer-Fall is going to be a season of integration when we look back at previous seasons and we look at the intersection of different themes.

  For example, for this workshop with Elizabeth, we're going to be looking at leadership and I think gathering, which is another previous theme, when we read Priya Parker's book on gathering. Elizabeth has some interesting ideas which maybe we'll touch on today about gathering and its impact or relationship to DEI. I'm going to stop talking and let you introduce yourself, Elizabeth. For those of you in the chat, I will just say AJ, hey, she says, "Hello, everybody. Greetings from Western and Sea, North Carolina."

  Dr. Elizabeth: Hi.

  Kyle: Elizabeth is from there too. Yes, give us a shout in the chat. Let us know where you're coming from while Elizabeth introduces herself.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be with you here today. Let me go ahead and do a few quick introductory items. We are recording this session today and I know that that's nice to know given the fact that talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion can be a little bit nerve-wracking, particularly when we are recorded and so I just wanted to give that shout-out out there. We are actually going to run the whole session today. We'll be finishing at about 5:45, a little bit early today to get us off to our next venture, and that's East Coast Time.

  I hope that this is an engaged talk today. I hope that we have a question and answer session. Feel free to ask questions in the chat box at any point during today's session. Feel free to use that chat box heavily. Ask questions, give answers. If you can't see the chat box, Kyle can help you out with that. Kyle and I are moderating that chat, although when I'm actually speaking during the session, I might not be able to see things so please feel free to ask those questions and answer and we can have a couple of sessions, one in the middle and one at the end for any questions or discussion that you bring up there.

  I will also display a deck in a second here. Then also I'll be talking about a resource guide and we will get those two items over to you at the end of the session, the slide deck and the resource guide. A huge thanks to Museums As Progress. Thanks also to Kyle. Yes, a huge shout-out to Kenzie. A little bit of a side note here, Kyle. I actually had a phone call with Kenzie and I said, "Do you know about this Museums As Progress?" She said, "Actually, I was the one that referred Kyle to you." I was really excited. Thank you. I had a really amazing conversation with Kenzie.

  Thanks to you all for having me here today. From what I understand from you, all your museums, and cultural organizations, you all as individuals also might be at various stages in your careers. I look at diversity, equity, and inclusion from both an organizational perspective, but also an individual leadership perspective. I know that some of you might work in teams within organizations and small organizations and mid-sized organizations. It's really exciting that you've voted leadership as a topic and I hope that I can bring a different vantage point to this today.

  I believe very heavily in meeting people where they are and so thank you for making the time to be here and for all that you do within your spaces. Let me start by giving a really quick introduction of myself. Again, I am Elizabeth Dickinson. I'm originally from California. From San Bernardino, California. I come from a family with four brothers. I'm second oldest. I come from a first-generation college student and have lived all around the country in various places and also Japan and the Netherlands and China for a while.

  I've been in North Carolina for probably about 13 or 14 years. I live here in Carrboro, North Carolina, which is right outside of Chapel Hill with my spouse and my 11-year-old. You might hear them in the background, although they've been given instructions to be a little bit on the quiet side. Let me tell you a little bit about my journey and how I ended up in this space called inclusive leadership. My journey began with my academic background, a little bit of my personal background, but academic background in the humanities and the liberal arts.

  My undergraduate master's and PhD are in this area called Critical Intercultural Communication. I have worked in higher education, corporate America, nonprofit America in the international context. When I returned to higher education, I took a job about 11 years ago in a business school and this was a little highly unusual coming from a liberal arts humanities background and ending up in a professional business school. I had to figure out very quickly how to translate what I do to organizations, these ideas, these thoughts, these concepts, using language that people within organizational context could understand.

  For 11 years I spent time having this background in organizations, but then also trying to figure out how do I actually do this in ways that I can help people think about diversity, equity, and inclusion differently within particularly an inclusive leadership lens. What I really appreciate about this concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion is it finally gave this name to what I had been studying for quite a long time and what I actually do. I actually do two things. I own my own business as a consultant and an advisor and a strategist in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and an educator.

  The second thing that I do is teach for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills Executive Development. For 10 years I was a full-time faculty member there, teaching in the management corporate communication area. Then I also for a while was our Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which means that I was a leadership position where I was helping the business school at UNC Chapel Hill grapple with the same topics that any organization across the country and to that extent around the world are grappling with now.

  As I positioned, as I pivoted into creating my own business, though, I kept a position as an adjunct faculty member for UNC Executive Development, where I still teach across leaders of federal government. The army and the Navy are two of our clients, but then also some nonprofit and some corporate clients that we have. Really at the end of the day, my goal is to combine my academic background with my subject matter expertise and my applied experience to really rethink this concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I keep saying DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  This is not going to be a DEI training. I would like to actually talk about inclusive leadership, which is a way to really rethink what we're doing in diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces. A little bit of an expectation, I'll be talking for a little bit and then I'll stop the slide deck and I'll see what questions or comments that you might have in the chat box and then return to some content through a slide deck. Then I hope that we really end with some solid time for questions and answer and discussion either from you all through Kyle or through the chat box.

  I would like to also at this point-- Give me a second here. Go ahead and give me one moment here. When we were logging on, Kyle made a comment that, "Oh, this looks really great. Everything's going to go really great." Then I said, "Oh, my gosh, Kyle, you just jinxed us." If anything that happens, by the way, from a technology perspective, we can blame Kyle. Hold on a second here.

  Kyle: It's always going to be my fault, and I [crosstalk]

  Dr. Elizabeth: [laughs] All right. I'm trying to get my slide deck up and edit.

  Kyle: Oh, looks like we momentarily lost Elizabeth. She's back. You're back, but you might be muted.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Can you all hear me now? You can hear me now. Thumbs up, yes? Okay. We are going to do this.

  Kyle: Yes.

  Dr. Elizabeth: You can see my full slide deck, is that correct as well?

  Kyle: Yes.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Okay. Kyle, you give me a shout-out if anything's going on and we can take it from here. Let's go ahead and get started. Inclusive leadership, the name of this session is called an Alternative Traditional DEI and I wanted to really give the question and the overall concept and the thesis of what I'm talking about in the beginning as we talk here. There's a lot of conversations and questions that are going on in terms of what works and doesn't work in this space that we call diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is sometimes called DEIB for belonging.

  Sometimes we have justice that's brought in the game but really what we're talking about is diversity, equity, and inclusion. There's a lot of research, and I'll talk about this in a little bit in thought leadership that's starting to ask this question of what doesn't work. By using the things that are consistently not working, as your pre-read pointed to quite a few folks are really burnout, they're demotivated, they're divided, and they're frustrated in this space because what we've been doing over the last 60 years or so in DEI spaces has stalled and a lot of it is largely not working.

  This model of inclusive leadership was something that I latched onto that lets us really just hit the timeout button, ask what we're doing to reset our efforts, and to really empower us and our teams and our organizations to do something differently. I do have a favor for all of us before we get started, so you'll see the citation here, which is Lily Zheng's DEI Deconstructed. Lily Zheng actually wrote the article, the pre-read that I asked you all to read, and a favor for us And I like to start these sorts of talks by saying that really despite our best efforts, I bet you'll find something wrong.

  Now talking about anything that has to do with diversity, equity, inclusion, people, and culture, it is really not if, but when we make mistakes in this space. Follow this quote when and not if this happens, I would like for it to ask you all to be critical and also extend grace and understanding that this work is very messy, it's ever-changing, and it's also imperfect. Please proceed thoughtfully with that in mind and when you can use mine, our mistakes to expand and build upon our nuanced understanding of this work and that is how we grow.

  Thank you for letting me say that as we get started. Today I'd like to cover four specific things, actually three main concepts, and then discussions and questions. The first is, what I really want to do is unpack this notion of what is actually traditional DEI. What is it, what works and doesn't work, and what are the effects that it's had on organizations and people?

  Then I want to introduce this new concept that's called inclusive leadership. What are the fundamentals of inclusive leadership? How does it differ from traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion?

