L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Boldly Inclusive Leadership: Humanizing The Workplace to Build Psychologically Safe Teams

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Evidence continues to build that building diverse teams with high grades of psychological safety greatly increases the chance of organizational success. Many leaders understand the organizational, social, and ethical need to build such inclusive teams, but feel as if they lack the resources or knowledge to do so. Minette Norman, award-winning author and this week’s guest, describes how leaders can overcome the traditional expectations of emotionless, hard-nosed leadership, and build thriving, joyful, creative teams.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. Today, my guest is Minette Norman. Minette is an author, speaker, and leadership consultant. The Psychological Safety Playbook, which she co-authored with Caroline Helbig, won the Learning Impact Award from Get Abstract in 2023. Minette was named in 2017 as one of the

most influential women in Bay Area business by the San Francisco Business Times and as Business Role Model of the Year in the 2018 Women in IT Silicon Valley Awards. She is also the author of The Boldly Inclusive Leader, the principles of which we focus on in this episode. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today I'm speaking with Minette Norman. Minette, thank you so much for joining me. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for having me, Tyler. I have to say, of the 40 or so guests that I've had on the show now, your educational background is probably the most fascinating to me, primarily because you and I have a similar background where we both wanted

to be professional actors for a while. I studied film and television in school, and I took a couple of acting classes, and you actually, I believe you have a degree in drama, if I'm not mistaken. And I don't usually start my shows off this way, but this is a kind of fascinating story as you've told it to me. And I'd love to just give you the chance to open up by telling me how you transitioned from that background into your current career. Yeah, many people are puzzled by the fact that I was a double major in drama in French and I ended up spending 30 years in Silicon Valley and I'm now doing what I'm doing. So I'll give you the brief version of how that all came to be. I did really want to be a professional actor and I studied acting.

And when I got out of school, I went to New York City pretty quickly after I graduated thinking, you know, this is the place to make it as an actor and took acting classes and realized very quickly that I just didn't have a thick enough skin to be a professional actor because the rejection after going to auditions just hit me too hard. And I thought, I can't take this. And I certainly know people that I went to school with who have been professional actors, but not at the high tier, and their life is a hard one. So I definitely made the right choice. I think I made the right choice early on in saying, I'm not going to do this professionally. And I fell back on my second major, that French major. And that was the entree into my world in

tech because what happened was while I was in New York City, I got a job at the French Trade Commission because I was fluent in French and they needed, I basically started out as an administrative assistant. And then I ended up leading the business library, running the library there. And it was at a time when they had just introduced the IBM PC. They went literally from having typewriters on desk to PCs on the desk. And I was really a quick study and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed figuring things out. I digitized our card catalog at the library, put it into a very simple database, and that led me into my career in tech. I decided after about five years in New York City, I wanted to move back to California

where I had grown up. And this is now the late 80s. And I got my first job in the software industry at Adobe when they were developing Photoshop 1.0. And my claim to fame was that I wrote the Photoshop 1.0 tutorial back in 1989, 1990. And then I spent the next 30 years in the software industry. I'm fascinated by the fact that you determined that your skin wasn't thick enough because I've also known a lot of actors. I lived in Los Angeles for a while. I actually dated an actress for a while. I actually dated an actress for a while from, you know, in TV and movies. And they struggle through this process of, you know,

going through auditions. And it's never an easy thing to feel rejection over and over. And I also more or less made the same decision when I was taking an acting class in school and decided my stage fright is simply too great. Like I could work toward this. I could, you know, try to resolve this and my anxiety, but there are also other things that I want to achieve in life. And I think I would almost rather pursue those things. And for me, this is a very specific question of self-awareness, which is a nice little segue into the first chapter of your book. You encourage leaders, business leaders to have self-awareness and to, you know, pursue self-awareness. And that is achieved by being

super aware of one's own emotions. We tend to in business, there are cohorts of people of business educators who advise that you kind of subdue your emotions and you act stoically and you favor logical thinking over emotional thinking to get over the bumps and the hurdles, especially if you're an entrepreneur and that sort of thing. And I think we've all experienced, you know, workplace socialization, workplace social interactions tend to be emotionless compared to, you know, familial and friendship and relationship social interactions. So this is a difficult question for me. It's how, as business leaders, do we determine the amount of emotion that we show? What is the lens through which we should observe our own emotions? And what changes behaviorally do we actually have to make

when we observe those emotions? Very complex question, but how do we embrace our emotions better and work as leaders? It's a big question and an important one. And as you said, I start with this idea that we need to be more self-aware as leaders. And I can talk about that. I want to address the question of this turning off emotions and being stoic at work, which has been really the traditional model of leadership for decades, that we don't show emotion, that we're strong and we're sort of, we have this shield up when we go to work. And I challenge that, and I'm not the only one to challenge that, because as human beings, we cannot turn off our emotions. Our emotions are constantly happening, whether we're aware of them or not. And so what I am advocating for is that we become more aware of them, because when we are not

