Ignite – The Podcast – Season 1 Episode 3

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Hello, this is Andrea Hendricks, your host for Ignite, a new podcast series launched by Authentico.
Authentico is a full service multicultural marketing and diversity, equity and inclusion agency.
Authentical creates meaningful connections to help brands broaden their horizons and reach their business goals.
We partner with clients to reach diverse audiences, create work that resonates and gets results.
And we help organizations develop successful multicultural workforce strategies and inclusive learning initiatives.
This is a joint venture, of Kansas City based agencies of Walz Tetrick Advertising and Tico Productions.
It grew out of shared values of end goals of CEOs, Charlie Tetrick and CiCi Rojas.
Our goal and our promise is to deliver success to the brands by tapping into the vibrancy of multicultural markets and to broaden and advance DE&I initiatives. Ignite Podcast series is about creating meaningful dialogue to innovate and culturally inspire.
If you look up the meaning of Ignite, it shares focusing your energy and intention to creating an attracting positive outcomes for your life or your business.
Today we are honored to launch episode 3.
This episode will continue to focus on the topic we covered in the first two episodes.
Perspectives from the top.
What can organizations do to enable progressive strategies around diversity, equity, and inclusion. And to keep up to date with what’s going on be sure to follow Authentico on our social media channels, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Joining me on episode 3 is Chris Jones.
She is the president and CEO of Spectra Diversity, headquartered in Minnesota.
She became the founder and president and CEO in 2015 and launched the business in 2017.
The idea for Spectra Diversity began in 2015, and it was all centered around diversity and inclusion experts and funding partners who saw a gap in the current diversity and inclusion data collection methods. And, so they wanted to think about how do you bridge organizations, culture and employees and leaders within the organization all-in-one assessment process.
So they found a way to create an assessment that closed the gap, which measures both.
Spectra Diversity is a woman-owned diversity and inclusion company which serves clients nationwide.
Let’s get started.
Chris, welcome to Ignite.
How are you today?

Chris I’m great.
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Wonderful.
Well, today we are going to share with our audience progressive strategies around diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I wanna gleam best practices and approaches from you as a great thought leader.
So as you know, this is hard work.
The work that we do and workforce, workplace marketplace and community. They’re ever changing, and it requires management and leadership approaches that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion at the highest level.
So my first question for you is, can you share what is the meaning of diversity, equity, and inclusion to you and why do you think it’s so essential for us to pause and reflect on that as individuals and as organizations?

Chris The way that I’ve described diversity is and by the way, a person is not diverse.
A group of people is diverse, so diversity is largely things that are part of their history.
It’s part of the family that they were born in, the community, that they were born in, things that they had really no choice about and it’s differences that may make a difference.
So there’s the things that you can see like we can see skin color.
We can see age, but we can’t see a religion necessarily.
We can’t always see socioeconomic background.
We can’t see sexual orientation.
You know, there’s a lot of things that we can’t see, so diversity is things we can see and things we can’t see.
Inclusion is the full engagement in a company of all the people that make up their diverse population.
So inclusion is a sense of belonging.
Inclusion is being able to be yourself at work and bring your whole self.
Not having to change your hair color or dress a certain way in order to fit in.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Yeah.
I love how you talk about belonging because that is the greatest outcome, you know, trying to move the needle on diversity, equity and inclusion. The outcome of that is to belong.
And I’m so glad that you brought that up.
And maybe we can revisit that in a moment.
But I think you know when you’re trying to add the glue to this work and people always ask, well, how do you know and when do you know or when do you feel you’ve arrived?
And so I’m glad that you shared it just doesn’t start and stop with diversity and inclusion.
It needs to include belonging so and then why do you think it’s so essential that we focus on this today?

