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DEIB Value in the Roaring 2020’s

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The Roaring 2020s Speakeasy Team – Authors Kimberly Layne Roberts, Twiana Armstrong and Matt Schlegel – reflect on the changing landscape of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives in organizations.

 

Find more about Kimberly, Twiana and Matt here:

Kimberly Layne: https://www.kimberly-layne.com/

Twiana Armstrong: https://linkedin.com/in/twianaarmstrong

Matt Schlegel: https://evolutionaryteams.com

 

#DEI #DEIB #Leadership #Roaring2020s

 

[Video Transcript]

0:00 [Kimberly Layne Roberts]

1:18 [Twiana Armstrong]

What’s occurring in workspaces in which we see institutions and organizations contorting or eliminating their DEIB initiatives is a contrived conflation set in motion by outside machinations.  Such conflating has these same institutions and organizations undermining their most valuable asset, their employees, while also failing to profitably penetrate new or obscure markets and not fully understanding the needs of their consumers. Making decisions not in the best interest of the company, but in the interest of risk management and partisan public opinion in an attempt to stave off potential monetary liabilities, lawsuits and litigation. Even in the face of proven success. Strategic plans that maximize profits through leveraging DEI and B initiatives should not be thrown out with the proverbial bath water. Leaders should  invest in a cultural competence assessment to determine how well you understand not only your workspace environment, but also your stakeholder and consumer environments.  Opportunities and profits abound when you are fluent in operating and working in diverse cultures. Assessments will collect data about cultural awareness, knowledge, skills, encounters and desire. I’m encouraging leaders I work with to complete a cultural competence self-assessment. Analyze the data and construct a strategic plan that achieves your goals whether it’s increasing revenue, reducing expenses, recruiting or workforce management.

3:19 [Matt Schlegel]

First of all, I love Kimberly’s story about how building a diverse and inclusive group can be so exhilarating. That’s certainly a great benefit. And Twana, as you point out, the backlash that we’re seeing to DEI efforts lately is quite remarkable.

I would encourage people in DEI leadership roles to be sensitive to your organization’s culture and understand how to really demonstrate the value of DEI initiatives in your context.

Remember, company boards of directors are becoming more diverse at a much slower rate than organizations themselves, and DEI leaders must be sensitive to that dynamic and be able to demonstrate value to their leadership.  Especially the financial benefits and positive impact to company profits, both on the cost side and the revenue side.

Your organization will reduce costs if you have a culture where people feel included.  It’s going to lower turnover rate, and you will reduce your recruitment fees. Also, if you have a welcoming, inclusive environment, you have a much bigger pool of people to draw on and will make it just that much easier for your organization to find extraordinary talent to help it grow and thrive.

On the revenue side, having diverse staff will help you better position your products to address broader marketplaces. Your diverse team’s perspectives will help you position your products and your services to identify with a more diverse customer base.

Diverse perspectives also reduce or eliminate blind spots that you may have in your marketing efforts, and that will help you grow your revenue and your sales.

So these are just a few examples of how a DEI leader can demonstrate the financial benefits of DEI efforts to their organization.

More VUCA in 2024 and the Roaring 2020s

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The Roaring 2020s Speakeasy Team – Authors Kimberly Layne Roberts, Twiana Armstrong and Matt Schlegel – look ahead to the drivers of VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – in 2024.

 

Here’s links to resources Twiana mentions:

https://www.mindtools.com/asnydwg/managing-in-a-vuca-world

https://ifundi.co.za/leading-managing-vuca-world/

https://au.indeed.com/lead/managing-leading-vuca-world

 

Find more about Kimberly, Twiana and Matt here:

Kimberly Layne: https://www.kimberly-layne.com/

Twiana Armstrong: https://linkedin.com/in/twianaarmstrong

Matt Schlegel: https://evolutionaryteams.com

 

#VUCA #Leadership #Roaring2020s

 

[Video Transcript]

[Matt Schlegel]

Happy New Year. So we’re now in 2024, the fifth year of our Roaring 2020’s, and they’re continuing to really roar!