aware of them, we go unconscious and we start to manifest behaviors that's often very unproductive. And it's an emotional response that we're not even aware we're having. So someone challenges you as a leader, asks a tough question, and you're maybe afraid. Maybe the underlying emotion is fear of exposing that you don't know something. But the way it manifests is you lash out at that person who asks you the challenging question because you just don't want to deal with it. So you shut them down or you embarrass them. That is probably not your intent as a leader, but it's because you weren't aware of what was happening with your emotions that, oh, I'm feeling uncomfortable, maybe a

little threatened. This is why emotions are important to recognize is if we're aware, I'm getting defensive, I'm frightened, I'm angry, we can say, okay, that's there. Let me choose a response that I am going to be proud of as opposed to something I'm going to regret and have to do damage control after. And so that's why I think it is so important. And one of the works that I cited in my book that I read when I was learning more about emotions and how we can get in touch with them was Susan David's book, Emotional Agility. So it's a really excellent book. And she says, you know, one of the things that we as humans struggle with is we don't even have vocabulary to describe most of our emotions. And I think she says most of us can name about three emotions.

And in her book, she has a whole table, which I actually referenced in my book because I thought it was so useful. What is the gamut of emotions? There's no finite number, but she lists a number of them. And for us to just become aware, because you know what happens, and I've seen it so many times with leaders, and I have been there myself when I was in a leadership position, is unconsciously treating people differently because we're having an emotional reaction to them. Some people push our buttons, right? And some people we just naturally are drawn to and we have an easier time with. So those people that are pushing our buttons, we probably want to be aware of how we are reacting and choosing

a different response. So that's it in a nutshell, but there's a lot more I could say about the tone that leaders set if they can become self-aware in that opening chapter. We will continue to discuss emotions and in particular how they come through in communication and specific tactics for addressing bad patterns of communication and that sort of thing. But I want to address some specific emotions that you discuss in chapter two, actually, which seem to be fear and confusion by leaders who are not really sure how to go about specifically, I guess, DEI measures in some cases, diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, or just how to communicate with people who are different from them. You know, we speak specifically about leaders who represent the dominant population in any given organization or workspace. It tends to be white men, you know,

older white men that are in particularly important leadership roles. And you've told some stories about folks who tend to just avoid the issues because they're afraid that they will make a mistake or screw something up, even if they have good intentions. And I have to admit, you're very forgiving of these people because I feel like these days, you know, we're really pushing for people to be better and to do more and be proactive about taking measures to be inclusive. And you advise that these folks kind of lean into that discomfort that they feel, these leaders lean into that discomfort that they feel or the confusion or the fright that they have about speaking to different people or about pursuing these measures at the end of the day. And I'm

curious as to what sort of attitude you think these leaders should go into these interactions with. What should their mindset be? What question models should they follow that will ensure that they will in fact be safe, that they won't create, you know, confrontations instead of invitations to conversation? And do you have any examples of that sort of thing? Sure. And I do want to address your statement that I'm forgiving. I want to clarify that, which is that it's not that I'm giving people a pass to not do this work. And in fact, that's my book. My book is an invitation to do this work. One of the things that I have seen a lot of that I do not think works is shaming people into changing their behavior. And that's what I did not want to do in the book, because I knew if I say you are bad,

if you are avoiding this work, you're weak, whatever it is, that's just going to have someone close the book, walk away from it and say, this is not for me. Right. I mean, shame just doesn't get people far. So what I am trying to do by calling out the discomfort and saying, lean into it is to invite people to say, yeah, this stuff is hard. And even though I've been doing this work for several years and I was doing it when I was still in tech, there's so much to learn constantly. And our world is evolving. Language is evolving. what is considered acceptable behavior is evolving. So we cannot get it right. And I put right in quotation marks there because there is no right. There is this trying to do better and trying to be a better leader and a better human being and

a better colleague. And so what I am asking leaders to do is to say, and even to be open about it, is that I truly care about creating a more equitable, more inclusive environment so everyone can feel a sense of belonging and they can do their best work. I am committed to this. I do not have all the answers. I offer some language you can use. And the most important thing I think leaders can do is to get curious, to listen to others who are different from them. Because what I saw happen too much, and this is basic human behavior, is that we are drawn to the people who are most like us. This is our natural human affinity bias. And leaders don't get a pass on this. Leaders hire people just like them. They reward often the people who are in

their model. They give them the stretch assignments and the promotions and the opportunities to speak, et cetera. And so what I am saying is that you need to get a little out of that comfort zone as a leader. You need to have a team of people that doesn't look or behave just like you. And you need to treat them all in an equitable way. And that means you're going to have to listen to the people who challenge you. You're going to have to get curious to understand where they're coming from. And you are probably going to have to drop some of your assumptions about what good leadership looks like, what success looks like, because not everyone is going to operate in the way that you are used to. And this is really challenging for many people because we are just comfortable. You've heard it. You say like, this person's not a fit for our team. And usually that's