Chris Well, I came with a few statistics here today.
So an inclusive organization, and that’s where I think you need to start is with the inclusion piece, not with a diversity piece, because if you have inclusion, the diversity of your employee population will follow.
Inclusive organizations are two times more likely to meet or exceed their financial targets, three times as likely to be high performing, six times more likely to be innovative and agile, and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes.
So in terms of the business sense, it just is a good thing for organizations to be inclusive and to make sure that they hang on to those employees, which right now are in in high demand.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Right. So I know you share in your work, that measurement leads to results.
And so I’m so glad that you shared some of the data points that are part of the work that you do and the work you do gives organizations what I call the power of knowledge as they seek to understand, you know, how to best harness and embrace increasing diversity of employees.
Like you talked about talent and you know customers and communities, they serve another research statistic that I saw recently. HR Research Institute shared that companies are struggling to mature their DE&I initiatives and I think when they talk about struggle, they’re saying that only 22% indicating that they are in the expert or advanced stages of DE&I initiatives.
So as you think about the statistics you shared, and certainly you know you’ve got a maturity model that you work with on a daily basis with clients or communities, what would you say would be progressive strategies to get these organizations unstuck?
You know they’re stuck in in their way of what they should focus on first, should it be workforce? Should it be workplace? Should it be community, or should it be marketplace? If you had to choose one, why to get them unstuck and to get them beyond just the adopt or the comply phase to be more advanced, what would you say as a leader thought leader in this space?

Chris First of all, change is really, really difficult.
I would start with the workplace, you know.
Start with the policies, practices and procedures of the organization.
So and there are probably hiring practices, there’s promotion practices.
There’s things that you can do to foster respect. You know, start on the things that that are built in or baked into the organization.
Start there because it’s really hard to change people’s hearts and minds, so start with changing their behaviors, their actions, and the actions that are permitted and encouraged within that organization.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks I love that. Yeah.
Start within your culture first and then your culture can attract the talent, the clients and the community engagement that you want.
If you’re culture is eroded, then it’s like you said, it’s gonna be hard to change.
Well said, well said.
So when you think about what great diversity and inclusion looks like after you move the needle on these progressive strategies, start with the work place culture.
What does great diversity look like?
You mentioned belonging earlier, but what else would be what you would say?
Would be at that pioneering progressive, transformational level.

Chris I would say that people can come to work authentically as themselves.
You know, if you’re a black woman, for example, you don’t have to straighten your hair.
You could have, you know, natural hair. If you’re a man you can wear nail polish.
You know, if you’re a woman, you can dress however you want.
I think it’s the teams that are at an organization like that are going to be, it’s going to be a diverse team.
You’re going to have men and women.
You’re gonna have different ages, is very important.
You’re going to have different racial and ethnic differences.
You’re going to be welcoming to people in wheelchairs and to nursing moms and to Muslims who want to pray during the day. You’re making space for everyone.
And a lot of the changes that need to happen are not expensive.
They’re little bitty things that are easy to do. So do the little bitty easy things and then the culture slowly but surely will turn around.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Excellent.
Yeah, well said.
So I love the word powering.
I mentioned that earlier and I know you launched a new book called and help me if I’m wrong, Powering Inclusive Cultures and you talk a little bit about that.
You were talking a little bit about that now about, you know, allowing people, inviting them in and letting them be who they are.
What is your book about Powering Inclusive Culture?
What is that book about?

Chris It’s really a book for leadership for small and medium sized businesses. The big businesses you know, Target and 3M are in my backyard here in Minneapolis.
But umm, small and medium sized businesses, they might only have one HR person.
They may not have any employee resource groups, so my book is really designed for the leader.
You know the President, CEO, the top leadership of small and medium sized businesses to understand DE&I, to understand how to turn it on and have it working in your organization. And, how to take those first steps that a small organization can take with limited resources. Because they’re competing with the with the big, big companies for employees.
So they need to be in the game.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Yeah.
And that’s a great cause all levels.
Need a way to on board successfully these strategies.
It’s not a cookie cutter approach. It’s a journey,
not a sprint. And what makes sense in one organization or size may or may not make sense where someone needs to begin or evolve or transform.
I know in the work that we partner together, so I’m honored that Authentico is partnering with you on the cultural assessment and climate assessment for our clients.
One of the things that you talk about in that work and I’m looking forward to reading the Powering Cultures book is the maturity model for success, moving from adopt and comply to the next level.
When you think about the maturity model and how to advocate for inclusivity in the workplace, can you kind of share your thoughts around that?
How the maturity model helps with inclusivity and how individuals can advocate for that?