We have a lot of things going on this year that will be diverting our attention here and there, not the least of which is the upcoming election. So we can say that the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that we’ve been dealing with since the start of the pandemic will be continuing.

And now, on top of elections, pandemics, wars and climate change, we have artificial intelligence really taking off, and there are good things and bad things about that.

I am eager to see how AI can help with team problem solving.  I have started a conversation with a person who is using various AI platforms, like ChatGPT, Bard, BingChat, to each build a problem-solving team,  and then have those different teams collaborate across each of the AI platforms to come up with solutions for complex problems like climate change.  I am fascinated by this work and will be following it closely this year and looking to how I can learn, grow and adapt my teamwork consulting business to utilize these amazing new tools.

What are you two looking to in 2024.

[Kimberly Layne Roberts]

This is a  new ERA – where the E in Era will be replaced by “AI”-RA.   “AIRA”

Bill Gates said there were two technological innovations in our lifetime that would change the world.

The first we know was in 1980 when he was introduced to a graphical user interface—which became the forerunner of every modern operating system, including Windows

The second we are coming to know is AI. Bill observed the power of Open AI: when he observed AI engine had passed an AP Bio exam consisting of 60 questions with a score of  59/60 correct and it had  answered 5 open ended questions correct a (5/5). He thought this was going to change the world and it is! It is a new era that is spelled AIRA.

Yes, Matt and Twiana, VUCA Is alive and well, and I would like to suggest we add a “D”VUCAD for distrust and disbelief. Along with the positives of AI for healthcare, learning, the way we work, and communication, it also is creation a mistrust and a distrust of what is real and what is not.

For example, it is very likely that people will be leveraging AI and digital tools to influence the outcome of the election. We have witnessed deep fake images,  and voices,  of those in the public eye such as entertainers, and politicians.

What do we believe and what do we not? I think that D should represent defining boundaries, defining regulation, and defining consequences for creating dishonest material.

This is a new AIRA. How are we going to ensure it is to our benefit and not our destruction? I know I will be much more discerning in what I believe, observe, and adopt as reality in my communication, my coaching and in my leadership. It  instills in me a strong desire to make sure I continue to lead with strong integrity, trust, and honesty.

Twiana, what are you thinking about for 2024?

[Twiana Armstrong]

Listen up, Leaders, denial is not an option! In this world of VUCA, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, leading and leadership has changed. Business consultants point to the beginning of the 2020s as another decade of turbulence. As you operationalize your 2024 strategic plan, assess your environment including how you will lead during these times of post pandemic, climate change, political extremism, the evolution of social justice and the revolution of AI. The US military introduced VUCA into our lexicon in the 1980s. As a leadership consultant, my conversations with leaders focus first on understanding their environment to developing a 4-point plan that leads through volatility to vision, from uncertainty to understanding, from complexity to compassioned clarity and from ambiguity to aligned agility. The most critical foundations in each of these pillars are self-awareness and belonging. Three actions to include in your plan:

  1. Hone your leadership skills – skills of the past are ineffective for success in the future. The world is witnessing a new normal.
  2. Invest in a robust change management masterplan.
  3. Surround yourself with team of experts: experts in organizational development, educational and training, conflict management and problem resolution, communication, change management and business analysis.

Below are links to resources about leading through VUCA. On behalf of the Roaring 2020’s Speakeasy Team, cheers to a successful 2024.

Happy New Year!

 

 

Psychological Barriers to Decision Making and Problem Solving

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There are a number of psychological hurdles we must overcome to engage with a problem.  Our brains are designed to conserve our body’s energy resources, and it has a number of tricks it plays on us to keep us from expending energy, even in the face a problem that must be solved.  Our continued burning of fossils and the subsequent climate and biodiversity-loss crises pose the biggest threat to humankind we have yet faced. How we humans are responding to these crises expose many of the tools the brain deploys to keep us from taking action and expending energy.  These tools are called unconscious biases.  In this video I share four unconscious biases that we humans are using to avoid taking action to address the existential crises of our time.

