Lynn - "How can I help my team embrace mistakes and DEI efforts?" (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
So Frances, we get to talk about, uh, DEI today, which is a topic close to our hearts. For listeners out there who aren't familiar with American corporate acronyms, this is diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just to give people some context, Frances, what is the connection between what we do and this topic?

[00:00:21] Frances Frei:
Yeah, the, the high-level way of thinking about DEI is giving everybody equal access to thriving, and we are all about improving individuals and improving organizations. Um, and when there are systematically some people that aren't thriving, we wanna go in there and help.

[00:00:39] Anne Morriss:
And what's the payoff of, of all that help?

[00:00:42] Frances Frei:
Uh, startling, typically. So we have seen organizations' business performance go from 2X to 5X. Um, just being inclusive of the magnificent difference that is already within the organization.

[00:01:00] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I mean, I would say the emphasis of our work is, is the inclusion part.

[00:01:05] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:01:05] Anne Morriss:
Of that acronym.

[00:01:06] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:01:06] Anne Morriss:
And I think in, in our experience, when organizations really get that right, it can deliver extraordinary impact on every metric that you care about as an organization.

[00:01:17] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:01:24] Anne Morriss:
I’m Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:01:27] Frances Frei:
I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School, and I'm Anne's wife.

[00:01:31] Anne Morriss:
At Fixable, we believe that meaningful change happens quickly, anything is fixable, and good solutions are often just a single conversation away. This is Fixable from the TED Audio Collective.

[00:01:45] Frances Frei:
That was Frances.

[00:01:48] Anne Morriss:
I stole your line baby. It's not gonna be the last time.

So today we got a message from Lynn, which isn't her real name. Lynn is the global head of DEI at a big multinational company. This means her team develops and executes diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for the company locally and around the world.

[00:02:16] Lynn:
Hi, Anne and Frances, I really need your help. I am leading our DEI efforts for my awesome organization, and we have some awesome folks, including our leaders, but they're hesitant.

They are afraid to progress and move forward. And I need your help with figuring out what is that support, what is that coaching that I can provide them that's gonna help them move forward in a meaningful way, which is what they ultimately wanna do. Thank you so much.

[00:02:41] Frances Frei:
This is such a common situation. So we have to do two things. One is we have to get people comfortable with making mistakes, and we want people to focus on the upside. And the upside is amazing. When we get this right, we can thump the competition, but we have to be willing to endure getting a few things wrong. And I think that means that we wanna collectively be okay with one another getting things wrong.

[00:03:07] Anne Morriss:
Let’s get into it.

[BREAK]

[00:03:22] Anne Morriss:
Lynn, welcome to Fixable. Maybe to kick this off, ‘cause Frances and I are, are really goal-oriented, and when I say that I mean Frances, um, what would be, what would make this time most useful to you?

[00:03:38] Lynn:
Sure. Perhaps an approach that I could take to help leaders work through these two barriers that are presenting themselves.

So we're focused on our executive leaders within my organization, and these leaders are really interested in embracing an inclusive lens of leadership and leading more through that inclusive lens in their decisions, especially around employee experience. Their two barriers, the pet title is Fear, and those subtitles are Fear of Mistakes—or errors and not recovering or losing credibility.

And the other subtitle is Fear of Knowledge because they believe they should be the experts before they can progress forward. And so, it's causing some credibility and trust issues with the colleagues. They don't see action, enough action from the leaders.

[00:04:38] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Got it.

[00:04:40] Frances Frei:
Okay.

[00:04:40] Anne Morriss:
Well, let's back up a little bit. Um, tell us, uh, roughly what the company does, uh, what industry you're in and, and what is your role in the machine of this organization?

[00:04:52] Lynn:
Sure. So the company is in the financial services industry. And our focus primarily is on consulting. It's specifically in that HR space.

[00:05:04] Anne Morriss:
Okay.

[00:05:04] Lynn:
A lot around benefits and org design and so on. So we help companies create these really robust, fantastic HR departments to service their employees.

[00:05:14] Anne Morriss:
Wonderful. And what's your job?

[00:05:17] Lynn:
Interestingly, I consider myself a consultant too, in the HR space, but my clients are internal—they’re employees, and I lead our employee experience from the onboarding to the exiting of the org and making sure that is hopefully a productive, well-lived experience with our organization.