coded language for they're different. And, you know, we have some bias here. And so we have to challenge all of those assumptions. And here's an example of something I was just talking to a person who works in a tech company and they were just going through their annual review and calibration where they do performance review. And he, it was a he, he had to keep challenging the conversations that were saying things like, well, that person's, you know, a little bit assertive and that person is overly ambitious. And who were they talking about? They were generally talking about women or people from underrepresented groups. Again, we do this unconsciously because that's the bias at play. So we have to constantly be challenging our thinking. And so, you know, this person who was calling it out, he said like over

and over, I kept saying in these conversations, can you hear that language? Now, would you use that same language in talking about this other person? And then people went, oh, okay, right. And they were open to it. So we have to challenge all of these biases, all of these assumptions, and all of doing this will make us uncomfortable because it's just taking us out of what's natural to us as humans. So the reason I am forgiving of it is that because we all experience this, and it doesn't matter if you're a white male or anyone else, is that when we get out of our comfort zones, it's really hard for us.

And we want to retreat to the comfort. And I just encourage you not to retreat and to keep trying and getting curious to learn more about the people that are different from us. I want to give you a scenario then. So let's say one of these leaders that you describe in this particular chapter is currently reading your book and they're learning as they go saying, okay, I'm feeling more comfortable opening up these conversations and sort of advocating for DEI principles for creating a diverse team of my own. And they're starting to make those moves, but their lack of familiarity with how to have those conversations can still be problematic. Some issues can come up, you know, with things like exoticizing certain people and the way they speak to them,

microaggressions, othering people unintentionally just by virtue of like targeting them for questions or kind of using them as, you know, the teacher of certain ideas. I see that very commonly, especially on like social media, but I've seen it happen in the workplace as well. Whereas everybody wants to be a critical contributor to a workplace for the job that they're hired for. Some people are just kind of passively or additionally assigned a role of, you know, diversity advocate or diversity representative because, you know, they don't represent the normative or dominant population. And you also write about psychological safety, the psychological safety playbook. To me, there's a long moment in there when leaders, especially like managers, middle managers, are learning these things where psychological safety just probably isn't present. Because if a manager is discovering these things,

is figuring them out, that probably means that the people on their team, even if it's a diverse team that's being invited in, it's still going to be an uncomfortable time while that leader kind of figures out how to have those conversations. And I only bring this up because there's generally another category of checks and balances here, which is the organization itself. You know, there are higher up leaders, there's HR, and there are whoever created the company, executives, who can make deliberate decisions to emphasize psychological safety throughout the company, to emphasize psychological safety throughout the company, to emphasize DEI throughout the company in various ways. And I'm just curious if you have

any advice from that sort of greater systematic standpoint, what can be done by those higher up leaders and, you know, different teams like maybe L&D, HR, to ensure that even in teams where, you know, a leader might be somebody who really wants to make this happen, but just isn't quite sure how to have the conversations, how to really do it correctly yet, and is actively learning, that their teams and the people that still work for them still feel psychologically safe. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, there's a lot there. You're talking about the hierarchy, which I think is really important.

And then you're also talking about there's a middle manager who's sort of caught in all of this and learning. So let me address sort of the hierarchy part first. This is a question I get a lot when I do trainings and workshops and talks, and that is, I'm sitting here in the middle. I'm middle manager. I am actively working on creating a safe and inclusive team. I am working through the ideas and I'm learning everything from the playbook and from the ideas that you've shared. And I'm committed to creating a psychologically safe environment. And my team and I are making progress. However, our executives don't seem to care about this. And this is a problem. And this is one of the most common questions that I've gotten in my work with clients. And so what I always say here is that you can influence to a degree,

but you control only basically what your purview is, your team and the people that report up to you. And so you can do everything in your power to create a great working environment for your team, your direct reports, maybe your colleagues as well, your peers. However, if your leadership, senior leadership, exec staff is not open to creating an inclusive culture, it's probably going to be that you're going to be more of a bubble. Maybe there'll be pockets of this throughout an organization where there are individual leaders who care deeply and are investing in the work that needs to happen. I hope that what is changing, and I'm seeing it more and more, is that senior executives are realizing, and this is coming through the pandemic and all of the things that have happened in the last years, that we need to create something different.