  Why it might work better and a new approach that we could use instead. Then also, third, I want to talk about this notion of cultural intelligence. One of the skills and the traits of inclusive leadership is really knowing a little bit about who people are, the cultural groups that they belong to, and then these overall concepts. Then I want to end with questions and hopefully discussion. We will be, as a heads up, stopping after inclusive leadership to assess the chat box and see what questions and comments that you have so that we can break up this discussion a little bit.

  All right, so let's start with traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion. First of all, what exactly is this notion of traditional DEI? If I put these concepts up on the screen, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity, if I were to ask people to define these individual terms and concepts and I want to stop by asking you to do that to think for a second. Can you accurately define these terms? What does diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to you and how much education have you had in this space?

  Now, I understand from the folks in this session that many of you are coming here having already thought about these concepts to some extent but I think it's really interesting to actually ask people, how much do you actually know what these terms are? What does this mean to you and how much education that you've had? Let me give you an example of this if we were to have a polling ability here. I recently at Fed Talks, when I led this session last time, we did a poll of over 200 senior leaders from across federal government.

  Those are folks from like NASA, Health and Human Services, a whole Moderator of federal government folks from senior leadership. We asked them, if you were asked, could you accurately define these four terms, inclusion, diversity, equity, and belonging. I think it was really interesting, the results from this poll said about half of the people said, maybe I'm a little bit unsure, a third were solid, yes, absolutely. Then some were unsure or no. I think that this was really interesting because particularly across federal government, folks across federal government get a lot of education and training in this area.

  I think it speaks to this notion of how much do we actually know here. How much DEIB training or education have you had? Then as I said, so much I can't count, or a lot was about 20% of the folks who were polled, and some in a medium amount made up the bulk of folks. Now, so first in terms of this notion of what exactly is diversity, equity, and inclusion. What I really wanted to do is define these terms very briefly, and I do this in any setting, no matter how advanced the session or the folks are.

  Mostly because it's really important to level set. When we look at concept of diversity, one common definition that you'll see of representation of difference across the groups, and you'll see a variety of different concepts, race and ethnicity, gender are two of the top one in the United States but from an international perspective, this might also differ. For example, across Europe you might find gender is talked about as led more indeed their DEI efforts, while in the United States, it's more race and ethnicity, but then when you go around the world, that might actually change.

  Socioeconomic status and class are incredibly important. We'll talk about a variety of these when we get to cultural intelligence. One of the interesting things about diversity, it is not an individual concept, so group people are not diverse, groups are. What I mean by that is you oftentimes hear people say, "I'm looking for diverse people to serve as volunteers in my organization." The reason why that's a bit of a misnomer is what a person is exists in contrast to the actual group. What we also want to remember here that's really important is context drives content.

  What we talk about in terms of diversity, the terms that we use, and the concepts that we talk about are often driven by the context. For example, if we use the term historically represented group and historically underrepresented group, the underrepresented group is going to be different depending on the context. For example, if we're looking at senior leadership across an organization, we might say from a gendered perspective, we might see fewer women or folks from non-binary or gender-underrepresented populations in that group.

  If we're looking at librarians, for example, or fields like human resources and marketing, librarians, K-12 teachers, those folks are going to be the representation in that group is typically males. Really, the context is what drives what we are mean by what we're talking about. That's a flash definition of the word diversity. Inclusion, and belonging, research shows that when folks walk into a room or they exist within a space, if they don't feel that they belong, actually people experience it similarly to how they might experience physical pain. It's this physiological feeling that we get, that we have as a human being in my body and in my skin. I can enter this space or this organization, and I can feel that I belong and I have a place and that my personhood is respected here. Now in terms of inclusion and belonging, inclusion is often what I like to call an action that results in belonging. Think about the homes that you grew up in, or the origin and the place where you grew up in. If you feel that you experience belonging there, it is often because of something that your setting did.

  Inclusion is an action and belonging is a result. One of the biggest mistakes that I see that leaders make in any organization is they say, "Belonging doesn't necessarily really matter. Belonging is something that folks should achieve at home. Since when did belonging become so important in organizational context?" Leaders should actually intentionally build it is what we argue. Now equity is a really harder one to define, but one of the ways that I like to start with is an image. Now I've seen so many different iterations of this image, and I keep coming back to this because this is the easiest, most simplistic one.

  Equality looks like this. We have people who are coming to a different setting who have access to an opportunity or a setting or a resource. Equity basically is the way that we distribute a resource or an opportunity in a way that achieves equality. Now, some folks might say that we could also take down the wall. Now from an equity lens, one of the things that we want to talk about is this concept of reality. Here in the state of North Carolina, for example, one of my colleagues at UNC Keenan Flagler Business School, Jim Johnson, talks about the triple threat in the state of North Carolina, young, poor black children.

  He calls this the triple threat. So that in reality sometimes this disparity, depending on the populations that we're looking at, will look differently, but this concept of equity and equality. Equality is that people really get the same resources, and the goal is equal distribution of those resources. Equity basically says, "Hold on a second, we're starting from different places." The goal is to allocate these things differently depending on people's needs. We might say equity is oftentimes a process that we could use to achieve equality.

  Equity is a really tricky term to talk about.

  It's a hard concept for some folks to get. It is debated, it is contested. When we look at diversity, equity, and inclusion, when we look at these individual terms that are defined, these three or four concepts make up this package that we will call traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion. Let me stop and talk a little bit about what I mean by traditional DEI. Sometimes you also hear the concept customary DEI. In the pre-read that we gave, it's the institutional concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion that we would talk about.

  What we're really talking about here are the topics that we talk about, the approaches that we use, and the methods that we use to distribute those. This was talked about in the pre-reads a little bit. Let me give you this next slide that talks about this. In terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, there's a lot of things that organizations and leaders are doing within an organization. I remember when I talk about this, I look at diversity, equity, and inclusion from an organizational perspective, and then also a leadership perspective.

  There are a variety of thought leaders of practitioners and of scholars who are starting to say timeout. I think you probably saw that in the article that you looked at. Lily Zheng is actually one of the people in that, that format. Lily Zheng has written a book called DEI Deconstructed. It's really excellent. It gives an overview of what DEI is, where it's not been working, and how we can actually do it instead. Irshad Manji has this format called Diversity Without Division. Dobbin and Kalev are really interesting. They are two sociologists.

  Frank Dobbin is actually the chair of the Sociology Department at Harvard, and along with his colleague Alexandra Kalev of Tel Aviv University, I believe, have really been looking at for the past decade a database approach that looks at what is not working in diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces, particularly training. Amri Johnson is someone who I follow on LinkedIn, who has written a book called Reconstructing Inclusion. Chloe Valdary gives this theory of enchantment approach. She's my heart.

  She speaks to my heart because she also comes from the humanities, but really tries to look at this from a humanistic base perspective. I'm going to stop sharing the slide deck for a little bit because I wanted to talk through a couple of these things that they are talking about. Now, when we look at what's working in diversity, equity, and inclusion, what I like about what Chloe Valdary talks about, and also Lily Zheng, is that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

  Now, you might see in the national news, there's quite a bit of discussion about from a political perspective, that we should not be doing diversity, equity, and inclusion at all. We shouldn't be having those conversations. They're too contested. I don't agree with that. I think that when we look at diversity, equity, and inclusion, we're looking at people, the cultural groups that they belong to. We are an increasingly diversified culture and society in the United States, full stop. We can't stop talking about that. There are things that we are doing well in diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces.

  Research shows that leading with an inclusive leadership lens works, research shows that when there is a larger overall effective strategy that an organization practices to do it without the pitfalls that you saw in the pre-read that you did, trying to solve for the wrong problem. Not finding the right specialists to help in this space, not asking folks, when you're looking at how much time or money it's going to take. One of the biggest pitfalls is folks are not really measuring their outcome, those sorts of things.

  There's a lot that we're doing well in this space. When people do things well, employee resource groups or ERGs can be very effective, but they're not effective if they're lacking an overall strategy. What sort of limitations are there? How is diversity, equity, and inclusion not working? There's five areas that I can point to. The first is really this lack of a strategy and tactics. Lily Zheng pointed to this in this article. We oftentimes see either a total-- There is no strategy. People don't even ask the questions, "What is our organization trying to solve for?"