[00:05:34] Anne Morriss:
Awesome. So tell us about the, the problem that inspired you to give us a call.

[00:05:39] Lynn:
We have been trying to work through solutions with our leaders to help them move the needle. And so we thought it was as simple as providing some, some structured education right around some of those key topics in the inclusive leadership space and leveraging some of the frameworks that exist.

But we realized that that wasn't enough, that there's still this level of fear and anxiety, and I, I honestly don't know what's contributing to it, on a leader, on an org level. On an individual level, I've had conversations with some of the leaders, and I can speak to that, but I can't scale individual conversations.

[00:06:16] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:06:16] Lynn:
I need something that's gonna address it on a, on a wider level so that we can progress forward.

[00:06:22] Anne Morriss:
Can you think of a recent example of when this fear really got in the way of progress?

[00:06:28] Lynn:
I can think about an example. I'm gonna talk about it through one of our pro—cycles, performance management. And, so, part of the performance management process that we conduct which is this, you know, the ratings, like most organizations, good or bad. And then we have calibration sessions with the leaders after the ratings have been loaded into the systems. And during one of the calibration sessions, one of our leaders was talking about two individuals who happened to be of the opposite gender.

One male, one female, both high performers, both recent parents of small children, and the leader with, well, really good intent, made a comment and said, “Okay. Jack is a great high performer. I know Jack just had a baby, but I know Jack is on the track to progress and excel, and so we want to make sure we create those opportunities for him. Whereas Jane also just had a baby, but I really think Jane wants to stay home or spend less time at work and more time with her family.”

So… his, my word's not his. “I'm going to assume that Jane is no longer interested in staying on that high-performer track. And so I'm going to now direct the focus towards Jack.” And so that conversation was amongst a different, um, a mixture of managers. And so, unfortunately, some of that information got back to Jack and Jane. And so now that manager is really scared about having any other performance conversations.

[00:07:53] Frances Frei:
Right. I don't mean to laugh, but I totally, I, I, I feel the, um, “Didn't know I was making a mistake, learned I was making a mistake, and now just afraid to open the door.”

[00:08:04] Anne Morriss:
Now, now it will be just

[00:08:06] Frances Frei:
I’m just gonna keep the door closed.

[00:08:06] Anne Morriss:
There will be no more performance reviews.

[00:08:09] Frances Frei:
No, I’m just gonna stay inside with two—yeah.

[00:08:09] Anne Morriss:
And, and this, this, this kind of anxiety is super common. We see it all the time in the work we do. That’s, that's a fantastic example.

[00:08:17] Frances Frei:
It’s beautiful. Yeah.

[00:08:19] Anne Morriss:
Any other recent examples come to mind, as this really does bring the issues to life?

[00:08:23] Lynn:
Hmm. This is one that's sitting with me right now. Um, oh, it's, it's a tough one. In fact, this just happened yesterday. So we recently had our leadership conference, and we tend to recognize performers. We're, we're in the sales industry during this conference, and so during one of the sales awards presentations, we were calling the individuals on stage to receive their award. And the backdrop for each individual was an image, their own image, and of some work that they did well. So this group of sales individuals that were receiving the high awards, they're predominantly a part of what we call the majority group. Um, 20% are not a part of the majority group, and of that 20%, two of the images that we displayed behind them were not their images.

It was images of individuals who were of that identity group, we'll say Asian, but not that particular person. And when we started researching with the leaders, they acknowledged, what, we were just trying to really get it done, and we were working through it really quickly to get images up. And we just didn't pay attention. We totally missed the mark and didn't pay attention. And so the two employees really were deflated by that.

[00:09:41] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:09:41] Lynn:
This was supposed to be this really wonderful moment, right? For all of the rec—all of the hard work that they were getting their recognition for. And they were distracted by the fact that there was an image of someone who was a part of the same identity group, but it wasn't them, so…

[00:09:54] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, that's it. I feel the pain of that—

[00:09:58] Lynn:
Yeah.

[00:09:59] Anne Morriss:
—moment all, all the way to the soles of my feet. Yeah. And, and you mentioned that, you know, fear. I’m gonna summarize it as fear of looking bad. Fear of making mistakes is getting in the way of making progress on inclusion issues. Is it fair to say it that it's, there is also a fair amount of fear of making mistakes on other issues as well, that that's a part of the culture?

