'Diversity and Inclusion Frameworks' with Kim Scott and Trier Bryant

We - all of us - consistently exclude, underestimate, and underutilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate, and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business. In a hugely impactful webcast with Kim Scott, leadership expert and author of Radical Candor, and Trier Bryant, diversity and inclusion expert, Leon Goren asked them about how a leader can use these teachings to change the culture of a workplace. Using examples and learnings from Kim's new book, Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair, discuss a framework of how we can recognize, attack, and eliminate workplace injustice while transforming our careers and organizations in the process. 
Just Work reveals a practical framework for both respecting everyone's individuality and collaborating effectively. This is the essential guide business leaders and their employees need to create more just workplaces and establish new norms of collaboration and respect.

If you’re interested in tuning into the live webcasts, please visit https://peo-leadership.com/.

Tune in to our new podcast, Snippets! In short segments, Leon Goren brings together business leaders to share stories, best practices and learnings with the rest of the community. Available on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/snippets-with-leon-goren/id1510439127.

If you’d like to find out more about our leadership community, please feel free to reach out directly to lgoren@peo-leadership.com. 

If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please subscribe and give us a review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.  

Transcript

Leon Goren: 0:00

Hi, I'm Leon Goren, president of PEO leadership, a peer-to-peer leadership advisory firm. We're an amazing community of CEOs, presidents and senior executives. Ask yourself, are you learning as fast as the world is changing? It's time for Ontario business leaders to band together for counseling support, it's time for you to tap into the business wisdom of our peer groups and unlock new ways to grow. I want you to come out of this COVID crisis a better leader and your organization ready for what's next, take the first step at peo-leadership.com. Special thanks to Vaughn Metropolitan center for helping us bring you today's po leadership's way forward podcast. So I just want to introduce myself and get everything rolling here. So for those that don't know, I'm Leon Goren and I'm CEO of PEO leadership and welcome to the Way Forward our live webcast series. If you're joining us for the first time, and you're a co president, business owner, and or corporate executive, looking to grow your leadership capabilities and performance and of course, grow your business you've landed in the right spot. In this rapidly changing business landscape. The importance of expanding your connections and having insightful and meaningful conversations with the right peers is now more important than ever. PEO leadership. Our members include some of Canada's strongest leaders representing almost every industry, they lead both Canadian SMEs and large multinational organizations. And in our audience today, we're also excited to welcome the business leaders of our US Alliance partners, Allied executive, and Inc CEO project. The leaders of all three of our organization understand the value and importance of being able to connect and think with each other. You know, in light of what we're talking about today, collaborate and respect each other as individuals as well as we all work to successfully achieve the personal goals of our members in their organizations. So if you're thinking about the future of your business, and navigating through the many unknowns that lie ahead if you're thinking about your stakeholders, and your employees and how you'll continue to engage, inspire and support them. If you're thinking about whether and how you should pivot your business and understand the importance of being able to step outside of your building to learn from others, then I think you've landed in the right spot. I urge you to reach out to us you can visit us at our website, po dash leadership calm. Consider taking part in our 60 day trial experience what it's like to have an advisor and a board community help you realize your personal and professional and organization's growth objectives. So this morning, I'm very excited to welcome both Kim Scott and traer Brian Kim is the author of just work get excellent not excellent get shit done fast and fair, as well as the New York Times bestseller radical candor be a kick ass boss without losing your humanity. Kim was a CEO at Dropbox, co co co to Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, Twitter and various other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty of that at Apple University and before that, let adsense youtube and double click teams at Google earlier in her career can manage a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond cutting factory in Moscow. She lives with her family in Silicon Valley. traer Brian is a strategic executive leader with distinctive tech Wall Street and military experience spanning over 15 years. She's previously held leadership roles at Astra Twitter Goldman Sachs, and proudly served as a combat veteran in the United States Air Force as a captain leading engineering teams while spearheading diversity, equity and inclusion. And that's just for the Air Force Academy, Air Force and DLD. She's been featured as an influential DNI practitioner by several publication outlets from USA Today to CNN and SK SW traer earned a BS in systems engineering with a minor in Spanish and leadership from the United States Air Force Academy, where she played division one volleyball together, both Kim and tree are founded just work in February 2021. Now before I begin this session, a couple things, one, let you know how I think I hope it's going to unfold. So we thought we'd spend the first 30 to 35 minutes more of a fireside chat talking about some of the opportunities, some of the issues, some of the challenges, and then open up to q&a. And really have you put for some of the questions some of the thoughts on your mind. And to do so what I'm going to ask is that you do it through the chat. So please, as we're going put the questions in there and 30 You know what, when we're in about 3035 minutes, I'll go to the chat box and try and either bring you out of mute so you can ask the question yourself, or if you're not, you know, I know the sensitivity of the subject and I hope this won't be an issue but if you're not feeling comfortable asking a question or you got something really pointed, directed to me that you got my name that's Leon Gordon, just do a direct message and I'll ask the question anonymously for them so really want to get you all involved in Oh Kim and tr do as well. And let's get started. So good morning, Kim to air and welcome to leadership.

Unknown: 4:58

Thank you so much for having Yes. Good morning. Thank you.

Leon Goren: 5:02

So let's begin. First of all, we talk quickly about the book. So I'm going to start with the book at with Kim. And just, Kim, tell us a little bit of the inspiration behind the book, what got your motive I know you love to write. But what guides you behind writing this book?