  They get into what's called the planning trap. They just start doing things, "Let's bring in a guest speaker. Let's do something for an hour. Let's form an employee resource group. Let's ask folks how they feel about things. Let's start a speaker series." They're not really pausing and asking, "What does our organization need?" This is why sometimes where DEI practitioners can be really quite expensive in some spaces because it has to be tailored to an organization. Now, there are a variety of different common practices that people can use, but DEI strategies when they're not done well is the first limitation of what I call traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  The strategy is missing, it's unclear, it's inappropriate for the organization. For example, you're using a social justice approach for a corporation that folks don't even really know what social justice is, and don't know the language and the terminology. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about social justice. It just means that the topics that we bring up, if we bring them up through a social justice lens, we have to make sure that we're using an approach and talking through methods that folks can really understand.

  The second limitation of traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion, in addition, so number one is a missing, an unclear, or an inappropriate DEI strategy or tactics. The second is really the sole focus on increasing representation. I look around at my organization, my librarians are mostly women, and I really need to hire more male librarians. Why? Because representation matters. Why? Because we have a gendered reading gap among our children now where boys are reading at lower levels than girls are.

  Why? Because when boys walk into a library, they have to be able to see, "I can see myself in this librarian. I'm making this implicit mental association between reading and somebody I can identify with." Then all people are doing this. Number two is the sole focus on increased representation. I'm only trying to get different folks into my organization and that's all that I do. The third is the lack of personal accountability. What I see a lot in this space, particularly in the clients that I work with and the population, "It's not really my job.

  I'm waiting for our senior leadership to do this work. I'm waiting for human resources. I'm waiting for employee resource group, our diversity officer," bu inclusive leadership and DEI it's not really my goal. The fourth is that it's not really embedded within my team and my role in my organization. Then the fifth is that we really see this stalled education. We see mandatory and compliance legal-based focuses, and really that's it. Dobbin and Kalev show the two biggest things that can be done in educational spaces that automatically cause people to tune out are number one, to make something mandatory, and number two, to make it compliance based.

  It's also to add to that, when things are just one-off. There's only one of them when they're simplistic and then when they're repetitive. When they have educator and approaches that don't fit the audience. When they lack a clear, achievable outcome so this one-size-fits-all approach. What really happens here is we see this, "At least it's something and something is better than nothing and so I'm going to really do anything because anything is better than nothing." What we really know is that that can be a little problematic.

  What we see as a result of this traditional customary diversity, equity, and inclusion, when we use topics and approach, and methods that are not suited for an organization, is we see a lacking sense of voice. I enter into the space and I can't say anything. I lack agency and I lack control. I want to put up onto the board a couple of different quotes that I see and I want you to think about when I walk into this conversation of diversity, equity, and inclusion, do I ever feel this? I'm afraid what I say might be judged, I'll be called out, or worse canceled.

  It's better not to speak at all. I see this all the time from folks and I can physically feel this when I walk into a physical room or even a digital virtual room with folks. I see people just tighten up because there is a lot of fear and I know this even as an educator. I know that even when I'm being recorded in spaces, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and say, "Oh gosh, did I say that? Did people think that to take away from my talk that I'm saying don't use a social justice approach? No, that's not what I meant by that."

  There's a lot of fear in this space. I want to participate, but there isn't an open playing field to feel comfortable to ask questions which may seem dumb about topics we don't know. People are quick to judge, and that makes it hard to learn. As a marginalized person, people expect me to teach them things. I'm frustrated and emotionally exhausted people need to want to learn when their own, and I'm getting tired of waiting. I want to pause here for a second. This was brought up in the pre-read with Lily Zheng's DEI-Industrial Complex article.

  Is that I think by using the same topics, approaches, and methods and traditional DEI that are not working and might actually be making the situation worse. One of the biggest travesties, quite frankly, in that space is that that can disproportionately fall on folks from marginalized people to figure out in organizations. Because when we aren't doing things to make our organizations more inclusive, to be more equitable, and more belonging, it's oftentimes marginalized people that have to pick up the pieces because they're the ones that are having to navigate these organizations that are not necessarily built by them or built for them.

  The next quote that I'll put up is a little bit controversial, but I think that it's really important because I do have folks when I create and whenever I educate in this space, one of the topics that I start off with very, very quickly is psychological safety. You have to create trust among folks when you talk about this. What causes threat, what causes people to clam up, what causes them to backlash? One of the things that I oftentimes find from folks and I've had folks actually tell me this in sessions, is "As a white man I feel like I'm seen as a demon when I walk in the room.

  I care a lot but when I'm judged intentionally or not, I check out and I disengage." What are we doing in traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion intentionally or not to cause folks from historically represented groups whether it's socioeconomic status and class, gender, race, or ethnicity to not be a part of the discussion and the solution? Race, gender, et cetera these are such overwhelming topics. I don't know where to start, I don't know what to do, I'm not an expert and it's not in my job title. Really fair enough about this.

  That it is asking you all to think about inclusive leadership. It's like taking on a second job. What we know is that because of our time and our era, it's really important for people to do this and really to fill in your own. I'd love for you to take this to the chat box start putting in the chat box. I would just really love for you all to start creating this conversation in the chat box. Do you agree with some of these? Do you disagree with these? How do you feel with some of the traditional or customary diversity and equity and inclusion components?

  While you're doing that, let me talk through one last thing. What exactly is inclusive leadership? Give me about 10 minutes for this and then we'll pause to read some of those chat box comments and then to ask any questions. I've been making this the case that traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion this approach that we've been using a compliance-based approach. The social justice approach for folks that don't know what that means, what I call surface-level multiculturalism or cultural humility models. We know that there's stuff that works, we know that we have to talk about this.

  Inclusive leadership is a model that I have latched onto and I want to talk about the fundamentals, why it works, and really this new approach and how to do it. To pause for a little bit here, I wanted to talk about my personal journey into this approach. Shortly after the social reckoning that followed the summer of George Floyd, I was teaching full-time in our MBA program at UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan–Flagler Business School and I was also starting my position as an associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  The Masters of Business Administration program, the MBA program approached me with a leadership and said, "We want to create a diversity and equity and inclusion class that's mandatory for all of our MBA students to take." My gut reaction to that was, "I don't think that that's a very good idea." The reason is because of that research that talked about if you make something mandatory and you don't do it really well, it can backfire and I only had had a couple of months to prepare.

  Now, the reason why they asked me to create this class was because I had already taught this class. I created diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace course for our MBA folks, but I was doing it as an elective. It was an elective class that people could self-select into the class. They had autonomy, they had agency, they had voice. They could say, "I want to talk about this." I said, "If you make all students take this, and I teach this class for more of a social justice approach, you're going to get backlash and then that's going to be really hard."

  What I said, "What I can do is if we teach this class, I have to use a different approach." I agreed to do it, and then I panicked because I thought, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to teach this class to folks in a required format?" That's when I really started latching onto this inclusive leadership lens. Let me describe to you a little bit about what this is. Inclusive leadership basically is an organizational and interpersonal strategy.

  It basically says organizations you have to decide to stop doing diversity, equity, and inclusion that you've been traditionally doing it because of the research that shows that what you've been doing largely is not working and can be making situation worse and you have to choose inclusive leadership as a strategy. There are two organizations that I want to point to who are doing this. The first is Johnson & Johnson. The multinational global pharmaceutical company is in the midst of actually pivoting their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts into an inclusive leadership model.

  The second is the United States Army. I actually have had really great conversations with folks, particularly the acting, I'm forgetting his title, pardon me. I'll think about it in a little bit, I think it's the Assistant Secretary of the Navy of Inclusive Leadership, who is also trying to pivot their DEI efforts to inclusive leadership. This is why you're going to start hearing the word inclusive leadership everywhere because I think there are some organizations who are saying diversity, equity, and inclusion doesn't work.

