People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And my guest this week is Jonathan Stutz, who is the president of Global Diversity Partners, Inc. Jonathan brings more than twenty five years of experience leading teams for Amazon, Microsoft and Zulily. He earned his MA from the City University of Seattle in Organizational Leadership and a BA in Political Science from the University of Washington. He serves on the Board of Trustees for the Bellevue Washington non-profit Youth East Side Services and has served as a Human Services Commissioner for the cities of Bellevue and Kirkland. We're here today, though, to talk about his book, co-authored with Eddie Pate, and the title is Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders, A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging. So, Jonathan, welcome to People First. Thank you, Marg. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. I am looking forward to our conversation. But before we dive into your book... I want to just ask, baseline question, relationships and relationships at work. What role have relationships played in your success? You know, it's everything. I think that the people that have mentored me and coached me and now that I've maintained relationships with over the years have become my friends. I don't think you get anywhere in life without people lifting you up and supporting you and advising you. So that's really what it's all about for me. The projects and the the companies even, and all of the work that you do over your career, they're kind of forgettable after you leave corporate life. And maybe a few stick with you, some big key projects you did, some big accomplishments, but it's really the people and the relationships that live on and stick with you. And that's what really matters. And that's my message to younger people entering the workforce is just treasure those folks that you work with and hang on to them, staying close with them, be intentional about connecting. You are speaking to my heart as my mantra is success in business is powered by relationships, but success in life fueled by connection. So tell me then, Eddie, your co-author, what's your origin story about how the two of you met? Right. Well, Eddie and I actually worked together. We did work done a team years at Microsoft and Eddie and I overlapped a bit there. We didn't actually work together on any specific team together at that time. We knew of each other and I met him a couple of times, but it wasn't until my Amazon career happened. started in what was that, twenty sixteen, where a mutual friend of ours introduced us and was trying to I wasn't very happy in my first role at Amazon here. It's a very tough culture to adjust to from, let's say, Microsoft or really anywhere else. It's unique. And so I was ready to move on to a different company or a different team. And our mutual friend introduced us and We went to lunch and it really we hit it off. And he was just starting up the first inclusion, diversity, equity team within the operations group at Amazon, which ended up being over a million people, which is just kind of mind boggling. And we had we were both founders of that group. He started the group and I came on, I think of his third employee. And we built it out to about twenty people. And we did some great work over the course of about four or five years together. All right. So I've got a double part question for you then, linked to what you just said. So D, E and I, part one of my question is, you call it I, D and E. Because I keep picturing the anyway. So I, D and E. So I want to understand that. And then, of course, diversity and inclusion. Let's just say it's under attack right now. Absolutely. So help position, because from my take, this is even more important, as important. The importance does not go away of the work that you're doing. So help us just set the frame, the context in which your book is going to be experienced by people. And so the difference between D, E and I and your approach of I, D and E, and then the fact that the whole work that you do is under attack. Thank you. So we've been calling it inclusion and diversity for years, and it goes back to the focus to be very intentional on inclusion. And the metaphor that I like to use is if you think of your organization like a home, you invite people into your home. You want it to be a warm, welcoming place where people feel safe to be their authentic selves. So you might cook some great food, maybe bake some cookies so the house smells good. You've cleaned the house. You make it a safe and comfortable place for people to come into and you welcome them with open arms. That's critical in your organizations to create an organization where people really feel safe and welcome and they feel it's like a place they belong. They feel valued and supported. If you don't do that and you just focus on diversity, diversifying your workforce, people will come in through the front door. And if you haven't created that inclusive culture where people feel they belong, they'll go right out the back door. And we call that in our industry a leaky bucket. So the focus on inclusion is absolutely critical to create an inclusive culture so that you not only people want to come into your company, but also to stay and feel like this is a place they can achieve their goals and aspirations. And that will actually have a synergistic effect where you almost create like a flywheel effect. Whereas if you have a reputation as an inclusive employer, people will be drawn to your company and your friends and family. They'll refer people to it. Other folks will want to be part of this great culture where they can really be successful. So that's really critical to