[00:10:26] Lynn:
I would say it's more prevalent with these issues. Um, and I think part of is it, is because the organization really did not decide until 2020 to really place focus in this space—more deliberate, intentional focus in this space. And so we are early in our journey.

[00:10:45] Anne Morriss:
And then what are the major steps the company has taken since, since then? What kinds of levers are they pulling on?

[00:10:56] Lynn:
Sure. One of the levers is an education, right? And making sure that we have this common understanding and language around inclusion, what that means to the organization, and more importantly, why? Why is it important to us when we think about us in terms of our sustainability and growth?

Because we have these numbers, right, that we want to achieve from a revenue, from a headcount perspective, and we can't do that if we just tap into a dominant group. It just so… and so that our focus is on, if I were to look at it, we have these three pillars: culture, talent, and community, which are our headlines.

And so we're, we're trying to make headway at each of those pillars by, um, attracting and retaining diverse talent and not in replacement of our dominant talent, but in addition to, right? That is the key for us. And even in the market space, we know that there's so much untapped, um, opportunity out there. Because we keep fishing from the same pond, even in the markets that we're going after, so…

[00:11:58] Anne Morriss:
And Lynn, I have one follow-up question then.

[00:12:00] Lynn:
Um, okay.

[00:12:01] Anne Morriss:
Then finally, I'm gonna let my wife talk.

[00:12:04] Lynn:
Yes.

[00:12:04] Anne Morriss:
Um, if you were gonna grade the company on the outcomes of their inclusion effort, not their, not their enthusiasm or commitment or efforts, but their outcomes, if you were gonna just give them a grade A through F, like, how's it going so far?

[00:12:28] Lynn:
Hm… C

[00:12:29] Frances Frei:
Okay.

[00:12:30] Lynn:
C minus.

[00:12:30] Frances Frei:
Yep.

[00:12:31] Anne Morriss:
And what would an A game look like?

[00:12:34] Lynn:
And this is obviously through Lynn's perspectives, right? So this would be…

[00:12:37] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, of course. that's who we're talking to. Yeah.

[00:12:39] Lynn:
Um, so one of that, that one problem that I've identified, I think, I think it’s, it through our talent space, through the market, tapping into more diverse market opportunities, uh, bringing in and retaining more diverse talent, and even in the communities that we serve, building stronger connections and relationships, um, with those individuals. I'm trying not to go to the metrics because we're in the business of the humans, but it all ties back to the metrics. It really does. To the dollars.

[00:13:12] Anne Morriss:
Got it. All right. As promised, the prosecution sits.

[00:13:20] Frances Frei:
Oh, so, so Lynn, I'm thoroughly enjoying this, first of all, and, and very optimistic that we're gonna get there. I'm going to provide a summary, and then I'd love for you to correct it.

[00:13:31] Lynn:
Okay.

[00:13:31] Frances Frei:
This is a relatively nice organization, so it's well-intentioned people that are trying to do the right thing, and in this area, they are met with, um, they don't know what to do, and their small forays into it just scare 'em back, uh, back into inaction. So please correct that.

[00:14:00] Lynn:
That is accurate. I even love the phrasing that you used around kind organization and small forays cause a regression. Absolutely.

[00:14:09] Frances Frei:
Okay.

[00:14:10] Lynn:
That is a great way.

[00:14:12] Frances Frei:
Alright. And so then if we think about this one part of it is that, um, you know, the chance of getting something that we don't know right the first time, we can just round that off to zero, right? When we experi—I mean the reason we have to experiment… So there is, in this instance, there's not that can-do inner scientist, let's experiment. It, it’s more fragile than that. And so we might have to do two things.

One is if we use our inner scientist in other things, so if there's like supply chain problems or tech problems—you try one thing, it doesn't work, you try another, you try another, like you just pivot quickly and go around it. But over here, the cost of getting it wrong is deeply personal. And so that's why we're not doing it. And I'm saying it as if it's a fact, but watching you to see if you're nodding or not.

[00:15:05] Lynn:
Yeah, that—wonderful suggestion.

[00:15:09] Anne Morriss:
That's just Frances egging you on for affirmation. Lynn, don't take the bait.