  They're firing their chief diversity officer, they're pausing on their DEI efforts and they're saying, "Not now. It's not the right time." The organizations that I think are going to start making progress in this space and that are being really innovative are saying, "We're going to put DEI aside and we're going to lead with inclusive leadership." Really what the strategy involves is connection, engagement, and innovation. The first thing that it's asking to say is that you have to connect with and engage with myself through the notion of self-awareness and I'll show you a model in a little bit.

  The second is that I'm going to connect with and engage others. I'm going to learn new leadership mindset and skills. What this really does is it helps people say, "I'm going to give you relevance, voice agency, and control. What I'm going to try to do is try to figure out how do I tailor this to your context and to your needs," right? Look at the screen because I'm going to do something a little spatial here. What we're going to do for the moment is we're going to put to the side diversity, inclusion, belonging, and equity.

  I am not saying don't try to diversify a population. I'm not saying that. I'm saying put it to the side for a second and we're going to move inclusive leadership to the front while we do inclusion and belonging first, equity and then diversity. Inclusive leadership becomes an organizational and interpersonal strategy that we lead with it in order to practice diversity, equity, and inclusion differently. It starts by having these really important conversations. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is for people in spaces for someone to finally stand up.

  I'm not the only one doing this and say, "Let's just really call a spade a spade. What we're doing in DEI is not really working and there's a lot of you that might feel disengaged and demotivated and alienated from a variety of different ways." Now, I had someone in a session say, when you put it like this, it's almost like you're saying put diversity at the end and maybe don't do it. That's not what I'm saying. I had to actually go back to the drawing board and say, inclusive leadership is the engine that drives the equity, diversity, and inclusion conversation.

  I want to pause for a second here and do a quick check-in question. I'd like to ask you, how might an inclusive leadership mindset help you think about and practice DEI differently? I would love for y'all, please take this to the chat box. I want Kyle to say to me, "Oh my gosh, there's so much going on in the chat box that I can't even read all of this." What recent issues, events in your industry, field, or organization have heightened unawareness of DEI?" Once again, the questions are-- Oh, go ahead.

  Kyle: No, I was just going to say we do have stuff going on in the chat box. I just feel like you are on such a roll. I don't want to jump in. I just want to hear more, so go ahead.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Kyle, we're on the same box. This is where I'm going to pause because what I would really love to do is, go back to the chat box and there's a lot going on here. Oh my gosh, this is really great. Kyle, from reading the chat box, what sticks out to you? I want us all to take a moment and pause here, put stuff in the chat box, answer that question. Let me ask that question again really quickly. How might an inclusive leadership mindset help you think about and practice DEI differently? What recent issues, events in your industry, field, or organization have heightened an awareness of DEI?

  You can't see my screen anymore, is that correct also, Kyle?

  Kyle: Yes, we can't.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Kyle, what have you been noticing from what folks have been saying while I also go back and look?

  Kyle: I do want to go back up to Vanessa who said, "I prefer DEI to include A for accessibility, full inclusion. Full inclusion can't happen without accessibility. That being absent here, I just feel like that's something that we don't want to skip over. I'd love to hear your thoughts on why the A isn't there."

  Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, absolutely. 100%. I feel that accessibility is from my perspective-- and I'll get to this a little bit when we get to the culture wheel that I'll show. To me now and I think that this is how different people view this very differently, there has been a very, very vocal and very rightfully so accessibility conversation that's going on in DEI right now.

  That folks are saying this is so centered on able-bodied folks, neurotypical folks. Anything within the accessibility space has been left out of the conversation.

  I think that's very rightfully so. The Americans with Disability Act of 1991, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong in the chat, what it really tried to do is to attempt to answer to bring that into federal conversations and more conversations. For me, I feel like accessibility, disability, ability, accessibility is actually housed within the D for the diversity. Remember, diversity is representation of difference within the group. That's where in my mind I put race, ethnicity, class, socioeconomic status, disability accessibility, age, religion.

  All of these things sort of end up in that D. This also speaks though to, there is not a consensus of a pain of what we even should be calling this. Should it be DEI, should it be DEIB? Should it be JEDI. Some folks really adamantly argue justice should be in that conversation. Some folks argue we should predominantly and only be talking about race. Some folks only about gender, some folks only about accessibility. I'm not sure if that answers that question, but I definitely want to make sure that we do make space for a whole host of identities and groups that folks are bringing into the equation.

  Kyle: There is a lot of wonderful stuff in the chat here, so I'm going to keep moving. Alex says, "Our Senate just passed the bill. There's a lot of bills going through that limit, training universities. I want to acknowledge that I feel a little bit spoiled being in New York, that I'm not exposed to that as much." Bethany says, "As a person who is cis-gendered and white, I either feel like the token gay person or like I should not engage too much to avoid speaking over other marginalized or underrepresented groups."

  Dr. Elizabeth: Yes.

  Kyle: Erin says, "I am very interested and passionate about these philosophies and implementing them at an organizational level in my current role and previously--" Sorry, I'm just losing my spot here, "previously within DoD. However, I am cognizant of the white savior narrative and that some conversations don't need my voice, but it is hard to know where that line is and how to contribute without centering my cis-white voice." I think that rhymes a little bit with some of the quotes that you brought up earlier. Alex says, "I always feel that DEI trainings are too squishy.

  They're too nice. As a queer person, watching how to be inclusive of people, I'm often frustrated by how easy the trainings I've done make it seem and how much it treats queer people as objects of pity and sympathy especially while being non-binary too." Frustration of those trainings. Which is definitely in that traditional piece you were talking about. Jen says, "We created harm by making staff of color feel obligated to share their experiences in a training ostensibly for the benefit of the white staff in the training.

  We scrapped the training and started over with better advice." Bethany brings up the inclusive museum. It's probably Gretchen Jennings. There's a few of those. Bethany, if you have the link to the book that you're thinking of that would be great. Natalie says, "The DEI trainings I have done should really be called Cultural Awareness Training. I walk away feeling like I should be ashamed for having my job because I am from a traditionally non-marginalized group." Oh, God. Elizabeth I'm not going to be able to-- Now, this is coming off here. I want to read through all these but I can't keep up.

  Speaker 2: No.

  Speaker 1: Let me see. Hold on one second. Jen says, "Is inclusive leadership a shield for corporations to drop DEI?" Sorry, and I just lost the spot again. "Seems like it creates room for bad actors."

  Speaker 2: First of all, there's three things that are coming to my mind. The first is that welcome to the complexity of this topic. I do not mean that in a snarky way but this is what we're talking about. In a space of 50 minutes, look at the complexity that these comments go through. I think that this is one of the reasons why folks can feel very overwhelmed because without being a specialist in this area, or without having training or a background, it's really hard to know. Sometimes I feel like we jump in a big ocean and you don't even know which way is up and then it's just so vast and it's so massive.

  I think that the intention of today is to really start these conversations in a way that we can say, "Hold on a second. We've already been doing a lot of DEI. Let's just talk really openly and honestly, not about DEI but how we've been doing DEI. To that effect, there's two things that I want to address really quickly that came up. Is that it's interesting that a lot of these comments come back to this concept of trainings. That I'm hearing trainings that are too nice, too squishy, too easy. This is the overly simplistic training that make people feel shame or that don't necessarily make people feel shame but people feel shame.

  There's the white savior narrative. Folks are uncomfortable in the room who are from marginalized or historically represented groups because the onus is oftentimes put on them, "Share us your story so we can learn from it," without realizing this concept of people being even re-traumatized by telling stories. I hear a lot from folks that it's emotionally exhausting. "It's just exhausting to have-- I'm doing two jobs. I'm doing my job and then I'm showing up from a marginalized group," whatever that group is. I think that we really have to hit the pause button on our trainings.

  This is why I love that pre-read. If you haven't done that pre-read, go back to that pre-read because this is somebody who is one of the biggest thought leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion, who is saying, "This is not working." Dobbin and Kalev, they actually put data to that. They actually follow organizations who implement these kinds of trainings, particularly with practices that don't work, and they look at the effects that it actually has on an organization. It does not increase historically underrepresented groups.