Chris The maturity model is a snapshot, it’s a snapshot in time. And, no matter where you are on the model, you pretty much take the same steps.
But your perspective of those steps is different.
So you’re gonna start by assessing, you know, what’s going on.
You collect the data with a survey, but you collect a qualitative data as well.
So you start with data and you start with stories.
Then you move to the strategy.
You set it up.
You know what is the business case?
Why is this important?
You set goals and priorities and that would be some of the policies, practices and procedures. And then with your strategy, you look at what are the quick things that we can do to show that we’re committed because like in one survey that was returned to us at Spectra, there was a big bunch of commotion about the dress code.
Well, you know the dress code, you can just, you know, the executives can just change it.
They can ask for input and just change it, you know, so do that.
There was another one that had a big uproar about comp time.
Well, if comp time is a big, you know, big hairy deal.
Fix it, you know?
So those are the quick wins. The harder wins are when you look at the entire systems and the structure of the organization and what training and education needs to take place in order to make sure that leaders are being inclusive to their people.
And that’s a bigger change.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Yeah, and I that’s why I love the model and the work that you do because it really addresses the inclusivity as a core piece for success.
And are there any other ways that you would share with us about how to be an advocate in that in that space?

Chris Yeah, like an example that that comes immediately to mind is when you’re pulling up to the airport, there’s those, there’s big signs on our freeway here and it says if you see something, say something. And, that that could go for your organization as well.

If you see something that needs changing, if you see someone that’s being not included, say something. Depending on your position, you may might say something to your manager.
You might say something to HR.
You might say something directly to that person if you feel comfortable doing so. If you see something, say something.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks I love that I, you know, I am a big proponent for the see model about you have to see yourself first for change and then you have to see others. And you cannot move to seeing approaches and seeing approaches meaning an effective strategy or advocating for someone until you’re willing to see yourself in your true, authentic nature that you talked about earlier.
Then you can help others move the needle when they don’t have their voice or visibility.
A seat at the table.
Maybe you’re calling is to see something, say something, and also do something and so I well said.
And so those of you who are listening in the audience, if you really wanna advocate for change, inclusivity is a great place to start.
Start with yourself and ensure that you feel comfortable being authentic and being included in the workplace.
But then bring someone else along if they don’t have the voice and visibility.
Maturity levels at all.
We all go through that depending on the environment and location we’re in.
And so I love the way that you position being an advocate in the workplace and I hope everybody out there is taking notes.
As we move towards closing the episode today, I always ask the question of our presenters or facilitators today sharing is to maybe share with us the audience a favorite of best practice DE&I resource that’s your go to.
It could be a tip, it could be an article.
What would be your best practice approach you wanna leave the audience today?

Chris I would say one thing that people can do because, one of the comments that we get in our assessments quite frequently is ohh, I don’t see color or everyone’s, you know, everyone’s equal and we all have biases and people are very reluctant to admit that they have biases.
There is a very easy it’s free.
It doesn’t take a lot of time, but the implicit association test that was created by Harvard University.
Will show you where your biases lie.
I’m a business owner.
I firmly believe that that women can embrace technology.
Women can be business owners.
And yet, when I took the gender one, it showed that I have a bias towards men being in business and women being in teaching and other sort of more traditional roles.
Well, I know in my mind that that’s not true, but my bias is so baked in to who I am that I could not trick my mind into going faster and answering the questions to show that that women are equally capable as men.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Yeah.
Well, I think you’re I think I think you’re right.
And I’ll let you finish that statement.
Is that beliefs versus action practice so you can model the way is and you know if you might have beliefs, but then you’re practice, if they go against your beliefs, then that’s where the rub is and that’s the gap that you have to work on.
What were you going to say about that?

Chris Well, I was going to say that once you’re aware of your biases, you start to see them all the time.
It’s like when you buy a red car, then all you see is red cars.
Once I learned what the plant a hosta was, I saw hosta everywhere and it’s the same with your biases.
Once you realize where your biases are, you can start to see them in real time.
You begin to see them when you look at past actions, but when you when you keep practicing, you can eventually see your biases showing up in real time.
And that’s where real meaningful change can happen.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks Well, thank you, Chris.
I could go on and on. I love to hear your thoughts on this topic and others for hours.

Dr. Andrea Hendricks  And so I wanna thank you for your insightful perspective.
I know everyone listening gained additional insights and best practice approaches to this very topic. So, as we leave Episode 3, I wanna take the moment to thank you for listening and encourage you to continue to climb in this space. Power forward.
We hope you enjoyed this new episode of Ignite and we look forward to having you engage in future programs. See you next time, go out and Ignite your strategies.