Kim Scott: 5:18

Sure. So shortly after I published radical candor, and by the way, if you write a book about feedback, you're gonna get a lot out of it. So I was getting a lot of feedback about radical candor. And I was in San Francisco giving a presentation to a tech company, and the CEO of that company had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade, and is one of two few black women CEOs in tech. And when I finished giving the presentation to her team, she pulled me aside and she said, Look, Kim, I'm really excited about radical candor. I'm excited to roll it out on my team. But I got to tell you, that it's a lot harder for me to put it into practice than it is for you. She said, as soon as I offer even the most gentle criticism, even the most compassionate candor to someone, I get signed with the angry black woman stereotype. And I knew this was true. And then she said to me, and I gotta imagine, cam, it's a lot harder for you than it is for the men who we work with. And I also knew this was true. And I sort of had three revelations at the same time. The first was that I had failed to be the kind of upstander who I who I imagined myself to be who I want to be. Throughout. Throughout my career, I had failed to notice, for example, for my colleague, who I really liked a lot, and she was always, unfailingly polite and pleasant, never seemed even a slight bit annoyed. And I knew in that period of time she had what to be pissed off about and the time we were working together. And it had just never occurred to me the toll that that must have taken on her and that I had refused to notice the things that were happening to her. The second was that I had and this is particularly hard for the author of radical candor to admit, but I had been in denial about the things that were happening to me, I did not I just had sort of gone through my career, pretending that what was happening wasn't actually happening to me as a woman in the workplace. And perhaps most difficult of all, I realized that I had failed to be the kind of leader that I imagined myself to be, I often failed to create the kinds of environments that would prevent those sorts of things from happening to underrepresented people. So that was, I guess, in a nutshell, why I decided I better get out of denial and sit down and write just work.

Leon Goren: 7:50

No, I thank you for that. Like, as I mentioned to you before, I just finished the book and it was it's fantastic. So first of all, anybody listening to this, you really need to pick up a copy of the book and not just read it once I have it read through once but you got so much information there that it's it needs a reread tree, or I'm gonna go to you like, so how did the cam tree or duo come together and form just work? You're the CEO now of just work?

Unknown: 8:17

Yeah.

Trier Bryant: 8:18

So when Kim reached out, and you know, allowed me to read the early edition of the book, and we were talking about, you know, you know, what she wanted to do with the book and potentially a company. I was like, Yeah, like I'm a chief people officer and a really great startup, literally, a hot startup like rocky launching rockets into space, Astra. And I was like, what I'm gonna read the book. And so the way that you know, Kim likes to just say it is that Kim wrote a book about having a lot of root canals. And she has ideas on like, how to make it not as painful. But she calls me the actual dentist, right? The person who's been a people HR leader. So I read the book. And I thought it was incredibly powerful and so differently on for two reasons. One, I also consider myself a DNI practitioner. And we don't have enough frameworks for people to leverage for leaders to leverage for organizations to say, here's a framework tactical and practical and put this into practice within your organization. And so I said, Kim, we have to get this into as many organizations into as many leaders as possible. And then the second thing that was just really powerful is that I had a lot of feedback for Kim. There's a lot of things in the book that if you are an HR people leader, you're going to be like, Oh, I really don't want my manager to do that. I understand the intent, but let's talk about it and work through it together. But there's so much there where leaders and organizations can partner together and people in HR teams can take this to really transform their organizations so that you can have more equitable and just workplaces. And I thought that it was so powerful that I thought it wasn't the opportunity to Leave my role. But I did, I was so inspired. And that's how just work at the company came into play.

Leon Goren: 10:06

That's awesome. That's a great story. So let's, let's dive into it. And maybe I start with Kim frameworks, I get them when reading the book, you are an expert at developing these frameworks. But it's fantastic because you put it in simple, simple terms for people to really understand it. Let's talk about definitions and really the root causes of some of this workplace injustice. And maybe you can talk a little bit some of the definitions of how you framed it to.

Kim Scott: 10:36

Yeah, so at least for me, one of the things that I came to realize as I was writing all these stories about the stuff that that had happened to me and my career, but also the stuff I had done to other people in my career, like the first part of the framework is being very clear about what your role is. Sometimes I was the person harmed by workplace injustice, sometimes I was the person who caused harm. And and that was actually harder to come to grips with. Sometimes I was the upstander, or the failed upstander isn't the story I just told. And other times, I was the leader. And so being clear about what you can do what what your degrees of freedom are to act in each of these different roles is really important. And then the other thing that I realized is that I often conflated thing, three very different problems. And so it's really important to disentangle them. We often confuse bias with prejudice with bullying. And to me, once we disentangle bias, prejudice and bullying, it becomes much clearer what we can do about each so the simple definition of bias is not meaning it, you don't really and you don't really intend to the the implications of what you've said and done or not something you really believe. Prejudice, on the other hand is meaning it, you actually believe this thing when it's prejudice. And very often when I would, when I would, when I would notice prejudice, something prejudiced being said, I would try to pretend to myself that it was bias, that was part. And it wasn't, it was actually prejudice, I got to deal with it differently. And then last, but not least, there is bullying, which is just being mean or meaning harm. And and that you need to deal with very different way as well. So Tria and I have developed some specific things that leaders can do about each of these three different things and sort of think about how you can teach your team to distinguish among them.

Trier Bryant: 12:39

And Leon, when we're also talking about the roles, an important thing to just acknowledge is that you can be in an hour long meeting and literally play all four of those roles. At the same time, you can be a person who has been, you know, being harmed by bias, then you could, you know, cause harm by bullying someone in that same meeting, be an upstander to intervene when someone may be exhibiting prejudice, and then as a leader, you know, have to put a mechanism in place to prevent that. So we're not talking over like courses of days or weeks or months that you might play these roles. Like we're constantly shifting through these roles throughout our day, and in some time, very short time periods playing multiple roles.

Leon Goren: 13:21

So just maybe, let's talk some examples in that meeting. Right? So if you're the victim, and somebody does some and it looks unconsciously it's most a lot of the stuff I'm gonna assume. And we could nature, it's unconscious bias, but it happens in that room in that first hour of a meeting, as the and you do this in the book, what, but three, or what, as a victim of what you do. And the one thing that resonate me is silence is not the answer here. And right.

Trier Bryant: 13:51

That's right, you want to we want to end the default to silence so often, we default the song because we don't know what to do. So Kim has a great example about the start of a meeting bias happening, and then what do you do about it?