If we want to be a culture and an organization that not only can attract great talent, but retain great talent. And we're seeing that people are leaving organizations because the culture does not align with their values. And so a lot of that is about, can I show up as myself? And I'm not talking about sharing every single detail of your life, but can I go to work without covering who I am? Can I fully participate in the organization? And so leaders, I mean, certainly the leaders that are bringing me in and bringing in colleagues that I know who are doing similar work, they get that it starts at the top and it trickles down. One of the things I say is leaders set the tone for their organization. I think that's one of my chapters in the book. And that

is really true. People are watching your every move, what you say, what you don't say, what you reward, what you tolerate. And again, it comes back to self-awareness. If you are not consciously setting the tone and really living the values that you're purporting to care about, then people won't believe it and they'll be cynical and ultimately they'll check out or they'll leave your organization. So I'm seeing some encouraging signs and I'll just give you an example of this is what I think commitment to the work means. I was recently engaged with a superintendent of schools. So this is not in the private industry, but superintendent of schools. He's a relatively new superintendent. He inherited a school district that had been through a lot of turmoil. He said, I want to bring more humanity to my leadership.

And he basically decided we're going to start with the foundation of psychological safety, which is where I think we have to begin. And then we can build on that. So he had me do a full day workshop with them. And then we're working together monthly on Zoom because he understands that this is not a one-off thing. This is not, I read a book and I'm done. It's that it's ongoing work. And the only way we will make progress as a leadership team is if we work together and we explore the wins and the failures and the challenges along the way and we talk openly about them. So I commend leaders who are doing that kind of work and I hope to work with more of them. this process is listening well, whether you're a leader who's learning more about your team or you are a higher up leader who's listening to, you know, the heartbeat of the organization, you have to speak to people individually and you have to listen very closely to how they feel, their emotions, and to what's going on, the feedback that they're giving about the organization, about team processes, team success.

You have to listen very closely and you dedicate a chapter to that. You do lay out a framework for active listening that rejects the impulse to sort of frame your response before you've actually fully heard the person. And I use the term heard in a way that is greater than, you know, orally hearing with your ear. I think it's important to understand that we're talking about really hearing what somebody's saying. And that may mean that what they're saying explicitly with their words isn't exactly what they mean. And you need to have follow-up questions and you need to listen actively. Would you mind going through that framework that you set out in the book? Happy to. It sounds so simple, right? Just

truly listen to understand and don't respond until you've fully gotten what the other person said. And this is one of the hardest things for all of us, myself included, because as we are, and again, I'm going to use quotation marks here, listening, or we think we're listening, what so often we're doing is we hear something that you say, I was just practicing, for example, when you were setting up that question for me, I was trying very actively not to think about how am I going to respond when Tyler finishes asking this question, and instead trying to listen to every word that you were saying, what does he mean when he says that, and just to resist the urge to get really clever and be preparing something pithy and smart. And this is where I think leaders

struggle. And that is that we think we have to be quick on our feet. If we're a leader, we have to have a quick response. We have to be ready immediately. And I think that's part of the model of leadership, again, of being impermeable, being perfect. And so when someone is saying something, our mind is just processing. What do I say? How am I going to respond? How am I going to sound intelligent? And what I recommend is that we all practice staying present, staying focused. Again, that's hard too. We get distracted. But just staying present with the person and asking clarifying questions to make sure we've understood because often we're making assumptions, right? We think we understand and you're actually meaning something else. So asking a clarifying question does a couple of things that I think is very powerful. One of them is that we will then get clear on what the other person means, but we're also saying to the other person, I care enough to truly listen to you and to clarify and make sure

that I am fully understanding you. And, you know, one of the things, and this is so essential to feeling included and that you belong, is that we all need to feel that we're being heard, that we're being seen, that we're being respected for who we are. And by asking clarifying questions, you know, Tyler, I really want to understand when you said this, this is how I interpreted it. Did I get that right? And then you also have a chance to clarify your own thinking. Like, oh yeah, I know I said that, but what I really mean is this. And what happens there is that both of you, or all of you, if it's more than one other person, are getting a greater understanding of the other person's perspective and thinking.

And then it doesn't mean we have to agree. And I think this is where some people get a little concerned is like, oh, if I truly listen to them, they're going to change my mind. And that may happen. And that may be a good thing, but it also may be now I've got it, Tyler, I totally understand. And I'm seeing things differently. Is it okay? Like I'd like to share my perspective and then maybe we could talk about how we make a decision or whatever it is we need to do together. And then I share my perspective that may be very different. I think this is where we can engage in true dialogue, where we can discuss things that may be challenging and where we can get different perspectives on the table and talk about them in a productive way instead of shutting them down or just offering a rebuttal immediately and not truly understanding and hearing. Because when we don't, and maybe I'll just take the negative of

this, is when we don't listen well, when we are just preparing our response, what happens is people stop feeling heard, right? You feel like feel like well it doesn't really matter what I say because they just have their own opinion they don't care and then what then happens is we tend to silence ourselves and we edit ourselves and we stop speaking up and we stop speaking our truths and we stop challenging and then the whole organization loses out on probably very important perspectives and ideas and maybe innovations. And so listening is just one of the most fundamental leadership skills that we can all get better at. And this is funny, in a workshop I did recently, so this was even set up as a exercise in active listening,

and it was in trios. And so each person took turns answering a question while the others were just supposed to listen to understand. And one of the participants afterwards reflected back and she said, you know, I was really good the first round. The first round I was completely listening. I was all in. I was getting it. Then the second person started talking and I realized I was up next. And I immediately started thinking about what I was going to say. And that was even in a setup exercise that just shows how challenging it can be. So we have to consciously practice and stay in it. And when we start thinking about what we're going to say, just bring ourselves back and go, hold on, make sure you're understanding before you go there.