the ID&E and focusing on inclusion, diversity, and equity. And we've been doing that for many, many years. The attacks on DEI are real. And where I think is, you know, it's really a false narrative, Morag. It's a narrative that has been hijacked. It's never been about hiring a black person just because they're black and a white person losing that job because you've hired a black person. It's always been about hiring the best person for the job. It's always been about when you get down to the hiring decision about merit, who's the right person for the job? Who's the person who has the skills, knowledge and abilities? Certainly coming in with unique perspectives of different backgrounds and cultures is part of the equation. But what's being told out there today by the political right, generally speaking, and the current administration in the U.S., is not what it's been about. It's not what it's about. It's not a zero sum game. It's actually a game where everybody wins because this work, the work that I've been doing since the very beginning, has been about creating high performance teams, highly effective teams, where everyone feels seen, heard, valued, and understood. We all have a basic human need to feel seen, heard, valued, and understood. For me, who's been doing this work for twenty five plus years, it's always been about that. It's always been about access, though, too. And that's the part of the answer to your question is it's never been about hiring somebody because of their race or gender, but it always has been about creating access so that you cast your nets wide. and create the opportunities for people to compete for the job. Because most companies, the dominant culture, the reality is it's, for the most part, white and male. And so you have to be very intentional about reaching in and developing trust and relationships with communities different from the dominant culture to create that access for people to have an opportunity to compete for those jobs. And I love what you said there. It made me smile. You might have seen a smile appear on my face because those very words about how we all want to be seen, heard, valued, respected. That's key and part of our human DNA. And the fact that, for example, if I reflect back to my banking career when I first entered the workforce in the nineties, traditionally male bank managers, all Mr. So-and-so because it was very formal and buttoned up when I joined. And that isn't a penalty to those who've reached the senior levels, What it is, is it's a glaring visualization of how the systemic issues have prevented more women becoming leaders, more people of color becoming leaders, those with both visible and hidden disabilities, different abilities are being filtered out and are not even getting a look in. And that's why this work is so important. And I was on your website earlier, the Inclusive Pebbles website, and you've got a ton of resources there, including videos that just highlight the microaggressions, the things we say and do. Because they're custom. It's what we've seen on TV. We've never really questioned it. We've never experienced it from the other side. And what they do is help to shine a light on those systemic barriers that might mean I never actually even throw my hat in the ring. for you to even notice it or not notice it for me to then have that hat picked up and achieve whatever it might be. So I just want to acknowledge, thank you for everything that you shared there in the work that you do. So you talked about though, and the title of the book is Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders. And I would like to think that most leaders are would like to think that they are inclusive leaders, but they're perhaps more well-intentioned than fully inclusive. So how would you differentiate between a well-intentioned leader and one that is truly inclusive in their approach? Right. I think the answer to that question lies in the reality that we're all very, very busy. And I think everyone has the intention to be an inclusive leader. They want to create a high performance team, a highly effective team. But in this go, go, go world, it's so easy to get caught up in the daily tasks, the daily projects, the daily work, the pressures that Sabina talked about in your prior podcast about this pressure that's really so harmful to managers that create bad managers. And this is where we come in and talk about you really need to, you know, kind of slow down and think more critically and more introspectively about what you're doing and how you're doing it and being super aware of the impact as a leader that you're having on the people that work for you and to try and create that intentionally and to create that connection. And so leaders, I think, who are truly inclusive leaders are ones that are very aware of the impact they're having on their folks and the potential, the opportunity they have to create connection that will actually drive higher performance from their folks. They'll be more loyal, more committed, and work harder. And ultimately, when they feel that connection, they feel like their leader's got their back, where they have really a, I've got your back, you've got my back culture. then people will be willing to take risk and speak openly and talk about their true authentic experiences where you can generate that creativity that leads to innovation. And that's the kind of leader we want. And one of the key messages in our book is this doesn't have to be overwhelming. This is not overwhelming. In fact, it is through these daily intentional practices that are about what we call dropping a pebble. And this idea of dropping a pebble is it's little things that you can do, not even every day, maybe