Kim Scott: 14:05

So so for example, a friend of mine ailing Lee walks into a meeting with two colleagues who are men, and the they all sit down big conference table and they're meeting with another company and everyone from the other company is a man, first guy comes in and sits across from the guy to a lay flat, the next guy comes in and sits across from the next guy and then they file on down the table leaving a lane dangling off by yourself with nobody sitting across from her. And the meeting begins. And it turns out that a lien has the expertise that they're there to talk about, but every time a lien opens her mouth, the man from the other company turned to one of her male colleagues and asked him for the follow up questions. And this happened. So raise your hand if you've noticed this happen. Yeah. And so This happens once that happens twice. It happens a third time. And her colleague finally notices what's going on. And he stands up. And he says, I think, a lien and I should switch seats. And they do and it totally changes the tenor. Because all of a sudden, everybody notices what's happening. And the men from the other side had not intended to exclude a lien in this way, when they realized what they were doing, they change their behavior. And so it was so much easier for him to do that than it would have been for a lien. If a lien had done it, there would have been like bias on top of bias, because she suddenly would have been abrasive or, you know, God knows what that she would have been called some other kind of gendered term. And so so one of the things I want to talk about and acknowledge in this book is that the gratitude that I have for the upstanders that have that have helped me throughout my career, and it's not because I'm the damsel in distress that I need help. It's because it's much easier for an upstander to intervene than it is for me to defend myself when I'm the the person harmed, or the victim, as you say, by the way, I wrestled with those words, should I use fit them? Should I use person harm? I'm not sure you all can give me feedback and tell me if I landed in the right place. So that's a story about kind of what ought to happen all the time. But that that story that I just told, almost never happens. So Tria has come up with some ways that we can intervene as leaders and when it's bias.

Trier Bryant: 16:36

So one of the things, you know, that we talked about in the framework is using for the upstander, using that AI statement. Right? So yeah, I think we should switch seats, right? And but it's in organizations, how do you create a culture where people are thinking in this way to interrupt the bias, and so we call these bias interrupters. And so to create a bias interrupter within your organization, it's important that you have shared vocabulary and then a shared norm. So shared vocabulary means what's a word or a phrase that everyone knows when it said that someone is acknowledging behaviors or an attitude? That is bias that we're interrupting it. Right? So, you know, Kim with her editor for the book, they used Yo, you know, maybe it's like, hey, biased alert, Kim and I at just work and we are teaching a course right now. We use a purple flag, purple from the book. So if someone says purple flag, or you see Kim waving the purple flag that we all know that, hey, there was bias, but then we need a shared norm, because then what happens after that, because it can get a little uncomfortable, right? So actually, earlier, we through a purple flag on Leon, saying, guys, right, giving, giving the feedback. And so in that moment, we know that the norm is he we're going to share what it is right? And then the person is going to say, Hey, thank you for acknowledging for for raising that. I appreciate it. Like I'll do better, we get back to work, the meeting, and conversation moves forward. But what happens if the person doesn't understand? Right? So then the shared norm is, Hey, I didn't quite understand that one. Why don't we connect after the meeting, and then we can have a conversation, right? But the important thing is that we're disrupting the bias, so that we don't ignore it, and that we don't perpetuate it. And that it also creates a learning moment for everyone else for our course, the other thing that we do is because it's over zoom, which is so great, is that we can drop a link or give additional detail in the chat. So that again, the conversation in the course in the lesson continue to go, but people can read and get caught up. And then again, educate themselves. What I really love in Kim's example with a lien is that the person knew that the bias needed to be interrupted. Now maybe with external folks, you don't say purple flag because they're gonna say what does that mean? Right? But do you still use the power of the if statement and then you know, later on have a conversation with a lien and say, Hey, if that was within, like our own company, I would have said purple flag, but I recognize the bias and I was interrupting and I was being an upstander to stand up to the injustice, right? Because it was not okay.

Leon Goren: 19:09

To try I just wanna we talked about it from an external that was an outside meeting, team, a three letter, whatever it was a presentation, but let's bring it into the internal like within the organization, right? And I'm an accountant. And the first thing I learned when I when I started running PL leadership was I mean, even look at numbers every which way you want and have the best strategy, but it's always about the people, the culture and and what else really, it always started with the leader. So getting a change of the way we operate, the way we address things has to start with the leader. Any advice on how we start that you got a new leader just became a leader, a CEO of an organization, they're there for the first 90 days. How do they change the culture and the norms around allowing for the interruptions to happen to catch these

Trier Bryant: 20:00

Lead by example, be vulnerable, call yourself out, right? call yourself into that throw our purple. Kim and I at least multiple times a day will not only throw purple sides of each other. But we'll also throw it on ourselves, right? And there may be moments where we'll hear someone say something. Can what was it the other day in a meeting? Oh, they were talking about grandfathering.

Unknown: 20:25

Yeah. And

Trier Bryant: 20:26

they said, Hey, we shouldn't use that term you are and Kim wasn't familiar, right? So I looked it up and put a in the in the chat message. But that person in that meeting, when we explained to them what a purple flag was, and calling out the bias, they did it on themselves, and then educated us, you know, on that. So I think it's leaders to lean in being vulnerable, lead by example. But also, you know, when we say person who's causing the harm, and we like to say being called in to receive that feedback, not calling out, creating that culture and endless conversations, that it's not a bad thing, right? We want that feedback to grow and develop and how you create that culture where people, you know, see it as a positive and are appreciative of that engagement versus feeling ashamed or shut down by it.