  It does not help with belonging. It does not help with inclusion. It does not help with equity, and in certain situations, it can make the situation worse. That's why the onus is now on organizations to-- I think what's really happened is that organizations, they don't really do their due diligence, and maybe to their defect, they don't have the time, they don't have the money but they just bring in trainers many of whom are just doing this DEI as usual, so there's that. Irshad Manji is really, really interesting.

  By the way, after this session, we're going to be sending this resource guide. There's a couple of fantastic readings and podcasts that I have on that, and Irshad Manji is on there. She does this whole concept of diversity without division. Her whole philosophy is that we walk into DEI spaces and we're looking at identities and representation. We also have to talk about diversity of perspective and thought but don't skewer me for saying that, because oftentimes you say diversity of thought or philosophy, and people say, "Oh, gosh, here we go.

  Somebody who's advocating diversity of thought." Diversity of perspective is really important though, because even within identity groups, you have a wide range of experiences and perspectives. Irshad Manji self-identifies as a queer Muslim woman from Canada. She says, "As a Muslim, not all Muslims think the same. Not all Christians think the same. Not all folks in the LGBTQIA+ community think the same." When it's done ineffectively what trainings do is they can actually further stereotype people into particular groups and then pick those groups against each other.

  Effective education is when you walk into the room and you say, "Here is the state of what were the complexity of what we're talking about and here is not working, and here are tools that do work." One of the biggest things that's missing from a lot of traditional education is psychological safety. Amy Edmondson, there's a couple of readings in the guide on it. I see that Kenzie said at some level, DEI is inherently divisive. It doesn't have to be. I think that we make it divisive. We make it divisive by the way that we encounter this training.

  That is Irshad Manji's entire point. It is that it doesn't have to be divisive. When we do it in a way where we're talking about human-- Diversity is a fact and a reality of human existence full stop. The way that we talk then about that diversity, we can do it in a way that makes it divisive or we can do it in a way that doesn't make it divisive. Thanks for your thumbs up, Kenzie. The second thing that I wanted to say, so it was really interesting, is inclusive leadership a shield to drop DEI. It shouldn't be. It's a really interesting point, don't come in and just slap a different label on your DEI efforts.

  You can't just say, "Diversity, equity, and inclusion hasn't been working? We're going to call it inclusive leadership." No, you can't do that. It's still inclusive leadership. If you do inclusive leadership and you do inclusive leadership well, and after I make this comment I'll go back to my deck where I talk about what exactly is inclusive leadership, it should not be a way for organizations to actually drop DEI. I would say that doing diversity, equity, and inclusion customary traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion, the way that organizations do it, it's actually a little bit easier than doing inclusive leadership.

  Inclusive leadership is a commitment when it's done well. It is an organization saying, "We are choosing this lane instead of this lane because it is a strategy for our organizational success." In doing that, you can't just say you're going to do a strategy and then not do the strategy. You have to actually do the work. In doing that, you actually hold individuals accountable for doing it. You can't just create bad actors. You have to actually get people to do it. Do you think we're ready? Oh, Kyle, what do you think? Are we ready for a little bit more or should we go back to the chat box? What are you thinking?

  Kyle: Two things in the chat. One because I do want to keep us on track here but [crosstalk] Joanna just says, "First reaction is mixed. I like the ownership weight by putting this under a leadership lens but wonder if this puts too much emphasis on the individual, what happens when leadership turns over? How does the leadership lens get explicitly embedded in institutional culture and institutional policies?" I want to acknowledge that, which is such great points but also, Vanessa mentioned, "We're running out of time and I still don't understand what inclusive leadership is."

  We do have another hour but I thought that was worth pointing out that and just to underscore that, that I think we're getting there. Right, Elizabeth?

  Dr. Elizabeth: Absolutely. That's okay. I think this conversation is unbelievably important to talk about what exactly is DEI and how have we been doing it to our detriment or to our benefit. That's really, really important. Because you can't talk about inclusive leadership without first talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I do want to say that, to the first point, is that you're absolutely correct. We cannot hold individuals accountable for-- This is not a pull yourself up by the bootstraps and just do it. We can't hold individuals accountable for larger organizational, structural, and systemically embedded concepts.

  Inclusive leadership, when it's done well, it is an organization acknowledging those systems and structures that typically bind people. What it also says is that it's almost like technology. Technology is here to stay. You have to update yourself on technological advances in order for us to survive as organizations. I'm not equating inclusive leadership exactly to technology, but what I am saying is that what it asks individuals to do is to stop pointing the finger and saying, "Well, I'm just going to wait for the [unintelligible 01:01:11] diversity equity, or I am going to onboard a bunch of volunteers in my museum, and I don't really want to think about the intersection of DEI and onboarding, because that's not really my job." Inclusive leadership, basically, the organization actually turns to that person and says, "It is now your job, and here are the resources and the tools to do it."

  What I want to do is, let's actually move to this concept of what actually is inclusive leadership. I feel like somebody led me there as we were going there. This is an actual model that I created to answer this question, what exactly is it? There are two dimensions in inclusive leadership. It starts with the self. Diversity, equity, and inclusion, when it's not done well, people end up in these trainings and it's like, "Let's learn about the other person." What we don't understand is, through this connection tool of introspection, that self-awareness is unbelievably important. I think people think that they're self-aware, but it is unbelievable in the work that I do, when you ask people basic questions about yourself, what is my background and my history, and how does that influence how I see the world, what is my communication style, even things as simple as, am I an introvert or an extrovert, what are my blind spots, what are the things that I'm proud of. Folks have never answered these basic questions of self-awareness because it's seen as too woo-woo. It's not my job. I'm task-oriented. I need to do my job.

  We oftentimes don't really understand what we bring to the table. What we ask people to do in inclusive leadership is to not only focus on what makes you smart IQ, but EQ, emotional intelligence, and then also something called CQ, which I'll talk about in a little bit, which is cultural intelligence. I saw this in the chat a little bit too, is that when we say leadership, we oftentimes think of the executives, the folks up there. Inclusive leadership says that most people within organizations, they embody this space, and they make decisions, and they are leading from where they are standing.

  There's this concept of leadership, there's this concept of management, which is a little bit different. Stop really looking at leadership as something that an executive does, and start thinking about in my spot where I stand, what do I lead. It could be that there's one intern who reports to me. It could be that nobody reports to me. We're starting to really redefine leadership as you as a person, what emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence are you bringing into every interaction. This also asks people to engage in critical thinking, a learning mindset, so when someone comes to me and says, "As a white person, when I enter this space, I feel like when any training that I enter, I feel like I'm demonized."

  There's a lot of reaction that's like, cry me a river, woe is you, you have a lot of privilege. Just buckle down, and listen and learn. I don't think that there's anything part of that message that's really right or wrong. A learning mindset, and this is what I love about Irshad Manji, you take a deep breath, and you go into it and you say, "Can you tell me a little bit more about what you're feeling and why? Because I would like to learn how." This is where a lot of people just want to be really seen and heard.

  When someone who is LGBTQIA+, or who's queer, who's non-binary or transgender, who comes to me and says, "I'm in this training, and I feel like this is not a space for me, and that I'm a token," the learning mindset says, "Thank you for coming to talk to me about this. It sounds to me like this is what you're experiencing, and can you help me really understand how you're feeling in this space? I might not understand exactly what you're going through, but how can I actually learn?"

  I think that we don't have a lot of learning mindset. How can I be vulnerable? How can I handle ambiguity, and how can I be humble? Then through communication, inclusive leadership is engaging with people. Inclusive leadership is about connection and engagement. That's what it is, but you can't connect with and engage with people unless you know your own stuff first.

  It is, I have a task to do. I have to onboard 20 volunteers within this museum, but then it asks you to stay. Part of your job is now relationally oriented, having relationship with people. Being open, communicative, fostering opinions, all opinions that gets tricky though, because what if those opinions are very counter, or what if I perceive an opinion to be an assault on my civil rights? That gets really, really tricky to be collaborative and inspiring. Inclusive leadership, it also asks for us to say, what is the context, where's the society, the industry, the organization, the unit, the person.