[00:15:15] Frances Frei:
Not exactly. Alright. Got it. Thank you very much. Anne, I thought you were gonna be quiet. So, um, okay. So we need to do two things. We have to affect their capabilities, like the wisdom to know what to do, and then we also have to affect their motivation. And their motivation right now is very self-centric. It's very protective oriented. And so we have to shift their motivation from “How do I feel after I try and miss it?” to “How do other people feel after I try and miss it?”

So here's uh, just a couple of ways to think about this. I would do the motivation first, which is in a conversation, if I was talking to the leadership group, I would be like, “Look, we are all going to make mistakes. Like, this is not a well-understood field yet. So many companies are struggling with it, and we are gonna get competitive advantage when we do it right. Um, so we have to experiment here and we have to create the conditions where experiments are exciting, whether the outcome worked or not.”

Now, part of that is, the experimenter, the person who tries it has to have resilience. I tried it, it didn't work. I have to try it again. It didn't work. So if I strike out, I still have to be willing to get back up to bat. Um, and part of it is those for whom we experiment with, we have to lower the expectation that we're gonna get it right the first time. So there is a message that has to be delivered to the whole community by the leadership team.

So you can imagine the leadership team saying, “Look, what we can commit is we really wanna get it right and we're gonna keep trying. But we're gonna be clumsy,” and I would use this kind of language for it. Um, whatever novice language is ‘cause we are clumsy, uh—

[00:17:18] Lynn:
Yeah.

[00:17:19] Frances Frei:
In the beginning. And I would acknowledge this is really personal and so sometimes when we are clumsy, it's going to strike some of you quite personally. “And we don't want you to suffer that silently. We wanna learn from it. And so here are all the ways you can reach out to help us learn from it. And we commit to doing everything we can, but we need to learn quickly about those things so that we can improve.” So the need for a feedback loop has never been more important in the organization. I would have that kind of conversation about the motivation and the stakes of it, and I would have the leadership team talk about that. How do you react to that, Lynn?

[00:17:58] Lynn:
I embrace that. I like affecting their motivation. I like using some of those terms like “clumsy” and really focusing on the feedback loop and lowering the expectation.

It's also drawing a question, which I may be premature in asking this… I’m trying to think about, so this, we provide the guidance and this message is out there. Uh, knowing the leaders, they appreciate support systems. And so, I don't know if that support system is, uh, more of a collective where the group of them are working together and kind of learning from one another and sharing their oops and their clumsy moments, or if it's more on an individual basis where it's one-on-one with a coach.

[00:18:44] Frances Frei:
Well, I think you probably wanna be a resource to them as a collection—

[00:18:48] Lynn:
For sure.

[00:18:49] Frances Frei:
And individually, I think.

[00:18:50] Lynn:
Okay, so both.

[00:18:51] Frances Frei:
I think you wanna do both.

[00:18:54] Anne Morriss:
I agree.

[00:18:54] Frances Frei:
Because sometimes people wanna talk individually and it's always better if we can hear each other's, because then we don't have to go through the same challenges. We get to learn.

[00:19:02] Lynn:
Okay.

[00:19:02] Frances Frei:
From one another's, and that's where, you know, you have conversations of what went well in this, like what felt good.

[00:19:11] Lynn:
Okay.

[00:19:12] Frances Frei:
And what felt awkward this week, and it's so that if we, when any of us get into them in the future, we can talk and try to make it less awkward. And I might, I might use, you know, those two phrases. It’s not what went wrong, it's what felt awkward

[00:19:27] Lynn:
Right.

[00:19:27] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I'm craving, I love that idea, Frances. I'm craving a, like a working group moment.

[00:19:33] Lynn:
Okay.

[00:19:34] Anne Morriss:
That can happen on a regular basis where I understand the stakes of screwing up outside this space are high for me as a leader, but in this space, the stakes are lower. In this space, Lynn has normalized that we are, im-imperfect humans leading imperfect humans, and, and we're allowed to come in here and talk about where we felt awkward, where we got it wrong. You know, who has ideas from their own experience. I think that group learning moment can be a really powerful compliment to the one-on-one moment.

[00:20:03] Lynn:
Okay.

[00:20:03] Anne Morriss:
Which still allows you to think that everyone else has figured this out.

[00:20:07] Frances Frei:
And, and you want them to experience you, and I'm sure they do as developing them, not evaluating them.

[00:20:14] Lynn:
Right. Yeah. Yes.