Kim Scott: 21:14

So for example, one of the CEOs who I coached I had had the the habit as most people do, who aren't in the south in the US of saying, you guys were addressing his team. And I said, and he was very focused on creating a better working environment for women. And he had asked me to come to him, like one of the things he did was he hired me as his sort of bias buster, he wanted me he invited me, he paid me actually, to come in and tell him what he was, you know, were the things he could do big or small. And I said, one of the things that you could do, which may seem small, but it's actually gonna be really hard is to change your vocabulary around saying, you guys, and he didn't get it. At first, we had a couple of conversations about it. He didn't necessarily agree with me, but he was open to being challenged. And finally, he's like, Oh, you're right. I'm invisible. Ising all the women in the room, I say yes. And, and so he really worked hard on changing his vocabulary. And at first, he tried to change his vocabulary before he told the team that he was going to do it. And then he realized it would actually be better if he told the team and he asked the team to flag him. When he did it. He said, I won't learn this unless people are interrupting it all the time. And this is really important. Because these kinds of these kinds of language, it is hard to change your vocabulary. If we say it's easy, and people tend to give up too soon. So for example, as I was writing the book, I hired a bias Buster who pointed out to me that I tend to use the word see and enable this way when I really need to understand or notice, and you'll probably catch me a couple of times, correcting myself in the rest of this talk. But I thought I had really understood how important it was I like I understood it intellectually. I also understood it emotionally because one of the people who is editing the book is a historian who's blind Zack shore, if you write anything, you should hire Zach short, he's an incredible, and I really valued him and his contribution. And the last thing I wanted to do was use language that would harm him. So I thought I had fixed this problem. And then just before I turn the book into the editor, I did a quick search. And I hadn't used misused slop, I'd use sloppy site metaphors, 99 times, and 350 pages, it was incredible to me. And so when you can, when you can share those things you make it, it's not that you're not holding yourself accountable for bias you are. But you're also acknowledging that this, the fact that I am using this biased language does not make me a terrible person, what would make me a terrible person would be to deny that I was doing an AR to insist on continuing to do it. So I think that kind of openness and vulnerability, especially around bias is important. And the other thing I would say, as a leader around bias, don't choose one kind of bias and focus on that don't think, Oh, I'm gonna solve the gender problem. And then I'm gonna deal with, we keep all of these biases work kind of in the same way and when we can, when we when we can address all of them at the same time. It actually makes it easier to solve them. We need to solve them in solidarity. We can't. One bias doesn't sort of operate, you know, in isolation from all the other biases. And it also then you're not singling out one group of underrepresented people.

Leon Goren: 25:01

So if I wanted to kick this off in my organization, right, I totally get the role modeling is absolutely imperative because other people look at you right in terms of what you're doing and how you behave. But how do I kick it off? Like, am I calling a meeting for a couple hours? am I walking them through different definitions? You know, one thing in the book he talked about people are taking these unconscious bias courses. I mean, as a first step, but you are you really say, yeah, that's a first step. But there's a lot that's got to follow after that. And you're talking about the interrupters. So I don't care, you're going into these organizations, you've been chief people officer in a number of different organizations. What would you say? use me as an example. I mean, I want to start, I want to start this initiative, I want to make a difference. I want to create a just workplace. What's the first thing I need to do with my management team?

Trier Bryant: 25:56

Yeah, another thing that, you know, we recommend, and I think that this this next very tactical thing, it's a, it's a little harder to implement, but it's so important and can be used in so many different ways as far as like, you know, really overcoming replace in justices. But if we move on to just prejudice in the framework, which is meaning it, right, we talk about what leaders need to do is create a code of conduct. Now, it doesn't have to be called a code of conduct. But it really just needs to be something that you can hold people accountable to, in your organization with some teeth in it, right? Because people can believe whatever they want to believe everyone has their own beliefs, but you can't come into an organization and do and say whatever you want. So leaders have to put those boundaries and and put those expectations into place as far as you know, what people can do and say, in your organization, and what that means and how you know, they can't impose their prejudice beliefs on others. So for example, again, prejudice is meaning it, I was in an organization, where we were interviewing for another talent acquisition leader. And at the end of the day, when we were debriefing, it was very clear that the top candidate that everyone had the most positive feedback on was most excited about was a black woman who was wearing her hair natural the way that I'm wearing it. In the interview, after we did the feedback, we've worked, we felt, you know, all the interviewers were really excited that we were going to move forward with offer with this candidate. However, the hiring manager said, Well, I'm not quite sure we're going to be able to go out to offer with her. And, you know, I kind of wanted to really dig into that, like, what did that mean? Why not when all this feedback was positive. And this was an organization that is known for hiring the best and brightest. And the hiring manager said, we'll try there, we can't hire her the way she wears her hair like that she can't go in front of the business, right? We can't put her in front of the business with her hair like that.

Unknown: 27:51

And I assure you, there was nothing in this job description that said anything about the way that you have to wear your hair. But that hiring manager that was prejudiced, because they meant it. And they believed it, that they couldn't put a black woman with her wearing her natural hair in front of the business to get the job done. So what can be in place to prevent those situations from happening. And that's where our code of conduct comes in, right? Where you tell people hate this, these are our values, this is how we're going to operate. This is how we're going to make hiring decisions and holding people accountable to that. And so but as an upstander, or the person who may have been harmed by that, which was the candidate who wasn't in the room, right? That's where we tell folks to use an if statement. And so when it statement, right focuses on the prejudice, where an i statement with bias, it invites someone in, right? So if someone says like, Hey, I don't think you know, it, like Kim tells a great story about how someone called her a pretty girl once. And she said, Hey, I don't think that I will ever take you seriously or work in a company, if you call me pretty girl, right? So it's inviting that person and to make it personal of how it makes them feel. But within its statement, you don't want to invite them in because they believe what they believe. Right? They have their data, you have your information. So you want to focus on the prejudice to say like, it is not within our code of conduct to discriminate against someone because of how they wear their hair. It is illegal not to hire someone which in the state of California and other states in the US, Marie Christine, I am loving your facial expression suits helping more fantastic, right. So it is illegal for you know, you have to make a hiring decision because someone wears their their hair.