  Let me give you an example of this. In inclusive leadership lens, and this is why inclusive leadership is when organizations-- Sorry, I have a little [unintelligible 01:07:02] flying around my room. When it's not done well, it's basically saying, DEI is inclusive leadership. Slap that name on. Just get a big old sign and slap it on it. That's not what I mean by inclusive leadership. It is basically saying, you as an individual, how can you start bringing a different version of yourself so that you can understand people differently? It involves education, and it is much more complex. I now know, as a white woman, when I start talking about vulnerability, there is a huge conversation that's going on right now with women from Black, and African American women, Hispanic, Latino women, Asian women. We evaluate people's vulnerability differently.

  If I, as a white woman, make myself vulnerable by divulging something that I did wrong, a mistake that I made, the conversation is that if a Black woman sitting next to me does that, will she be perceived in the same way? The answer to that is, we're probably going to be perceived differently. I cannot make this blanket statement, that all people everywhere should be vulnerable, because we have to understand the context. What' the society, the industry, the organization, the individual person? This is where this gets a little bit complicated, but to answer the question earlier, inclusive leadership basically says that these are the skills and the traits that we are asking people to learn and to use. This is why this can be really overwhelming for folks, because there's a lot here, but I would argue, and I think that the thing about inclusive leadership is that it takes time. It takes time, and it takes effort, and that was one of the points that that article made.

  This is really tricky, though, because you also hear folks say if the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in your organization are taking a lot of time, you have to ask the question, why. Is it taking time because you don't have a good strategy and you're not doing it well, or is it taking time because you're actually doing it methodically and you're doing it well? You're getting input from your community, you're doing your research right.

  What I do when I coach folks through this, I say, "Consider this to be part of your job. Half an hour every week, you go through this resource guide that I send you, and you read an article and you think about it, and you learn over the course of a year, it is amazing what you will then learn about inclusive leadership on top of other educational initiatives that you do."

  I want to pause here for a second and talk about this notion of cultural intelligence. This actually goes back to one of the questions about where does accessibility lie here. I love this so much that I want to spend a little bit of time here.

  Diversity, equity and inclusion training, oftentimes one of the intentions, and when it does well, it helps us understand people better. I am who I am, and I'm bringing this to the table. Kyle, who he is and he is bringing it to the table, and everybody who is there and they're bringing it to the table. When it's done well, not if, but when we experience conflict, or not if, but when we encounter notions of difference, it helps us understand each other a little bit more, it helps us negotiate that from a relational perspective. Traditional customary diversity, equity and inclusion, when it's not done well, oftentimes really reinforce the stereotypes using the word token. It puts people into these token groups. Inclusive leadership basically says, is you have to stop looking at people in terms of these simplistic categories that we've created, and start looking at people as the more complex beings that these are. This is in this notion what CQ is.

  Moving Diversity Forward is a book that is written-- I actually have it randomly right here Moving Diversity Forward, it's by Vernā Myers. It's a really, really great book. She actually presents this thing that she calls a cultural lens. The point that she makes is that everyone in this session today, we all have these six core identities. We are people born into the world. We belong to these groups, either by birth or by choice, and these make up cultures. These are the often the groups that we think of when you think of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We could spend the next 16 years talking about these, by the way. Cultural anthropology is an entire field. You can get a PhD in cultural anthropology that might actually look at these, or from the humanities or cultural studies.

  We have race and ethnicity, class and socioeconomic status, which is, in the United States, one of the biggest categories that we don't talk about. In the resource guide that I'm going to send you, there is a really amazing article by Harvard Business Review that says that if your organization is not talking about class or socioeconomic status, it is missing a huge part of the conversation. Going back to race and ethnicity, one of the things that we talk about-- Well, actually, this goes back to physical abilities and qualities, so that's the abilities. I would also put a cross to that because it's not just physical. Our understanding of abilities and disabilities has exploded in the last 20 years, even the concept of neurodiversity, which has been talked about for a long time, but wasn't even on a lot of people's radar until very recently.

  There is a really amazing scholar, for example, but we're not just talking about abilities and disability. We're talking about physical and other qualities. There's a really amazing scholar now, gosh, I can't remember her name, and I feel ashamed that I can't, who's talking about this notion of colorism, of how within race and ethnicity, there is a hierarchy, a power, a privilege that exists of colorism. Then we go to sex and gender identity, and sexual orientation, which are huge, huge, huge right now.

  Also age. There is a move away from using the term generations into talking about people in terms of age. There's a couple of readings in the resource guide that can talk about that a little bit. That we use these words generations as almost as if they're horoscopes. We tend to really simplify really over-complicated groups, but the fact of the matter is that one of the reasons why we talk about generations and age a lot, is there is something there. As a 50-year-old woman, I experience my organization in life very differently than my 11-year-old daughter in the other room. Age is a huge cultural group that we talk about.

  This is the part that's really interesting. To go back to answer that question, where is accessibility in DEIA, or DEIB, or DEI, or JEDI. If we talk about race, class, any of these identities, for me, is it's housed within that diversity, and I'm a huge proponent of trying to talk about as many of these categories as we can.

  In the United States, yes, absolutely, race and ethnicity, and gender are the two that we talk about the most, or the two that we talk that people often think about, and given the history of our country, are incredibly important to our identity. I fully believe that there is space and there should be space to talk about a variety of these other identities. This is the interesting part about this category, is she says there's an outer wheel. Look at all the stuff that ends up here. I want to disagree a little bit respectfully with Vernā Myers here. You'll see religion at the very top here. I wonder sometimes if religion should be the seventh of those major categories, because it is huge, but we look at things like people's thinking styles in their birth order and their ideological diversity, political views that folks are extremely complicated. The question to ask here, and I want you to take this to the chat, how does this culture lens or this cultured wheel, as I call it, how does this help you understand yourself differently, other people differently, your organizations differently, the people who you serve differently?

  I was teaching this session two weeks ago, and from my perspective, when I look at this, I think, "Oh my gosh, this really complicates human beings, because we are complicated, and there's so much that we can learn here." One of the participants says, "I think people are just really simple, and we're over-complicating this." I think we do a disservice when we try to simplify overly complicated things. What I like about this is, this is complicated, and this is why, and these are the things that I really want you to consider, that the meanings of these categories totally depends on the cultural context.

  I am working now with a multinational corporation in their inclusive leadership efforts, and when I'm in a room-- I was in a room with 35 of them. There were folks from all over the continent. There were folks from Dubai and Mexico and Canada. From an international lens, or if you think about what is the goal that I'm trying to solve, what is my goal within an organization, that's going to look differently. Race and ethnicity is going to look differently in the United States. Let me backpedal.

  We might be able to say that we can agree on these definitions of race, these categories of race, socially constructed as they are. In Canada versus Dubai versus the Netherlands or versus the United Emirates, wherever, versus the United States, that those are going to really look differently.

  Number two thing to consider, there are similarities and differences between groups and within groups. This tokenism that folks feel, I think sometimes comes when they find themselves in organizations where people look at them and say, "Oh, you are gay. You are a lesbian, you are queer, you are Black, you are a person with a disability or a disabled person. You are that person." That's where people start feeling really tokenized. Inclusive leadership basically says, yes, people belong to these social categories, and there is a lot of difference that exists within groups as well.

  Number three, we have seen and unseen identities. People walk into the room and you look at me, you can probably determine my gender identity as a cisgender woman. I don't know if you can tell my age, but I'm a 50-year-old woman. Maybe you could see that. Maybe you can't see that. This is the really hard part too, is that some of these, we can identify, and some of these, we can't. Really effective inclusive leadership education is when you actually help humanize folks. We also have fixed identities and fluctuating. Age is the great equalizer. Then going back to our disability and accessibility conversation, I can't remember the percentage, if somebody knows this, but it's really quite high, and I was startled to learn this a couple of years ago.

  In the United States, folks who self-identify as disabled, quite a few of them actually acquired that disability at some point in their lifetime. Developed depression, developed diabetes, cancer diagnosis, physical accident or physical situation.