It must be really difficult for you to practice this in scenarios like this right here in a podcast when we're talking about a book that you've written and concepts that you've probably given extensive speeches on and you in some cases might have canned responses for but maybe not maybe you practice not doing that and I think that's really fascinating because I have to say I've spoken to some people on the show who have clearly keynoted their ideas fully and it just kind of you know comes out in that way but I do really appreciate the way that you listen actively on this and I can really feel it.

So thank you for that minute. Yeah, I do not have a canned response. I mean, certainly I have ideas that I am convinced are important, but I've been on lots of podcasts now and I would say no two of them are the same because I am truly practicing what I preach and I'd rather stay present and have a less scripted answer than just give you something canned, which isn't very interesting probably.

Yeah. One more question about that communication chapter. So you talk about identifying and working around instinctual responses like defensiveness. This for me personally has been one of the most significant developments in my relationship life in the past several years is understanding when I'm responding to something in that instinctual way that is negative, that is, you know, protective of myself, and in some cases, irrational, and how, you know, my brain and body isn't really reacting in the way that makes the most sense for me or for that conversation. And this manifests itself in many different ways. but I think there are things that trigger us, that cause us to react that way. And we have that sort of fight, flight, freeze reaction.

Would you mind explaining how to identify these sort of negative instinctual responses and how to return to a more openness in the conversation that we're experiencing? I think it's one of the most important topics. And as you said, in your personal life, it has shown up for you. This is true. And so this is not just a professional setting. This is in all of our interactions with people. We do get defensive and that is normal. And I love the neuroscience behind it because I think it's so helpful to understand what's going on is that our brains are designed to keep us alive and safe. And they do that very well. And whether it's a social setting or a professional setting, or you're about to get hit by a car in the street, our brains don't really distinguish between what danger looks like. So

if someone criticizes your idea in a meeting, or your partner yells at you, your brain responds that you are in danger. And that's, as you said, the fight, flight, freeze response. And it does serve us well in a physical setting when we are going to jump back from the car about to hit us in the street. And it usually doesn't serve us as well in a social or professional setting because those reactions, if you think about them, fight. What happens when the fight reaction kicks in? Well, often, and I remember this happening to me many times, is that someone criticized me and I did not really tailor a response. I instinctively responded and I criticized them back in a harsh way. I may have like snapped at them or just deflected right back at them. Well, what about you? And that generally, and I would say in most cases, doesn't go well because when we're feeling defensive and we fight back, the other person's now going to get defensive and it goes into this battle of all of us are just in this fight, flight, freeze. And when that happens, we basically have no access to our prefrontal cortex because we're in that survival mode. So we can't think clearly. That's the same thing about whether we freeze. I was just talking to someone who said, I go into this almost tunnel vision where I can't hear, I can't think, I am just frozen. That's a very common physiological response to being attacked, being defensive. is first to be aware. It doesn't mean you're a bad person because you get defensive. It means you're a human being whose brain is working. So I think take away the judgment and then think about

what can we do. And what we can do is to get, I'm coming back to self-awareness, notice what happens when you get defensive because each of us will have physical responses. And for me, I can tell immediately my face feels bright red and hot. And that's my tell. Like if you think about like a tell in poker, what's your tell? People talk about that tunnel vision or being frozen or being sweaty or being hot or being cold. The racing heartbeat is really common. Like all of a sudden my heartbeat is racing. I am in fight, flight, freeze. I am defensive. So I think the first step is to just become aware of what our body is telling us. And then what we can do is we choose that we're going to not respond instinctively. We're not going to lash back out. And when we are in that tunnel vision, we take a breath or two.

We maybe stretch. We do something with our bodies. One of the things people do is they press their fingers together just to remind themselves to calm down. And then when that happens, it doesn't take long, honestly. That one breath, that something physical that you do, you can now say, oh, I have a choice in how I'm going to respond. And this all feels like it could take a long time, but it can be done very quickly. And then instead of lashing back out at someone or going dead silent, you can say, I would like to understand more about what you just said, and then ask a clarifying question. And that can be very helpful.