Trier Bryant: 29:34

So using it statement, but we really you have to have a a code of conduct. I'll give you a quick example of a code of conduct at one of our previous companies. They didn't even have values, right. So let's just start there. Let's just talk about what are your company values? Well, so we created six values, and I think that value should be very short. So these values, not a single value was over three words, six values, very important. How Under each value, there was three restatements, and the we statements were how you bring that value to life and how we expected people to behave. So if the value was people first, which was the number one value People First, we respect each other, and this organization and communicate with respect, that's how we put people first, right? What are the restatements that embody that value that let people know how you behave and engage within an organization?

Kim Scott: 30:31

So and I think so. So, to answer your question, Leon, what what triora saying is, as a leader, you've got to, first off, identify the difference between bias and prejudice. With bias, the first thing you want to do is get your team to write the words that they're going to use to interruptive. So you, we're not going to give you the words you've got, and you shouldn't give your team the words, get them to give you the words, are you gonna say bias alert? Are you gonna say, or are they gonna say something else, but they've got to say something, then with prejudice as the leader, you need to write a code of conduct. And then you need to get your team to edit that code of conduct. And remember, the editor is the boss, not the writer, this is something I acutely aware of. So you've got to make sure that you're all getting all on the same page about where that line is between one person's freedom to believe whatever they want, and another person's freedom not to have that belief imposed upon them. And it's easy to say that it is really hard to write a code of conduct, so spend some time on it. And then I would say, the third thing you need to do as a leader is to create consequences for bullying. So bullying is just being mean. So at one point, I was the CEO and founder of my company, co founder of a different company, this would never happen to tree air and most company, but I was I was when I was the CEO wasn't a very good one in this case. So so because I had not created consequences for Boeing. So there was the guy working for me also, I didn't expect myself to be bullied as the CEO. That was incorrect. So there's this guy working for me, and he's not doing a very good job, I'm giving him some feedback. And I asked him towards the end of the conversation, as I tried to always do, what could I do, or stop doing that would help you improve this project. And he leans in, and he says, The problem here is you are the most aggressive woman I ever met. And I'm like, gosh, you know, we're in a very aggressive industry, if I'm the most aggressive woman you ever met, I'm not even in the top 100 most aggressive men, and part of your job is dealing with all these aggressive people. So your problem is clearly not my aggression, your problem is my gender. And in my case, that's not going to change. And so so this was, you know, was I was a little bit taken aback, but in this case, I responded as though I were the person harmed I as the person who harmed I have a right to choose to respond or not to respond. And I didn't, I didn't really say much to him. I didn't push back, I didn't use that new statement that Tria was talking about, I didn't say, you cannot talk to me like that, which would have been a reasonable response as the person harmed. And then as the leader, what I should have added is and if you talk to the other women in this company, and that way, you will get a poor performance rating. And if you if you can't change your behavior, you're gonna get fired. Like we're, it's not acceptable to talk to people. Yep. And, and I didn't do that. And of course, the problem with bullying is that if you don't create consequences, conversational consequences, but also career commerce consequences, or compensation consequences, then it's going to escalate Not only is it gonna continue, it'll get worse. And indeed, in this case, it did get worse fast forward a couple of months. We're having our company all hands he's sitting over a table the garbage can was underneath him, a woman on the team comes up to him with a with a paper plate and a pizza cross, clearly needing to throw her pizza crust away. And she says I need and it was obviously when she needed the garbage can and he spreads his legs and he's like to get in between my legs. And, and and so it got worse. You know, he wouldn't have said that to me, but I was standing right there. And he felt comfortable to say something like that or on on the team in front of me because I had not created consequences for bullying. So can I offer Leon as a summary slide?

Unknown: 34:42

Sure.

Kim Scott: 34:43

I love I love the visuals. So so just to sort of sum it up, distinguish as a leader you need to distinguish between bias, prejudice and bullying, and you need to create bias interrupters that make it safe for people harmed by bias and also for upstanders, not just safe but expected for people to interrupt bias with their eyes statement, you need to create a code of conduct, you need to write and have your team edit code of conduct. And that makes it much more clear what what you're appealing to with your Ed statement, it is a violation of our code of conduct, not to hire the most qualified woman because of her hair. You know, and there's also like, the common sense, or it is ridiculous not to hire the most qualified person because of our hair. But but sometimes what is common sense is not common is Uncommon Sense. And so you need to codify it in a code of conduct. And you also need to create consequences for bullying. So I would say these are the three things you all as leaders can do to really start to change your culture.

Trier Bryant: 36:01

And I want to acknowledge the on that like, as a leader, as a chief people officer, for me, where I failed in preventing was bullying, bullying was the hardest. And, Jennifer, to your point, yes, not only does there need to be consequences, but those consequences need to be enforced top down. Absolutely. And why bullying is hard, especially in some of the smaller organizations is sometimes you know, a lot of organizations, you have the brilliant jerk. And it's hard to hold consequences against the person that might end have them end in leaving the organization when like, you can't get your job done without that one person, right. And there's this pressure of just trying to make excuses. Or maybe it's so we have a direct culture, that's just how we communicate. But they're being mean, they're both they're bullying, and they're causing a lot of harm, and being destructive in your organization. And so, you know, when I read the book, and I reflected on this, this was the area where it was like, Wow, there were so many missed opportunities where I didn't offer and enforce the right consequences. And then also some organizations as leaders, we do a really good job looking down at the organization and creating consequences. But we need to have the conversation as well as what happens across all these workplace in justices. When it's happening at the very top level. What happens when your CEO is exhibiting prejudice, what happens when your board members are bullying, and so what happens, you know, when those situations occur to have those conversations beforehand, so we know how to intervene, and to hold people accountable at those highest levels as well.