  Something else to consider, number five, there's concepts like passing, code switching, closeted intersectionality. Those experts in the room that know what these are, please put those in the chat box and define those. What does it mean to pass? What does it mean to code switch? Closet, it is oftentimes, so research shows, for example, that in the United States, this comes from the Human Rights Foundation, I believe. In the United States, about 50% of people in the workplace who self-identify as, I think they did LGB, but they might have done LGBTQIA+. I have to go back and look. About half the people, they don't come out of the closet in the workplace for fear that they will be judged or penalized or whatever, and that all of the work and the energy that, that takes to remain in the workplace, closeted.

  Then six, there's groups that we feel connected to. I feel connected to my DEI community, to my neighborhood, to my family. There's folks that we feel obligated to, but not connected to. Sometimes you hear folks talk about growing up within a particular religious group, but making transitioning to a different religious identity, and they feel obligated to that religious identity when they go home, but they might feel differently, would benefit from, but we don't think about. This is otherwise known as the concept of a privilege. The fact that I actually have health insurance and an income, is something that I don't really think about that when I go into the doctor's office. I make myself think about it to feel grateful for it. Then, really, what specific examples can you think of in your context?

  This is the last slide, and then we're going to stop for more questions and answers and discussions. One of the ways that I want you to start thinking about this, and, oh, this is perfect timing because I wanted to do this, and then we have enough time in another-- we have another, we'll leave for 15 minutes for final questions and answers. This extends this understanding of what exactly is inclusive leadership. I'm going to put a bunch of stuff on the screen and say, "What does this mean within an actual organization and in my team?"

  Inclusive leadership is an organizational, an interpersonal strategy where we ask, where we decide as an organization that we're going to go away from traditional customary DEI, things that don't work, and lean in more to inclusive leadership components that do work as an organization. Then I'm going to ask individuals to do that, and then I'm going to give them the resources and the tools to do that. Now, the complexity becomes, and the question that I grapple with all the time, is, can an individual choose an inclusive leadership mindset without this or the support of an organization? I think that the answer to that is it's mixed.

  If you do engage in an inclusive leadership mindset, think about how you recruit people. If you're looking-- I don't know, I keep focusing on volunteers within a museum. I don't know why I keep thinking about that. How do I recruit people become a volunteer with my organization? We have to think about accessibility. We have to think about access. We have to think about who actually has the privilege to be able to become a volunteer. Or if I'm trying to diversify my team within my organization, say I lead and manage a team of 15 people, and I have too many Xs and I want more Ys. Think about then how we interview, how we onboard. We would do inclusive leadership differently within each of those. This is where this is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are successful and there are unsuccessful techniques to interviewing people that we know work and that we know don't work that people are doing and not doing within diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  Inclusive leadership basically says, "I've got to do a little bit of research so that I can figure out what to do and what not to do. Then demographics, what does my organization look like?" Then a lot of people don't think of communication as a diversity, equity, and inclusion concept, but in my book, it absolutely is. Maybe I'm biased because all of my degrees are in communication studies. We're looking really at not just the words that we use, the internal communication, external communication, but listening. How well does that exist within my organization? Decision-making feedback, small groups meetings, formal, informal gatherings. How am I doing this or not within, who's getting promoted? Who's getting recognized? Who's getting awards, performance appraisals, innovation, problem-defining and solving data, boards, clients and public interactions and engagement markets, politics and current events?

  Really the question becomes, and this is why this has to be tailored for your individual role teams and organizations, is what DEI-related goals or situations have you identified? Because your goal, and this is one of the things that the article pointed to, is that people don't even, first of all ask the question, what am I trying to solve for? What is my goal? People just just go into it. Maybe they actually have a pretty diverse demographic of a team, but their small groups are missing psychological safety, so they can't actually get people's opinions, so things like that.

  Before I stop for discussions and questions, we're not over yet. Don't leave. Don't drop off because we're going to have a really great conversation, and we're going to go early as well. I am on LinkedIn, and what I would love for you to do, before we go to questions and answer, is take a screenshot, connect with me on LinkedIn. Linkedin is a great resource, by the way, to follow people in inclusive leadership. It's a huge learning experience for me. I'm going to be sending Kyle the slide deck and the resource guide. I can also upload them to the chat box while we're talking there. I do want you all to note that you can contact me after this session for anything that you want. I have a repository of so many things for you to do.

  Let's stop there. Let's do a time check. We're at 5:30. We are going to go to 5:45, 5:50, right, Kyle? What's coming up in the-- Oh, thank you for my LinkedIn.. This is not just a self-promotional plug. I absolutely love. Now I have all these museums, cultural organizations folks, and I get to see, "Ooh, what's going on in that space?" It's how I keep in touch with Kyle, with Kenzie, with all of these folks. What's going on in the chat box, and what do you think?

  Kyle: There's been a little bit of plus ones for Joanna mentioned, "I don't know what the outer wheel does to the emphasis on the inner wheel. As traditional leaders, managers of people, we should be recognizing people as individuals, and realizing that people's multiple identities, backgrounds, life influences, all go into making them who they are. The inner pieces, the six blue pieces, represent historically oppressed categories in our US workplaces. I'm worried that this conversation can head down a path of false equivalencies."

  Alex is a plus one there who says, "Joanna, I think that's an excellent point. At the same time, I think it's really eye-opening, interesting to consider rent versus owning as something that can encompass a diverse group."

  Jim says, "Plus one, Joanna, it seems like many perspectives in the outer wheel categories actively discriminate against either inner or outer wheel categories, whereas the inner wheel, except class, are inherent characteristics."

  Dr. Elizabeth: I think both the outer and the inner wheel are all of that. First of all, there are parts of the inner wheel. If you look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964, what are the historically oppressed groups that the federal legislation and the EEOC tries to mandate that you can and can't discriminate against? You're absolutely right. You will see race, you will see, interestingly, the word sex was used, and the EEOC later amended that to also include gender identity and sexual orientation. Age is not in there.

  I think the way that EEOC and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 defines a historically represented group, does not encompass all of the six and those inner boxes. There are some in the outer boxes that, like religion, that also folks have been fallen in historically represented categories. I think the point of putting things in the middle, and putting things in the outer, is that when you talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, folks will often think about those six, and they will think about them in very totalizing ways when there's actually a lot of diversity within each of those categories.

  You're absolutely correct. People are very, very, very, complicated, and the outer circle encompass who we are holistically as people. We know for a fact that folks, there is this kind of hierarchy socioeconomically economically to home ownership versus renting. We have tax incentives to do one and not the other. Then this is where this notion of, so there's this notion of intersectionality which is Kimberly Crenshaw's notion of how race and gender intersect, and then there's intersecting identity. For example, we might look at socioeconomic status and class, and how it intersect as an intersecting identity with home ownership or renter or renter status. The whole purpose of that is to start to really, I think then that I'm making the point that someone was making, is that, yes, absolutely, people are very, very complicated. This is not to say that we shouldn't be oversimplifying them.

  I think there were a lot of comments in that I can go back and look. Oh, Joanna, I don't know what the outer wheel does to the emphasis of the inner wheel. I think I don't necessarily look at it, there's not necessarily a special relationship between the inner and the outer wheel. I think if that's where Joanna's coming, Joanna, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing your name, is coming with that. We should be recognizing people as individuals and realizing that people's multiple identities, absolutely, and this is where this is all contextual within an organization. We cannot speak in totalizing terms because it--

  Okay, let me give you an example of this. I was working with this organization. This is a really quick example. They're a multinational organization. I was talking with their marketing team about this conflict that they were having on their marketing team where they actually marketed something and they made a mistake, and they got kicked back. They got kicked back for it. I looked at this marketing product, and I was like, wow, that's got a DEI oops all over it, but nobody in the group really saw it.

  It was really interesting, and so I was talking to them through this, and as I was doing this, I was looking at this team, and there are probably about six to eight people I think on this marketing team, and it was a very diverse team. It was like if you look at the inner wheel, I was like, wow, there's a lot of racial ethnic diversity, there was gender diversity, there was even sexual orientation diversity, there was age diversity. What happened in this team, then, to lead them to make decision, that led to a mistake that they actually marketed something when they shouldn't have in the way that they did. It came back to the fact that there was not a lot of thought and perspective diversity, and that's actually outside the outer wheel.