I have also found one of the things that I have done, and it's a little vulnerable to do it, is to say, can you hold on one second? I'm having a little bit of a defensive reaction to this, and I don't want to say something I'm going to regret here. I want to have a dialogue with you, so I'd like a moment to think, or can we come back to this later? And I think that is a very, very powerful thing to do, both for you and for the other person, because the other person realizes like, oh, there's another human being here. And what I just said had an impact on them. And I think it just humanizes the interaction. So there are lots of things we can do. And of course, I could talk about this all day,

but I think we just all have to pay attention to what our body is telling us, and then choosing that we don't have to respond in that knee-jerk reaction way. This one, I will tell you, I've worked with a lot of clients now over the past few years, and I often do a little polling on like, what's the hardest thing for you? And this is the one that comes up for people time and time again. You know, managing how we respond when we get defensive is very challenging for us. I'm glad that you brought up the neuroscience. My partner is a neuroscientist and that's what she and I do. We take a break when we identify that we've become defensive and she has taught me a ton about how to converse appropriately and non-violently. So shout out to Monica, my girlfriend. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. And I find, you know, this is one of the things that's very interesting to me. I'm not a scientist at all, but I've done a lot of reading about the neuroscience behind so much of our behavior because first of all, it explains so much. And it's also a way to talk to people who are skeptical about some of this work. You know,

they think it's touchy feely or they think it's extracurricular and we don't really need to invest in this work. And when we talk about the neuroscience of what is happening to the brains of everyone you work with, suddenly the skeptics often come around. So I use neuroscience often when I'm talking to engineers or scientists and things like that. It helps them understand what I mean. Yeah, I think as soon as you learn about the neuroscience and then you observe the actual effects that you just described, you know, the things that happen to your face and to your body, it all becomes very clear that this is very important and very real because you become more in tune with your emotions in those moments. And you can observe over time how your thinking changes in response and in correlation to those feelings and those physical physiological reactions.

So it's a really fascinating topic. One of the things that you brought up is, you know, criticism. You actually have a few scenarios where somebody was kind of insulting that you wrote about in your book. And one of those feelings that can result from that, I feel like is exclusion. If you're in a meeting or if you're with a group of people and somebody acts that way toward you and nobody does anything about it, you know, you're going to feel like excluded. And to me, that's that sort of like innate sort of tribal, primal need where suddenly you're having that defensive reaction because you're thinking, oh, my gosh, am I not welcome here? Did I say something silly or am I just being treated cruelly because I'm not respected? And you write in the book that exclusion is a lonely feeling. That to me is something that we've probably all experienced

at some point. And this is in your chapter on empathy. And I just kind of want to ask you, why do we need this education on empathy? At the end of the day, should it not be our default, At the end of the day, should it not be our default, especially as leaders, to be empathetic and compassionate? Where did we go wrong that we need to be taught about empathy and compassion in the workplace or anywhere, really? What are the forces that today it's better to not be this way? And then, you know, we have to come back around and teach each other to do this correctly. What do you think is going on here?

Well, this is a big topic. And, you know, it's really interesting is empathy was one of the first topics I started diving into when I was still in the tech world. We even talked about empathy for the customer when I was in tech. That was something that you could talk about. Like we need to be empathetic to the customer and give them a great experience. But what I was exploring is why do we not have empathy for one another at work? And to your question, where did we go wrong? I think it comes back to this idea that you started with at this podcast, which is that the notion we need to leave our emotions at the door, that we shut off our emotions when we

come to work. We need to be stoic. We need to have this mask of sort of invulnerability up. So I think empathy is one of the things that some people may be naturally more empathetic than others, but everyone has the capacity for empathy. But where I think we go wrong comes back to our natural biases, which is that empathy is easy for us when we connect with someone. Like if I see you as, you know, Tyler, you're just like me, we were both actors. Like, I'm just going to have this natural empathy for you because I see something that we have in common. If you are someone where I feel like we have nothing, like we're politically opposed to one another, we're philosophically opposed to another, we have completely different backgrounds and cultures

and ways of thinking, it is going to be harder for me to empathize with you. And here's an example. I will just tell you from my own life, and this is where I learned a lot about empathy. I had a colleague I actively disliked. And I'm just going to say, we rubbed each other the wrong way. He and I were as different as night and day. We saw the world differently. Everything about us, we were just polar opposites, and we were constantly bickering and we were at each other's throats and it was pretty unhealthy and I was unconscious of it. I was not aware I was being pretty nasty to him and I was maybe embarrassing him in public and he was doing the same to me.