Leon Goren: 37:38

It's funny as you as you guys are. I say guys, where's the purple flag. But I'm actually self reflecting about, you know, 20 years ago, I work in a professional service firm. And I remember down the hall, a partner, and there are many partners in this firm, it's, I'm not going to name the firm. But all he would do would be yelling at people bullying them. It was unbelievable. And you'd sit there and I'm in my 20s at the time, and you'd be like, this is insane. But you'd never say a word. And it's a partner, right? And I'm sure this still goes on. In many organizations where you're not even at the partnership level, you're in a manager level. What do you do in that situation? Like the CEOs never, you know, it's a large organizes CEO can be in Toronto, you're in Los Angeles, wherever you are. And it's pretty scary. Like even I'm a guy, I'm going to address this guy. I didn't, I never would do that. I would never stand up to this individual. I get yelled at as well. Any. It's just something that just rang in my head, as you were talking there. Twitter, what would you do in a situation like that?

Trier Bryant: 38:48

Yeah, so we talked about a couple of different things. But one, as a chief people officer, my perspective is please escalate that and share that with your manager or the person you report to or just go directly to your HR people team. Because it's really difficult to hold people accountable when we don't know what's going on. Right? And so allow your people on HR teams, hopefully they're good people in HR teams to do their work and to handle those those situations. Right. But what are the things that you can do beforehand to make that conversation easier, right document, document those things that you have a written down document, talking to other people in building solidarity? Excuse me, so talking other people saying, I had this interaction with this person, have you had that interaction with the person and if there's trends and there's other folks, right, then building that solidarity, that there's a real issue here, right, and that they can't say, Well, this is a one off or it's a you know, individual situation. So there's things that you can do that can make that better. But the other thing is also is that, you know, in the military, we take a class on hostile, working with hostile employees and having hostile communication One of the things that they teach us when we're leading our troops is that when someone is angry, and they're kind of off not saying this is always a situation of having a personal conversation with them, because oftentimes, especially in this climate right now, with everything going on, having the humanity and empathy that like, we don't know, everyone's journey, we don't know everything that's, you know, going on. And so I've had to confront some bullies in our organization. And I'll just start with, you know, what,

Unknown: 40:28

we need to have a conversation about work. But let's put that aside real quick. Right? And let's just talk about how are you doing? still use Damon? Right, putting it back on them? How are you doing? What's going on with you? Are you okay? I see you engaging with people on my team in a really inappropriate way that you know, is not appropriate at this company, that doesn't make you look good, that is not conducive to getting things done. So what's going on with you, and then I can't tell you how many times that that is just an opening for people to be like, I'm going through a divorce. And I'm really stressed out. My daughter is struggling with bulimia, and we don't know how to help her at school, right. And then that's where I, as a people leader think it is my responsibility to say like, this is from the military to is that when people are their best at home, they're going to be even better at work. So what resources can we provide? Or do you need to take some space and time so that you can deal with that so that you can't can come and be, you know, your best version of self at work? That's true. That's, that's great.

Kim Scott: 41:30

Yeah, I think another thing that you can do, as a leader, you couldn't have done this as the, you know, as the sort of new employee facing the partner. But as a leader, one of the most important things you can do to prevent bullying on your in your organization is to create checks and balances, because there's a lot of research that shows the more power a person has, the more likely they are to engage in bullying, like the there's a workplace study that that shows that 65% of bullying happens top down, not that many employees bully, they're their bosses, unless you're the underrepresented leader, then you are more likely to get bullied actually. And so one of the one of the most one of the best things that Google did to to make sure that nobody had to pay the asshole tax was they made it really easy for people to leave a team, if they had a boss they didn't like they could easily that it was Oh, it was acceptable to go and talk to other people and just to switch teams, and your boss didn't have to give you any permission. And and that really took a lot of that was a significant check and balance on on on leaders, I would say as a CEO and founder one of the things that I one of the big mistakes I made was, as I started these companies, I used to focus on making sure I had control making sure there were no checks and balances on me. And and that was a big mistake because then I became the bully actually. And and like in the in the in the story I told the woman who were the guy was like you want to get between my legs, she wound up suing the organization for creating a hostile work environment. And the last thing I intended to do believe me was to create a hostile work environment for women. But she was correct. I had done it. And one of the things this is shameful. And I want you all to avoid making this mistake, one of the things that I did in response was to pay her off and make her sign an NDA. That is a that is so wrong. That is so wrong. What I did was really wrong because one of the checks and balances that we have in the society that we should have it clearly doesn't always work is our legal system. So an employee ought to be able to get that's why forced arbitration and this the way that we abused in the 80s and NDA should be about trade secrets. It should not be about the shift that happens to you at work. I hope I'm allowed to curse on this New Year fine.

Leon Goren: 44:16

Well said Actually, I totally agree. I have a question and it's probably more relevant to the Canadian state and as Americans but we're still here in lockdown in Ontario just so you know six week lockdown removes from their house. But a lot of the policies and conversations that we're having what do you do like zoom has changed the world a little bit right? A lot of areas I heard the bully screaming and down the hall so to 20 other people today you can be on a zoom calm, be screamed at nobody hears anything and it could be abusive, right? It's I'm wondering, are you seeing that? are either of you seeing that and then how are corporations watching for it and dealing with

Unknown: 45:03

There's actually data I'm going to talk about right now, Kim to project. Great.

Leon Goren: 45:09

Anyway, that's not my question. Somebody asked that question.