[00:20:14] Frances Frei:
So that any hint they get that you're grading them is going to shut them down.

[00:20:19] Lynn:
Right.

[00:20:19] Frances Frei:
And so if that's, if that summarizes the motivation part, um, now it's the capability part. So now what are the skills and tools that we can provide that can help them do it? So I'm going to provide a few of those and you—

[00:20:37] Lynn:
Okay. Okay.

[00:20:37] Frances Frei:
Tell us which ones to double-click on or, or not. So in general, um, there's really four stages of inclusion. So stage one of his inclusion is, does everyone in the organization have equal access to feeling safe? And those that are not, let's look deliberately for the obstacles that are in the way for safety with no judgment about it, just curiosity for what it is so that we can address them.

Once we've done it for safety, phase two, or level two, is does everyone feel welcomed? And then again, just looking for under what circumstances do, which people feel less welcomed than the norm.

Once we get through safe and welcome, the next one we get to graduate to is that, do people have equal access to the soloist performance of their unique contribution? Um, or are we just being asked to play in the band like everyone else?

[00:21:47] Lynn:
Right.

[00:21:48] Frances Frei:
And now this is a very different one that we're looking at, but you’ll, you'll look around and be like, “You know, I'm not even sure I know their unique contribution.”

[00:21:55] Lynn:
Yeah.

[00:21:55] Frances Frei:
Or, “I do know it, but we just haven't been giving center-stage opportunity for them.” So level three is the celebrate uniqueness part of it.

And then level four: are people being celebrated backstage, behind closed doors of the important meetings? That is, who has an ambassador that talks about me in important rooms when I'm not there? And then, how do we get people to be spoken about in their absence in the important rooms?

[00:22:30] Lynn:
I wanna double-click on the fourth one.

[00:22:32] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:22:32] Lynn:
I like ambassadors. I was equating it to a term that we use, sponsors, um, which is starting to get worn out actually.

[00:22:44] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:44] Lynn:
And so I like introducing a new term, like ambassadors.

[00:22:46] Frances Frei:
And, and so many decisions get made when people in the room behind closed doors, in the C-suite, when we talk about other people. Well, who we're talking about is a function of who we're running into and who we have access to. That’s if we leave it up to chance. But what if we didn't leave it up to chance?

[00:23:03] Lynn:
Right.

[00:23:03] Frances Frei:
What if we systematically made sure that everyone had someone who can elevate them.

[00:23:13] Lynn:
Right.

[00:23:13] Frances Frei:
And celebrate them?

[00:23:15] Anne Morriss:
And, and just to go back to where we started, Lynn, that, that example you started with, which is a great closed-door example. It's a lot harder to just make—

[00:23:23] Frances Frei:
Dismiss Jane.

[00:23:23] Anne Morriss:
Dismiss Jane and, uh, just dis—

[00:23:26] Lynn:
Yes.

[00:23:26] Anne Morriss:
Make assumptions about her motivation when we don't know her.

[00:23:29] Frances Frei:
And it's a lot harder to do it when—

[00:23:30] Lynn:
Right.

[00:23:31] Frances Frei:
When her ambassador is in the room.

[00:23:33] Lynn:
Yes.

[00:23:33] Frances Frei:
But if Jane's ambassador is there just being like, “Well, wait a second.”

[00:23:37] Lynn:
Yep.

[00:23:37] Frances Frei:
And so the way to think about this is if someone is being discussed in the room, in the absence of their ambassador, let's just postpone the conversation. And if that person doesn't have an ab—ambassador, then someone goes study up, fall in love with them, and come in and be their ambassador.

[00:23:53] Lynn:
Right. Yep. Now that's just logic introducing itself.

[00:23:58] Frances Frei:
Well, the goal is to be obvious in retrospect. That is the goal. Lynn.

[00:24:03] Lynn:
That is helpful. This is very helpful.

[00:24:05] Anne Morriss:
This is, this is where logic also shows up is when you get to that third phase. In our work, we call this the “inclusion dial”, ‘cause we grew, we grew up on game shows.

[00:24:14] Lynn:
Right.

[00:24:14] Anne Morriss:
When you get to the upper edges of those inclusion notes, that's where you see these performance impacts—

[00:24:21] Frances Frei:
Dramatic performance improvement.