And it was one day when he just called me out. He said, Minette, I want to talk to you. I feel like you're trying to shame me in public in front of our peers and our manager. And I suddenly had this moment of like, I don't necessarily have to like this person, but I feel empathy right now because I don't want to embarrass him. I don't want to make him feel bad. And he didn't want to do the same to me either. And so suddenly we both had this, I would say a softening toward each other. We don't have to be best friends. We don't have to go out for coffee or drinks, but we have to treat each other with decency and respect in the workplace. And I think this is hard for us sometimes because we aren't aware of what's happening and we are not thinking of them like, just like me, he cares about his

professional reputation and he doesn't want to be embarrassed. And in my book, you probably remember is that I include this practice that I learned about this just like me, that if we can think about the things we have in common, like just like me, he cares about his friends and family and just like me, you know, he cares about his health. Then we start to humanize the other person instead of othering them and calling them like labels, like a jerk or whatever it is. And so very interestingly, and I believe I put a reference to it in the book, there's a study that I've been reading every year that has come out, I think for about eight years now, called the State of Workplace Empathy

Report that's put out by Business Solver. And it's fascinating because what they've been seeing every year is that employees care deeply about having empathetic organizations and empathetic leaders. And leaders think that they are already extremely empathetic, but their employees are not seeing that. So going back to your original question, we have strayed from what empathy and compassionate leadership looks like. People crave it and leaders probably need to pay a lot more attention to how they show up in a way that appears empathetic and compassionate to their employees because there's a big gap right now. me tactic is inviting storytelling, especially when it comes to inviting people into teams, creating diverse teams and understanding how to be a cohesive team that is made up of people with vast differences. You recommend allowing everybody to tell their story or some component of their

life story. And I would like you to go over this and just kind of describe what kind of settings or frameworks make the most sense for doing this, for inviting people to be a storyteller in a way that they can do so confidently, honestly, and candidly and not feel like they're going to be othered or ostracized or judged. Because, you know, telling one's life story, especially if it is different from the norm, can be a very difficult thing. And especially if you're talking about, you know, big challenges in your life, those things just don't come up at work a lot. And I, you know, I think this goes back to the same topic of, you know, sort of stoicism and being strong. But how do we do this? How do we invite people to tell their stories as leaders and make sure that they're doing so in a psychologically safe environment

where they also can be candid enough to really create that cohesion among a team. Yeah. And you can't ask people to just, hey, tell me your life story and expect that they'll be right, because that's going to put someone on the spot and make them feel very uncomfortable. And I think we build this comfort over time. So certainly when you have just, maybe it's a new team or there's a new member of the team, you're not going to ask them to reveal all of their deepest truths and secrets that put them in an uncomfortable position. But I think what we can do,

and this was something I learned from my HR partner when I was working in tech, we did a really great exercise. I had a team that was very global from different cultures, different first languages, and we were coming together in person for an in-person meeting. And she suggested we do something

that is kind of like telling your life story, but it's in a non-threatening way. And what she suggested that we do is that we each create a poster that we would actually walk through, but it was a physical poster. You don't have to do this, but that was basically, it was called your lifeline. And it was like, what do you want to share from your life? And it doesn't have to be everything, but what were things that had an impact on who you are as an adult today? And you get to self-select what's in there, right? You don't have to reveal things that make you deeply uncomfortable.

It was amazing as an experience because we got to learn things about one another that we would never have heard in like a staff meeting normally. And people shared, you know, where they'd started and just events in their life that shaped who they were. And it was a very big bonding experience for us to know, okay, this person who grew up in rural China, how did they get to where they are today or whatever it was, you know? And I think those kinds of ways are less threatening than saying, tell us something that was really hard for you when you were growing up. You know, then that puts people on the spot, especially people who came maybe from socioeconomically challenging situations.

I met someone who spent part of her time living on the streets of Oakland. She was a successful professional today. Like she chose to share that at some point, but that was her choice, you know, and when she was ready to share that. You write a chapter about inclusive meetings. I would like to just go over very simply some of the key principles to holding inclusive meetings. This is one of my favorite topics because I have been in so many bad meetings over the decades that I spent in the business world. And what I mean by a meeting that is not inclusive is kind of your typical meeting that if you don't consciously try to create a meeting where everyone feels included

and that everyone has a voice, what happens is that you have a couple of dominant voices who do most of the speaking and you have the rest of the people in the room or the virtual room who are silent. And those people have great ideas and they probably have really important contributions to make, but they can't find a way into this loud, dominant couple voices that are taking over. Or they, because of their identity, feel like their voice might not be welcome. There are lots of reasons. They've been shut down in the past, so they're going to be very wary before they open their mouth again. And so I think what I really recommend, and this is a fun thing for a group to do, is to craft your own rules of engagement with the teams that you meet with regularly.