  It turns out that there was one person who was actively the naysayer and actively resisting this. I said, "Well, who is that person?" and they said she left. For that team, this is why this becomes really, really complicated, for that team looking at that wheel, the diversity that they needed was actually perspective thought diversity through psychological safety. What they needed to do in their inclusive leadership work is really start with how are your small groups and teams which are actually, and, Kyle, you and I have talked about this, the glue that keep organizations together, they were at a different starting place than another organization. That's why I get really nervous when people say, oh, we should only be talking about diversity of thought and perspective. If you want to talk about diversity of thought because you're too scared to talk about sexual orientation, and race, and ability, that's not a good reason.

  For some organizations, it's a really important thing for them to be bringing in different ways of thinking, so that you've got not only the people in the room saying hold on a second, this isn't a good idea, but then you have the psychological safety for actually listening to people.

  What other questions are on people's mind?

  Kyle: Yes, let's see here.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Alex as a non-binary person, I always want to rail against distinct categories. I hear you, Alex. I think this tool is a useful one to have as long as you're comfortable not having super solid definitions. Alex, this is a really interesting point. This is where you put on the critical thinking lens, that we human beings kind of like our categories. Especially from a western black and white, and this is this is ambiguity, that a lot of people don't like ambiguity. I want to know who people are. I want to know what they are. I want to know what these categories are. Historically speaking, in the United States, we have created this binary, male, female, when in the biological reality, does not necessarily reflect that binary. What I like about where Alex's comment is going, and this is where the critical thinking lens, is we have to be comfortable saying these definitions are not as solid as we think that we are.

  That applies to not just sexual orientation or gender identity, but political affiliation? That we dehumanize people, and we put them into these categories that we have constructed. Some of the uncomfort that people feel in this space is having to actually requestion these categories. I think that that's an interesting point.

  Kyle, are there any other comments that I-- By the way, can we actually cut and paste these comments so that I can go back and read them later? Can we get a print out of them? I can actually copy and paste them.

  Kyle: I can copy and paste them, I think, yes, somebody else brought that up, about sharing the chat. I don't think that I get a copy of the chat, so if you want a copy in case you can. The other piece is I like the idea of the chat being private in sense. I'm calling out people by first name, but yes.

  Dr. Elizabeth: I absolutely agree. I think that keeping the chat within this group is, I don't know if people can see it when they go back to the recording, but just for my own sense that I can look back.

  Michelle also, yes, the slides will be shared. I actually put in the chat box the resource guide. Did y'all see that? I'm also now going to put the slide deck. Those two have been uploaded into the chat box. Oh wait, wait, wait wait wait. I didn't [crosstalk] Elizabeth Dickens [crosstalk] sense.

  Kyle: There you go. I'll include those-- Sorry, I'll just want to assure people that I'll include those files in our follow up as well.

  Dr. Elizabeth: I'm trying to think, with the final five minutes that we have, Kyle, do you want to go back and look at a couple of these questions? Was there something that came up?

  Kyle: There was, I think Kenzie brought up a couple of points. I also want to be sure to-- Sorry, I'm trying to multitask.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Yes, I know. That's okay.

  Kyle: Making myself not doing a great job. I also wanted to make sure that I don't miss mentioning that we are looking at doing in-depth, well, an in-depth workshop with you on this topic. Specifically I think the intersection of leadership and gatherings. That being you and I previously have talked about how meetings are often where the rubber hits the road, in terms of DEI and practice. There'll be more on that in, and I think we're planning on September, sorry, for that workshop.

  I did promise at the beginning that we would just choose somebody at random, to who if you are free, Mindy, you were chosen for, if you'd like to participate in that in September, you'll get a lab pass. You'll be able to-- That'll be a more interactive not a webinar format. It'll be more like a workshop format. Mindy, I'll message you separately and invite you to participate in that.

  Then Kenzie says, is there a generally accepted intentional frame

  for who DEI policies address, i.e those subjected to discrimination, disadvantage, oppression, or he just assumed to be understood. Alex is a plus one for Kenzie.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Is there a generally accepted intentional frame for who DEI policies address? Well, I think it depends on if you're looking at it from a legal compliance-based perspective, or if you're looking at it from a DEI industry perspective. I think that, and I'd already mentioned this and not to talk-- I think that, yes, from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, EEOC compliance based perspective, there is a generally accepted frame for that, and then I think that others would chime in and say, looking at it in that frame is kind of limiting, are there other groups that-- Well, Kenzy says the same thing, I think it can be kind of limiting, and I think that this is where this becomes very, very tricky very, very quickly, is that which groups are subject to discrimination, disadvantage and oppression. That can be in the eye of the beholder.

  If you have someone come up, who's from a historically representative group who's an introvert, and feels that they have not been able to make progress in an organization because their introversion is seen as not a leadership quality, some folks would say, well, that's not race and ethnicity, that's not gender, that's not sexual orientation, that doesn't fall under Civil Rights Act of 1964, so maybe from a traditional classic DEI perspective, those sorts of identities are talked about a little bit less.

  I would argue that in inclusive leadership, I think that we do need to hold space for folks who are coming into this saying, my experience is in this particular way, but that gets really, really tricky because then folks might disagree about who should or shouldn't be actually a part of the conversation, if that makes sense.

  One last thing, I'll say, for example, let's just say, for example, you do a climate assessment. Let's say you do an anonymous survey of 15 people on your team who you're leading, and let's just say, well, this isn't going to work. Listen, you have to have a bigger data sample. What if you have a large organization and you-- It comes back that you ask the question, do you actually feel that you belong in this organization that you are included? Let's just say only 34% of Black women say that they feel included. What if you do the same survey and you say 68% of folks who identify as white males say that they're included. 34% of Black women say that they're included, 68% of white men say that they're included. Traditional DEI would say focus on that 34% and bring them up. Inclusive leadership, and this is kind of I guess a quiz, what would inclusive leadership say? It would say, could you do something in your efforts to bring both up to 95%?

  Some people say no, absolutely not, you should focus on the folks who are most effective, which were, in this case, Black women. You have other folks who would say focus on the folks who are most affected, what does that necessarily mean if some folks feel like they're affected outside of these federally protected classes and categories, and this is where this whole thing gets really squishy and itchy. I think as an inclusive leadership person, my goal is to make sure that folks in the room understand how people are experiencing these organizations, and empowering all people to be agents of change, and increasing the experience of folks within that organization, and understanding that that might actually materialize differently within people's lived realities, if that makes sense.

  I'm going to ask for a lot of grace here, and I hope that I did not muff up anything and anything that I've said in these comments. I know that sometimes it makes sense in my brain, but I hope that if there's something that I have said or we've talked about that's not sitting with you, or that you want to clarify, please absolutely reach out, and I'm always open for the conversation. I know we're winding down, and I want to be respectful as folks's time. Research shows that if you have a little bit of space in your brain, before your next thing, you're actually a little bit more of a content person. I'll just do a real quick wrap-up, and then I'll turn it over to Kyle.

  I just want to thank everyone so much for being here today and for your engagement throughout this session. The questions and the comments were amazing. I wish that we had had more time. I hope I didn't do a disservice, I'm always open for conversation. We will also be sending the deck and that resource guide. Take a look at that resource guys. Spent a lot of time and energy, and it's really fantastic. Any category that you want to-- Most categories that you want to look at that it's there. A huge shout out again, thank you to you, Kyle, and to Matt, for having me, and I hope to see you all in the fall at the more in-depth session.

  Kyle: Thank you so much, Elizabeth, and thanks to everybody who chimed in and participated today, and shared your perspective. One of the most exciting things to me about these sessions in MAP, is to bring folks who are sort of in adjacent spaces, adjacent to museums. Elizabeth is an educator, but not directly involved often with museums, so it's such a pleasure and privilege for me to get to connect people in this way. I hope that you'll keep an eye out in the community in the coming weeks for our announcement of Elizabeth's more in-depth session. Thank you again, Elizabeth. Thank you, everyone.

  Dr. Elizabeth: Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate your time. Thanks much. Have a good one.

  Kyle: Take care all. Bye-bye.

  [01:47:03] [END OF AUDIO]