two, three times a week where you send a message of, for example, you have a meeting going on and you get interrupted more. And, you know, women tend to get interrupted. The studies show much more frequently than men in meetings. And in this situation, the leader says, hey, hold on a second. Morag wasn't finished speaking. Let's let her finish, and then we'll come back to you, Jeff. We want to hear what you have to say, but let's let Morag finish. Sending that message that we don't interrupt, that we let people finish their thoughts, is dropping a pebble. So when the people in the room see that behavior, they go into the next meeting thinking, they drop a pebble and they'll stop somebody from interrupting and give people the opportunity to speak. And that creates a ripple and that ripple creates a wave. And over time, it exponentially grows so that you build a culture where we respect people when they're speaking. And that can go for having an idea and somebody takes the idea, all sorts of different scenarios like that. I mean, I love the visual image of just dropping the pebble. I don't have to lift the mountain, shape the mountain, drop a pebble. However, you talk there about the leader. And I can imagine for many leaders, it's like all on my shoulders again. Yeah, well, it doesn't have to be just the leader. It can be the people in the room. It doesn't have to fall on just the leader. And this is what we talk about, about use your voice, right? Create a speak up culture and leaders to encourage people to speak up. We have another practice that we talk about in the book called the pause button. And this is this idea that you create a culture where everyone has the power to use this, pause button. And the idea is that when you're in a meeting and somebody says something that could be potentially offensive to somebody else, cutting them off, taking their idea, whatever it might be, ignoring them, you can say, hey, hold on a second, I want to hit the pause button. And that sends a message that we're going to go from that go, go, go, get through the agenda meeting to we're going to slow down. We're actually going to take a pause and talk about what just happened and clarify, you know, kind of either, you know, call them in. and educate them in a diplomatic way where you create awareness of the microaggression or the microinsult. Or you can call them out. Somebody can do something that's so offensive, so harmful, so abrasive that you actually need to send a message that we don't do that here. That's not part of our culture. So calling in, calling out is another daily practice that we talk about. And like you said, it doesn't have to be on the leader's shoulders. Everybody can speak up in creating this speak up culture where you send the message that you are empowered to use your voice in our meetings and in the organization. So I love the fact that you described there, essentially, that we explicitly contract for this. And that moment from... We all sit and squirm in our seat. We've all been there where somebody makes an off-colour joke and then you think, well, is it just me? Should I speak up? They're two levels above me in the organisation chart. They're going to think I'm just overreacting, but I really didn't like that. And, oh, now the moment's passed. You know, all of this is happening, has happened in my head. I know it's happened in other leaders' heads. So we go from this moment where we haven't explicitly contracted. Mm-hmm. to that time where we all have the language of let's press the pause button, I love that. But there's this messy middle between the two. And there's so much talk about creating safe spaces, psychological safety. But at some point you have to go from the uncomfortable denial And through that messy middle, what advice do you have for even starting the conversation to find out whether or not we even have psychological safety? The assumption being we don't, if I'm hesitating, but like, ah. Yeah, no, great question. And it's one I don't actually get very often, so I love it. So in the work that I do through my business, Global Diversity Partners, we work with clients to do an assessment of the culture to find out if we actually have a place where people can speak openly and freely. And so a couple of ways of doing that, first is sitting down with executives one-to-one and having those conversations to get a pulse on their commitment to inclusion, to equity, to creating this culture of belonging and get a sense for where they're at, where their heads are at and how committed are they? Because it really does need to start from the top where they're sending a message that this is a core value of the company. Further, you can then sit down with groups of employees. I sit down with groups of black employees and interview them and get an open conversation going and try and understand what their experience is. If they have employee resource groups or sometimes called affinity groups to sit down with those folks who are members of a particular community and their allies. It can be an LGBTQ plus group. It can be a Hispanic, Latin group, a black group, a women's group, a disabled employees group. Companies have a number of these. And that's a great resource. And that's why I call them employee resource groups. It's literally a resource for the company to hold a mirror up and see and understand what is the experience that your employees are having. Because your Black employees, I'll tell you, are having a very different experience than your dominant culture employees, which typically are white and typically white male. And even women are having a very different experience. You hear it all, I hear it all the time. So this is a great resource. And then