Thanks to Matthew Cahill of The Precipio Company (https://percipiocompany.com/) for his input on this talk.

[Transcript]

I’m giving a brief talk about unconscious biases and how they affect our action or inaction to address the climate crisis. And I’m giving this talk to my ProVisors Networking group, and I thought I would share it with you. So let’s get started.

Unconscious biases serve as an energy saving technique for our brain. If we can avoid expending the energy of making decisions, then that saves energy for the brain to do other things. Unconscious biases serve as one of those tools. These are mostly beneficial, but sometimes they can be harmful when the brain inaccurately assesses risk. And, by not taking action, you will end up preserving a status quo when maybe that’s not the most appropriate thing to do. Media know about our unconscious biases, and people who advocate for inaction and preserving the status quo use our unconscious biases to their benefit to keep us from not taking action. The unconscious biases that I’ll go over today are Normalcy Bias, Bystander Effect, Survivors Bias, and Backfire Effect.

The first is Normalcy Bias. What this one does is trick our brain into thinking that everything is fine, even when it’s not. And, it’s particularly easy to trick the brain when the threat is invisible, like say a deadly virus, or an invisible greenhouse gas. Everything looks fine, so the brain tricks us into thinking everything’s fine.

All right, the next one is the Bystander Effect. Even when our brain does see that there’s some kind of urgent emergency happening, we’ll trick ourselves into thinking that somebody else will take care of it. And therefore, we can avoid expend the energy of making the decision to do something, and the energy of taking action on actually doing something.

And then the third one is Survivors Bias. “I made it this far, so I’m going to be okay.” It’s particularly easy for our brain to trick ourselves when we live in more resilient communities than in less resilient communities, “Oh yeah. So they may have a problem, but we’ll be fine here.” And another thing is, if you live in a place where the climate is particularly mild, like we do here in California, then we can trick ourselves into thinking, “Oh yeah, everything’s fine, there’s no problem here,” while maybe the rest of the nation or the globe is having extreme weather events.

All right. And then the last one I’ll go over is the Backfire Effect. When our brain is confronted with some information that it doesn’t want to hear, then we go into,  “la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,” and we just ignore it and deny it. And that allows us to preserve whatever beliefs or thoughts that we had, without having to expend energy to change the way we think, and perhaps have to take action to address some emerging issue.

So these are just four of the things our brain does to trick us and keep us from addressing the climate crisis because if our brain does accept it, then that next step is you start to feel guilt for not taking action. And so, these biases will have the effect of saving energy, avoiding taking action, and avoiding any feelings of guilt by tricking our brains into thinking that there isn’t an emergency.

All right, thanks so much for listening.

Reflections on 2023 in The Roaring 2020s

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The Roaring 2020s Speakeasy Team – Authors Kimberly Layne Roberts, Twiana Armstrong and Matt Schlegel – reflect on growth and discoveries in 2023.

Here’s links to resources Twiana mentions:

https://nesslabs.com/the-power-of-self-reflection-at-work

https://www.linkedin.com/advice/1/how-can-you-reflect-your-work-create-actionable-oitmc

https://bestdaypsych.com/personal-growth-through-self-reflection/

Find more about Kimberly, Twiana and Matt here:

Kimberly Layne: https://www.kimberly-layne.com/

Twiana Armstrong: https://linkedin.com/in/twianaarmstrong

Matt Schlegel: https://evolutionaryteams.com

#DEI #DEIB #Diversity #ServantLeadership #Leadership #Roaring2020s

[Video Transcript]

[Twiana Armstrong]