What would make it so that everyone in this meeting could fully participate? And some examples are, well, we send an agenda in advance so that people who need more time to process and prepare come to the table already with some ideas formulated. We do turn-taking in a meeting to make sure everyone who wants to speak has a chance. And we offer alternate ways of contributing if someone just doesn't like speaking in public. How else can we contribute? Perhaps asynchronously or using a chat function or a polling function

or something? There are a lot of tools we can use. How do we handle interruptions? Because when people get interrupted repeatedly, they start to feel that their voice doesn't matter. And again, they'll just shut down. So there are lots of things we can do. I like to use a lot of online whiteboards or whiteboards so that we can get all the

ideas on the table quickly and then have a framework for discussing them. There are lots of techniques. And when I recently did, I was working with a group of about 50 people and I had them in tables of five just come up in a few minutes. I think we gave them 15 minutes. Come up with your set of inclusive meeting guidelines. They were phenomenal. There was a lot of overlap, but then they had some new ideas, each of them. And I think why not do this and then have someone who plays a facilitation role is in a rotating way. So not everyone's, not someone being the facilitator every time, but get used to having facilitation at meetings to ensure that everyone can fully contribute and that people are listened to

respectfully. With all this talk of moving past the stoicism and suppression of our emotions at work and being strong, moving past all of that, you actually recommend that we invite joy into the workplace. So this is really, for me, it's kind of the other extreme. We're going from work, which is very serious. And at a time right now, oh man, it's tough out there. The economy is not doing great. And business has been tough the last couple of years since the pandemic. Things have been different. But you do recommend inviting joy into the workplace. And you give a few examples of how you've seen this and how you've helped facilitate it. Ultimately, the examples of this that I've seen have kind of always been the same sort of thing where I honestly feel like it's very

similar to what you just described in meetings where you have a couple of funny guys. You know, you got funny guys in the company who, yeah, they're funny and they're fun, but they do the same sort of thing where they end up kind of like bogarting the conversation a little bit. And it's very rarely like an overtly bad impact but it does establish like who the strongest voices in the space are on the team are even if they're mostly making jokes those people still have a degree of power just by being confident enough to speak like that and i do feel like that can suppress other people's willingness to speak up to contribute to joy to experience the joy and there are plenty of cases historically where that sort of behavior is on a much greater scale,

something that's very toxic. Like we had the whole Uber scandal where, you know, they had the whole frat bro environment where like, I'm sure those guys were experiencing joy at their job. It sounds like they were having a great time, but they're, you know, being douchebags for lack of a better word. And we don't want that. Obviously we want inclusive joy. We want everybody to feel the joy as much as possible. So how do we do this? How do we invite everybody to feel the joy simultaneously without emphasizing a few voices? How do we do that in a way that is actually, you know, for the team, that is for everybody, and that isn't sort of guided by those dominant voices? And I guess I don't want to confuse joy with humor because those are two different things.

And so when we're talking about the jokesters and really just the bro culture, that's not at all what I'm advocating. I guess what I mean when I talk about joy is that often work is really heavy and really serious. And it would be great if we can celebrate the wins along the way. And you're right, it's inclusive collective joy that I'd like to celebrate. And even if it's just like if you have a regular staff meeting, we often just do status updates or what's going on. But why not take a little moment out of that meeting to celebrate the wins and find rituals that you can use to celebrate whatever those are. that you can use to celebrate, whatever those are. And one team that I worked with, they had this nice ritual of just calling out great things that other people had done.

That's a way to bring in joy. One of the things that I did fairly late in my leadership career that I wish I had learned about earlier and that I think is a fabulous way for leaders to invite fun and joy and levity into work is to work with an improv artist. You know, there are lots of people who do improv in business now. And so you may know about this as a former actor, but it's become a very useful skill. And we actually had an improv actor in our organization who facilitated a fabulous workshop. It was so much fun and everyone enjoyed it. Even the introverts and even the people who, if I had said we're going to do improv at work, they would have called in sick, but they had a great time. That might be me now, honestly, after all my experiences,

but I hope I get through it. But it's not like the scary improv. It's very fun exercises that I will tell you actually translate into different team dynamics afterwards. It's one of the things that had a lasting impact in a positive way on our team. And it was something as simple as, you know, the principle of yes and an improv that you don't turn down any offer, but you build on it. So in my team, my staff members had this really strong tendency to shoot each other down and like, yeah, but that's never going to work or we tried that or whatever. And after we had that exercise or that improv

workshop, we had new language. And so whenever someone did that thing of like, yeah, we tried that, it doesn't work. We would all just say with a big laugh and a big smile, yes, and. And suddenly we all shifted our thinking and shifted our mindset and like, okay, let's stop shooting each other's ideas down. So that kind of thing, it brings levity, but it also brings better performance. And that's what I'm talking about, about joy. It's like, let's celebrate the wins. Let's remember that this doesn't have to be so heavy every day. Yeah. I like that a lot. All right. Before I let you go, Manette, can you just let our listeners know where they can learn more about you and your work

and the book, which I'm holding up on the screen right now, if you're watching the podcast instead of listening to it. Can you let us know where we can learn more about you? Yeah, probably the easiest place is my website, minettenorman.com. I have a sample chapter of my book up there. You can get in touch with me. And also, I'm on LinkedIn a lot,

so find me on LinkedIn as well. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Minette. This was a fantastic conversation. And for everybody at home, thanks for joining as well. We will catch you

on the next episode. Cheers. You've been listening to L&D in Action, a show from Get Abstract. Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never

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