Unknown: 45:13

It's a good question. So project include actually has data on this, where it demonstrates that as we've gone to these remote work environments, because because so much communication is happening in these one on one and chat and text in these private ways that are not able, you can't overhear them, or or, you know, it's not like, it's not like platforms where everybody sees what everybody else writes that there's a lot more bullying going on, and people people are underrepresented along a lot in the report does a really good job examining intersectionality. And the more intersections you stay on that the word the worst situation you're in right now. It's it's incredible tree. Are you have other thoughts on it? It's a really powerful report. And one of the reasons why I was so surprised by it, and I think most people would be is that the headline of the report is that the remote work culture that not everyone is accustomed to that we've all been kind of pushed into, because of COVID is exacerbating harm, significantly. And you would think that that wouldn't be the case, because we're not physically in the same spaces. And you know, you're not doing lunch with folks, there's less interactions. And so what this also means, though, is that if harm is being exacerbated in this remote culture, and now some organizations, maybe in Canada, but in the US are starting to talk about coming back, like some organizations have given their return dates of reopening their offices. What does that mean, if you will, coming back into the workplace, in specifically in the US with so many tense conversations and things going on, we've got black lives matter, and it will be the first time that people will be face to face working with colleagues with everything that's going on, stop Asian hate all of that, that's going like, ah, just a lot, right? And then the to kind of underrepresented groups and organizations that I think are often forgotten about that, I think, you know, we have to just really be paying attention to our one caregivers and parents, and to the other one is an underrepresented group in your organization. Now, our employees who have onboard and joined your company and COVID remotely, right, which is a very different experience, thinking about what is the culture of your company, and how have they been able to experience that or observe that remotely, and then what happens coming back into the office. So just being keenly aware of this. But what is great about the report that I really encourage not only you all to dig into as leaders, but to share with your teams is that not only gives you some really great data, but then at the end, it gives you some very tactical things of what to do. And so we are we are huge fans of Ellen how over at project include. And again, we love resources that help leaders get very tactical, on how to be thinking about this, and not only continuing to be remote, but also when you're coming back into the workplace.

Leon Goren: 48:23

Maybe you can share the link to that. So in the chat, so

Kim Scott: 48:30

the link is in the chat, and we'll put it maybe Liana can put it in the show notes as well, it really I can't recommend this report highly enough. The the other the one simple thing that I've been encouraging people to do is to start to track what percentage of time you are speaking in a meeting. And one of the one of those sort of hidden forms of bullying that I think is much worse in, in remote work is that what I call the bloviating bs are in a meeting. So this is the person on the team who is not better informed than anyone else. And but is is is talking three times more than anyone else. And this hurts collaboration enormously. There's a lot of research that shows that teams on which everybody speaks roughly the same amount of time performed better. And I By the way, and Guilty as charged, I am definitely take up more than my fair share of airtime. So so I'm not trying to point fingers at people but I've been really trying to be aware of what percentage of time I'm speaking on a call and not and there's actually tools that will help you track this. None of them are great. I've been trying to persuade the folks at zoom to build it in and I think it would be a mistake for it to be a like a public Like dashboard, because then it would be public shaming. But for everyone to get a private report of this this meeting have eight people in it and you spoke 40% of the time.

Leon Goren: 50:12

Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you, Kim. There are a couple of questions. I'd like to come to my scrolling here. Brian, are you on the call still? Can you come off you, Brian Holland, or Kelly will try and get you off. And I can have you ask that question. You asked it to everyone in the chat.

Unknown: 50:30

I can just reach out here you are.

Leon Goren: 50:33

There you go. Brian, it's always nice to hear the individual. Go ahead, Brian. All right. It's, it's Byron, actually. Believe me, I've been called Brian my whole life.

Q&A from Audience: 50:47

And Kim, love your previous book, big fan of it. And, and certainly, a lot of the elements in it are in our company as a result of my question. And it's one of the I also just read Reed Hastings book, who certainly seems informed by radical candor. And I'm wondering that challenge between the the brilliant jerk who just says, I'm being really, really candid with you.

Leon Goren: 51:14

And radical candor, and one person's brilliant jerk is another person's just being really candid. And how do you really start to unpack what's reasonable? and challenge the brilliant jerk? I just wonder if you could unpack that a little more for us?

Kim Scott: 51:31

Yeah, it's a really important question. It's actually why I wrote a second edition of radical candor, because so many people, I would be working with the team. And someone that would charge into a meeting and say, in the spirit of radical candor, and then they would proceed to act like what I consider to be a garden variety jerk. And that is not the spirit of radical candor. That's the spirit of obnoxious aggression. And so one of the things that I want to sort of reiterate is that radical candor gets measured, not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listeners ear, and that is an ablest metaphor, I'm going to wave a purple flag, I'm gonna think of a better way to say that. But it is the other person gets to decide not you how it's landing for them. And and I think each of us when we're speaking to others, when we're giving radical candor, we need to learn how to notice the impact that our words are having on others. And to know whether we need that means we need to go up on care personally, or over on challenge directly. So if the person seems sad or mad, you need to move up on the care personally dimension of radical candor. Whereas if the person is just not hearing is not understanding what you're saying, then you need to move out on challenge directly. And so I think there are some people who in the face of an emotional response from someone else will will actually double down and go further out on challenge directly, whereas what they need to do is pause and try to understand a better way to say what they're saying so that the other person can understand what they're saying, it is it is our job when we are speaking to be understood. And and when we are listening, it is our job to understand x. And therefore you if both the listener and the speaker take 80% responsibility maybe will communicate okay. But I think usually when person when people say, I was just being candid, and the other person is in tears, they're not being candid. They're being a jerk,

Trier Bryant: 53:35

and environment. I think the other part that people miss also is that radical candor, when we're on their axes of like, challenging directly and caring personally, radical candor is and this is how I give radical candor. And I give it the same way to everyone. Radical candor is unique to the person that you're giving feedback. So it's going to look different every time. And I think that's where some folks Miss, have What does caring personally mean to Kevin, what does caring personally mean to Deb, what does caring personally mean to Byron, and it could be very different things. And that's where you really need to understand. And then you can, you know, give that direct feedback, but the caring personally is going to be different for different folks. I remember, I had the type of relationship with my teams where we have a lot of fun, we joke or super sarcastic. And I was getting feedback externally at a company that was at tree are so mean to her team, the way she talks to her team, right? Like I would be sick. And it was a very open floor plan, you know, in tech, and I would just be like, why am I allowed to go into this session and I don't have my data for the leaders like I guess I'll just go in and not be able to get anything done. And they're like, I know I suck at my job tree or I'm going to get into like my, like, sarcastic funny, whatever, but and it's like, I need it. Now. I'm about to go into the meeting. And then they're like, Yeah, got it. And someone would overhear this and say, chair like you're So mean to your team this and that. But that was that was radical candor on our team. And that was okay. And when I had to remind that person is like, I don't give you radical candor like that, because I know you wouldn't be able to receive it in that way. It's different, right? And so people have to understand that it's different in different ways. And I really encourage folks to take in people's intersections, right, all the intersections that they stand out when you're thinking about caring personally, because it means different things to different folks.