Leaders, your Roaring 2020’s Speakeasy Team is taking time to reflect on our body of work.  In 2023 we endeavored to increase with abundance around leadership, mental health and diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging, DEIB. As I contemplate 2023, I’m carving out time to reflect – How did I do, did perform to the highest of standards? Did I achieve my goals? To explore – What if?  What if I had done it differently? To critique – What did I do well?  Where are there opportunities to strengthen my body of work? And lastly, to excitedly plan for 2024 – What’s next? Many of you are preparing to implement and integrate strategic plans for 2024, activities foundational to for successful leadership. Increase your chances for success by reflecting on your body of work by demonstrating positive mental health. Use your sphere of influence to encourage others to carve out time to reflect on 2023. Including others in this exercise helps create an environment of belonging. The resources below will help you get started.  Happy Holidays to you and yours! I am looking forward to continuing to support your leadership throughout the Roaring 2020’s! Happy New Year!

[Matt Schlegel]

Thanks, Twiana.

This year, I experimented with a specific leadership style: Servant Leadership.

As a reminder, Servant leadership starts with being a servant first, being in service to your team.

To be an effective servant leader, you must first work with your team to establish a vision for the world you want to create together.  Then you can create specific goals aligned with realizing that vision.

This style can make your teammates feel very empowered.  But for some, it pushes them out of their comfort zone.

It takes energy to create a vision, to make decisions, to commit to taking action on those decisions.

For people who are used to a top-down command-and-control leadership style, it may take some time to adjust to a culture of servant leadership.

I was a bit surprised when I experienced pushback like, “Just tell me what to do.”

Of course, I wanted them to decide for themselves what to do based on the vision and the goals!

I found that as my teammates built their muscles of creativity and decision-making, they felt increasingly empowered and became more productive.

I am committed more than ever to working with teams who embrace the servant leadership style, ensuring that all teammates feel comfortable making decisions and feeling that they are supported as the team works with common purpose towards its common goal.

Kimberly what are you reflecting on this season?

 [Kimberly Layne Roberts]

As I reflect on this year and remember my sole intention at the beginning of this year,  I am sitting very pleased, joyful, and grateful for its fulfillment.

I had set the intention that if there was nothing else, I accomplished this year, I intended to tackle my past traumas, mindset monsters, hidden emotions, and past survival techniques that were no longer serving me. .Why? I wanted to do this as I was starting a new beginning, a new life. A new beginning that would start on June 23, with the love of my life, my husband, and family I had always wanted: two teenage boys, and a sister for my dog, Sammy.

Through a neuro emotional coach training course, learning the application of Positive Intelligence, and my own self work and determination, I must honestly say it has been a year of transformation . I am blessed with a wonderful life

that I Have manifested and set an intention to live, and I am eternally grateful.  Such that I am using the tools that I have learned, the neuro emotional coaching, positive intelligence ,and releasing hidden emotions to help my family, my friends, and the many individuals and teams I Executive Coach.

I will be setting a new intention in the New Year to continue to perfect my service to others by building my expertise in helping others release those feelings, limited beliefs, and survival techniques that are no longer serving them so that they can find new found freedom, abundance, joy and love.

How are you reflecting on your year this year. What is your intention for 2024? On behalf of Myself, Matt and Twiana, we wish you the joyous of holidays and the happiest of New Years.

 

 

Cultural Intelligence – CQ – in the Roaring 2020s

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Authors Kimberly Layne Roberts, Twiana Armstrong and Matt Schlegel discuss the importance of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) for organizations and how CQ complements diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) initiatives.

 

Find more about Kimberly, Twiana and Matt here:

Kimberly Layne: https://www.kimberly-layne.com/

Twiana Armstrong: https://linkedin.com/in/twianaarmstrong

Matt Schlegel: https://evolutionaryteams.com

 

#CulturalIntelligence #CQ #DEI #DEIB #Diversity #Inclusion #Leadership #Roaring2020s

 

[Video Transcript]

0:00 [Kimberly Layne Roberts]

In our pursuit of DEIB,  we are asked to look at EQ or emotional intelligence, and I am going to ask us to take a step further and to look not only at EQ but also Cultural intelligence or CQ Why?