there's other ways of doing, we could go into greater detail, but basically culture surveys, which would give people another way of access of looking at the culture and then cutting that data. And this is a key point is when you're looking at any data, whether it's promotion data, hiring data, recruiting data, performance rating data, You want to cut that data by intersectionality. And what I mean by that is black women, white women, Latin men, black men, disabled women, that type of thing. You can understand that different populations, different communities in the company are going to have a different experience. And that's why you don't look at it just women versus men, because black women and white women are going to have a different experience in the organization, and you want to see where those gaps are. And it's through that gap analysis that you can then begin to build a strategic plan for inclusion, diversity, and equity in the company. It's looking at the gaps and figuring out where are we today? Where do we want to go? And that gap is basically your strategic plan for diversity in the co-organization. I love the idea of those kind of focus group conversations, the quantitative data that goes alongside it that allows you for the good, the bad, the ugly, to put a stake in the ground and then assess progress over time. So in your experience with the teams that you've worked with, often by the time an organization is bringing you in, they're like, let's do this, let's fix it. So what are some natural first steps, but also what are some of the first mistakes that you've seen those eager leaders make in trying to shift perception, behavior, and outcomes. Right. So I'm going to take the second part of the question first, and that's the mistakes. And what people often will do is they'll just throw a whole bunch of programs at the wall and see what sticks or feeling like that activity is actually a measure of results or impact. And activity is not. You want to begin with what I was just mentioning a minute ago, which was the assessment stage. You want to do basically a gap analysis to understand what is the current state of the organization and what is our aspire to culture, as we used to call it at Microsoft. What is the culture we want to create here? And so if the goal is to create a culture where everybody feels seen, heard, valued, and understood as cultural belonging, you want to understand where are the gaps and who's experiencing the gaps. And from there, you can start building out training and And you can customize your training based upon the needs of the organization. You can build in employee resource groups, you build connection. There's just a whole slew of programmatic opportunities to start building it out, addressing specifically those gaps that you have in the organization. So for example, one company I'm working with, Actually, they have a great culture and they have a lot of long-term employees. They're doing great with their retention numbers with people that are historically underestimated. But they had a blind spot and this is very common. They were really lacking diversity of black people in their leadership, in their senior leadership. So they just hadn't cast the nets wide enough to offer people the opportunity to compete for those jobs. The industry had a lot of great people, but they just were hiring people like themselves and they were predominantly a white leadership team. So that became an opportunity to go out and build relationships with professional organizations that were focused on people that were black and African-American and increasing the candidate pool. Always hiring the best candidate for the job, but making sure that everyone has access to compete for the job. So that's an example of a very specific intentional act. And then just leadership, you know, constantly talking about it and talking about the importance of it and valuing it and supporting it with dollars, you know, budget and headcount to show that they really are walking the talk and not what they call performative diversity. Yeah. Yes. And just in case anybody listening or watching this episode is unsure, just give us some of the headlines in terms of the business, the team, the personal impact when we start to invest in creating these inclusive cultures. Well, this is great because you, you know, as a leader, let's just take yourself. I mean, you surround yourself with people that are coming from the same educational background as you, Maura, same background. Maybe they grew up in the same part of the country, went to the same schools. It's going to be really difficult for you to have a team that understands the breadth of your customers' experiences. And you really want to have a leadership team and a workforce that mirrors your customers so that their perspective, their needs, their experiences are best represented in the company, in the organization. So one of the huge benefits of having that diversity, and I'll tell you, it's not easy. I mean, from the standpoint that if you have people that are all like me and you, then, you know, it's easier to gel because we all have kind of maybe the same, you know, backgrounds and experiences. And so it's easier just to get along. But that creativity may suffer different ideas coming from different backgrounds. The debate, the discussion will be different. What's interesting is when you... The studies have shown this when you take two groups, a homogeneous group and a group that has that level of diversity, that they give them a very complex, difficult project. The homogeneous team will actually... feel like they came up with their solution with higher levels of confidence and they'll come to agreement faster. The diverse