Leon Goren: 55:28

That's great. Thank you. Chair. I have one other question. And this question actually arises, I sit in these advisory boards, I listened to some of the issues and opportunities that they're they're dealing with. And I mean, in the book, you talk about committees around hiring, compensation, not doing individual performance reviews, right one on ones. And, and it's, it's a sensitive issue, because there's a lot of a lot of nervous people out there to be quite frank about sitting down having a performance review. And having it later cancelled them. They said something incorrectly or they, they gave feedback, although it may be right. Or, actually, let's let's pull back a little bit, maybe it's, they're actually not giving the right feedback, because they're scared. Any advice to those leaders? This is I think this has become a big is going to be a big issue this year, as people start to go through that feedback process. Fear, what would you be suggesting within an organization today?

Trier Bryant: 56:36

I know that cam has thoughts on this and something that's really helpful, but one thing that I will say is that there's a couple of our clients and organizations that actually cancelled performance reviews for 2020. And I think that was but like, the messaging that they put around that to say, like, we're not doing performance reviews, they have people do self reflections on how they felt like their work was and to have a conversation with their manager, but they got they didn't do their typical performance review, because of everything that happened in 2012. Quite frankly, did we really expect anyone to be exceeding expectations and doing people's best work, right? No. And so it took that pressure off of people just to be honest. And then because performance reviews are tied to their bonuses, they basically said, everyone's gonna get the same percentage of their bonus, right? And then we'll see what happens in 2021. I think showing up with empathy, but also finding ways to do that equitably, is where, you know, we really just need to be thinking about how do we take care of our people and just being honest about where folks are right now?

Kim Scott: 57:38

Yeah, I think in terms of sort of impromptu feedback, it's in whistling Vivaldi, Claude Steele writes about being the only the only black PhD in his psychology department, and he talks about how crucial it was to get really good feedback from his academic advisor on his work, he said, that was the thing that helped him get through that very difficult experience and to excel in his career. And he said, he explained that very often the tragedy is that people are less likely to give that kind of good feedback to people on their team who are underrepresented, because they're, they're afraid of being called racist, or sexist, or, or, or whatnot. And that is like it is your job as a leader to give everyone Equal Opportunity feedback. At the same time, I want to acknowledge the concern that is there that people in fact, around this book, people often don't send me comments because they're afraid of being a promise, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to publish, you can say whatever you want to me, and I will not. I mean, we it has to be, it has to be safe to talk to one another. And, and so, for example, a friend of mine, a white man who works at a big tech company said he was in a meeting, and, and a woman on the team in marketing was calling her campaign Rolling Thunder. And he knew that she wouldn't have chosen that analogy if she had known the history of Rolling Thunder, but he was afraid to tell her the history of Rolling Thunder because he didn't want to be accused of mansplaining or something. And it was tragic to me because I know her and I know she would have wanted and she wouldn't have accused him of mansplaining and so I think part of it is that especially when we're a leader in an organization or when we are over represented along some dimension or another, it is we have to we have to step up and we have to say you know it is it is my job to give this feedback and I'm going to do it and and I'm gonna overcome the fear because whatever you whatever fear you have as a leader, I promise you the the concerns of your employees who are underrated Presented are much, much larger.

Unknown: 1:00:02

It's a call of what Alan Kay said, we need to coach managers to give effective performance feedback. Not only is a muscle like everything else, and you need to give your employees and leaders, the resources and the training to not only give feedback, but to action feedback. And that's 360 because we shouldn't just be waiting for performance reviews for feedback. We should be constantly provide be providing our talent, opportunities to develop throughout the year.

Leon Goren: 1:00:32

Thank you so much. Both Kim. Three, are we running out of time? I know now the questions are flooding in and I'm like, Oh my god, we're up to the hour. I want to thank you very much. I'd like to thank everyone in the audience for joining us today and really opening up your minds and trying to really learn and and listen to great experts really on this. Kim, thank you so much for the book. Just work I urge you all if you do have a chance, pick up the book, read the book. It's enlightening. And you know, there's always more to learn about this stuff. So thank you so much again, both here in Canada for joining us today.

Unknown: 1:01:09

Thank all of you for joining us. And thank you Leon for having us and keep in touch we can you can roll your own read the book and roll your own or you can reach out and triage and I will help you roll the ideas out.

Leon Goren: 1:01:22

That's great. So if you're interested in our the way forward live webcast, please visit us at po dash leadership comm you'll find a number of recorded past webcasts that have included Professor Rosabeth Cantor, Professor Michael beer, both from Harvard Joe Jackman, Harry Kramer, Dr. Greg wells, Robert chestnut, we talked about Code of Conduct within the organization, Dr. Jason sowk, the list goes on. And we've got a number of coming up in the in the coming months as well. So stay tuned. Until we meet again, I'd like to wish you all a fantastic day. Have a wonderful end of the month and think positive and think about making some changes in your organization and thinking about things differently. Thanks again. Take care everyone.

Unknown: 1:02:06

Thanks, everyone. Your ambition makes you think what? It's what drives you to believe in your idea and its potential. It opens doors to a whole new world of possibilities, new inventions and better ways of working. What if you worked with trusted advisors who understood your own mindset and how to unlock the full potential of your private business to create long term value in this transformative age. Together? We can turn your water into why not? He why private advises to the ambitious