Emotional intelligence provides us the self-awareness and social sensibility we need to detect and manage the emotions of people like ourselves. While Cultural intelligence expands that ability to have the  capacity to lead, empathize, and be open to others who come from different backgrounds than our selves.

EQ is great for leadership but In order to lead diverse teams we need CQ. Allowing for diverse teams, opens the door for a unique, innovative collective brain power that is more varied, creative, and sometimes experienced than a like- minded group. For example. What if we had a group of set individuals who were all like minded in that they were all color blind  on the red and green axis. It wasn’t till we opened the door to a new or different individual that we were able to now introduce the colors of red and green into our world.- How innovative-  The introduction of two new colors!

How do you get CQ and Cultural Intelligence:  Here are three key ways:

  1. Stop judging and begin to listen to those individuals who are not like you.  You may learn a new insight or way of doing something.
    2.  Look for the positive intent in a different individuals reasoning, thinking, or doing than you. From their perspective their intent is purposeful and good.
  2. Allow  culturally diverse individuals to sit at your table, to voice their thoughts and to connect and lead.

At the end of the day. What we learned in kindergarten still stands valid and helps all us to embrace diversity:

  • Learn to play with others no matter who they are and what they look like  While on the playground or in the sand box
  • Share and especially share if you have more than others.  There is enough to go around
  • Be kind and inviting to everyone you meet.  It is no fun eating your lunch alone.

2:03 [Twiana Armstrong]

Sir Richard Branson is famously quoted as saying, “A company’s employees are its greatest asset, and your people are your product.” Employees are the greatest and most valuable asset of an organization. To this end, corporate America’s efforts to address DEIB demonstrates a level of consciousness to treating its employees with care, comfort, and concern. Everyone is well aware that profit is the foundational bottom line.  This level of consciousness is playing out as some organizations carve out or cut its DEIB programs amid backlash to its initiative. “A LinkedIn study found that chief diversity & inclusion officer positions grew almost 169 percent from 2019 – 2022. Fast forward, current research now shows that the attrition rate for DEI roles at the end of 2022 was 33 percent. Organizations are restructuring and renaming roles from Chief DEI Officer to Chief Impact Officer or Chief Influence Officer. Reasons for this backlash vary and serve to challenge an organization’s level of consciousness about the understanding and commitment to its most valuable asset.  According to workforce intelligence, since July 2022, Amazon, Applebee’s and Twitter have led the way with DEI layoffs. The state of Texas has gone so far as to ban public colleges’ DEI programs which resulted in Texas A&M entangled in a lawsuit over its newly hired Director of Journalism. The lawsuit was settled for 1 millions dollars. Studies show DEIB benefits include a profitable foundational bottom line, higher recruitment and retention, as well as, expanded innovation and creativity. Leaders, your level of consciousness directly correlates with your level of understanding and commitment to DEIB.

 

4:31 [Matt Schlegel]

Thanks, Twiana and Kimberly.. Yeah, it’s pretty stunning to hear that organizations and a university are eliminating leadership positions intended to head up diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives.

I just can’t stress enough how important it is to keep up the focus on DEIB, especially now. I live next to Stanford, and just recently a student was hit with a car after the driver of the car shouted a slur at the student. The student was injured and hospitalized. This student is an Arab Muslim, and he was attacked based on his appearance.

By not putting an emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, there are these real world consequences.

I am so impressed with this student who released a statement while in the hospital that I really think summarizes so well what we’re all trying to say here. I’ll read a part of his statement. He says, “Today, as I share my story, my hope is to ignite a spark of empathy, a desire for change, and a call to action, to foster a society where love overpowers hate, where understanding douses ignorance and where compassion binds us in a tapestry of unified strength.”

Wow, I just can’t think of a better way to summarize how important these concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, AND cultural intelligence are, especially in these times.

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