group will actually take longer at times because they have to work through all the different opinions and experiences. And in the end, their level of confidence with their solution will be less than the homogeneity group. because of that debate and not sure that they had their answer. But the studies show they actually outperformed the homogeneous group. Their results get a higher level of quality and impact. And the other thing is that when you have a diverse team, you show up differently. you will prepare better. You will think differently going into the room to study. So it actually benefits you and your performance level going into a team where everybody has varied experiences. You'll actually plan, prepare, and deliver a higher level of performance because of that diversity that surrounds you. So it's a win-win. And this is very different coming back to one of the original questions, is very different than what's being the drumbeat out there from right now. about what this DEI is all about. It's all about everybody winning when you really get down to it. Because we all want to be on a championship team, right? I mean, we all want to succeed. So that's what this work's always been about for me. So you talked earlier about the organizational-wide surveys, the focus groups, which again is involving many. What I liked about your book is the accessibility of daily habits. Mm-hmm. dropping the pebble, that there is a power of one to affect change in this conversation, in this relationship, in the team that I lead or I'm part of. So for an individual leader whose organisation may not yet be at a point that they are already willing and able to have these conversations, what can we do as individuals here to help accelerate change? and create those ripples as you describe them? Yeah, I think, I mean, it's a little selfish, but it's, you know, pick up my book, pick up Eddie and I's book. It has great foundational chapters on understanding inclusive leadership at a high level where you talk about the foundational importance of having courage, the willingness to act and to speak up as we talked about earlier and use your voice and to take action. Um, in the book, we taught about rocking the boat, having the courage to rock the boat, but not so hard that you knock yourself out or anybody else out. We need everybody in the boat in order to, you know, succeed. We need everybody rowing in the same direction. Um, So that's a big part of it, having heart, having courage, which is all about, heart is about empathy, right? And empathy and compassion is having heart. So having that vulnerability to be able to share more about yourself and your human experience, your humanity, so that your employees feel comfortable with you, they feel connected to you. And then when they have challenges or problems, they feel more comfortable coming to you because you've been vulnerable with them and they'll know you'll be empathetic. So empathy is huge to creating the culture belonging. And the last one is wisdom. So you've got courage, heart, and wisdom. This idea of wisdom is having experience and knowledge combined over time to build this wisdom. And we share in the book the two IL model. This is the seven insights of inclusive leadership. and folks can go on our website and learn more about that but basically people hyper focus on unconscious bias or implicit bias as it's often called we have seven insights and it's part of lifelong learning to understand the experiences that others have and to be able to use that in your day-to-day work as a leader so those are foundational and then you get into the daily practices that are actually organized by the employee lifecycle. So you can literally use the book as a guide to go, let's say you're working on recruiting, you can go to the section on recruiting, or hiring, talent management, talent development, promotions, and even a whole section on HR as a key partner in the work to scale it. I love the fact that you describe HR as a key partner. And I think far too often, Less experienced business leaders abdicate responsibility to HR to fix this, as opposed to them being seen as a partner, a steward of the data, maybe. But we're all in this together. Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. So as we come to the end of our time together, book definitely, I encourage everybody. And again, if you didn't catch that title, Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders, A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging by Eddie Pate and my guest here today, Jonathan Stutz. Where else can people go to learn more about the work that you and Eddie are doing? Great. Yeah, I would recommend going to our website, inclusivepebbles.com is one word, inclusivepebbles.com. There are a host of resources. There's Eddie and I in conversation on short videos talking about each of these topics, so you can deep dive there. There's our book, but there's also other books that we recommend as resources to really scale up your knowledge in this space. All the podcasts that we've been on, including this one, will be uploaded there as well. So folks can watch other podcasts that I've been on and talking about the book and Eddie and the work that we're doing. So great, great resources. And then, of course, to reach me, you can always get in touch with me through the Inclusive Pebbles, but also my business website, globaldiversitypartners.net, all one word, globaldiversitypartners.net, and reach out to me. Awesome. Happy to speak and continue the conversation. Jonathan, I know we just scratched the surface. I've enjoyed our time together. Thank you for joining me here on People First. Thank you, Morg. It's been great to be in conversation with you.