[00:24:22] Anne Morriss:
—really show up. Okay? And so that's where you can credibly start to make the link is if we can really get all the way here to the point where people really feel celebrated for their unique contribution.

[00:24:33] Lynn:
Yes.

[00:24:33] Anne Morriss:
Then all of those other things we are chasing as an organization are gonna be much closer. They're going to be in reach when we can do that for every single human who walks through the door.

[00:24:45] Lynn:
Oh, I, I welcome that. I really do. I'm ready. I'm ready to test this out as I digest, and hopefully you don't regret going on this journey with me.

[00:24:54] Frances Frei:
Oh, not a chance, Lynn. And we are, we wanna hear how it goes. We are with you every step of the way.

[00:25:00] Anne Morriss:
Um, Lynn, let me just push you on, on the action front before we—

[00:25:05] Lynn:
Okay.

[00:25:05] Anne Morriss:
Close this conversation. Give us three things you're gonna do differently when you show up for work next week.

[00:25:11] Lynn:
Sure. I am going to actually put a structure and some, some steps around what you've shared with me and actually think through it. Think about the audience that I wanna bring this message to, which are the C-suite leaders, and think of it in a way that is going to resonate with them. Um, and then I am going to look for some commitment for us to move forward. So I want to engage them with this conversation and then us agree on how we move forward.

And I know we're gonna baby step it because that's just the nature of us. Um, but then I want us to also talk through that third step, is what might success look like? Like what, what is that positive outcome that we're going to be wanting to achieve? So we have that North star that we're working towards, right?

[00:25:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:55] Lynn:
Knowing that we won't be perfect at it, but at least we're working towards that North Star.

[00:26:00] Frances Frei:
And we encourage you not to forget that you are their partner every step of the way as a group. And one to one. Because that will take away the fear. We're not going it alone, and that you've got their back, well, that will be an amazing thing.

[00:26:17] Lynn:
I, I, I agree with you and I really want to make sure that I emphasize that and that they understand and, and can trust in that because I absolutely want to be of service to them in that way. Yeah. I am so appreciative for this opportunity to think out loud with you and to get some guidance. Thank you very much.

[00:26:37] Anne Morriss:
Will you come back and tell us about it?

[00:26:39] Lynn:
You had me at hello.

[BREAK]

[00:26:58] Anne Morriss:
Frances, we make very strong statements about—

[00:27:03] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:27:03] Anne Morriss:
The people who get inclusion, right, being able to thump everyone else. So tell us where your conviction comes from on that front.

[00:27:09] Frances Frei:
Yeah, so you know, all of the, a academic research, almost all of it shows that we're better off with more diversity and more inclusion. And that's for on boards of directors, on senior teams, for the organization at large. It's work done by, um, business academics, social scientists. Uh, so that work is, I would say mainstream now, um, which is really lovely.

[00:27:33] Anne Morriss:
And part of why it's hard to get DEI right is because of something called the common information effect. Frances, why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:27:41] Frances Frei:
So the common information effect, it's complicated, but here's the simple version of it. If we put people together that have some things in common and some things different, we tend to focus on what's in common. And it, it takes a lot of effort to surface our uniqueness as opposed to instinctually going after what's in common.

And so, when we are in a group where there is beautiful difference, we have to deliberately be inclusive of one another. Otherwise, we're not gonna perform that well. So its reason why it's called diversity and inclusion, um, is that you can't do it with diversity alone. We have to be inclusive of that majestic difference.

[00:28:21] Anne Morriss:
Yep. And I think some organizations are at the point in the story where they're achieving the metrics of diversity, but because they have not yet reached inclusion, they're not yet seeing those performance payoffs.

[00:28:37] Frances Frei:
Yeah. And the performance payoffs can be astounding, but only if, and only if we are inclusive and as we just discussed, uh, with Lynn, it’s, it's not that it's hard or rocket science, it's just that it's not yet been widely distributed. Like we had the benefit of watching her nod and going on taking notes, but she got it.

[00:28:58] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:28:59] Frances Frei:
And she's gonna be able to turn around and describe it to someone else.

[00:29:01] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I think so many people, and you know, we have been in the trenches, with many of these wonderful humans, when they're in the middle of a change process like this and it feels like it's not working.

And I think a lot of people in the DEI space are literally in the, in that middle, in that tough middle right now it can be energy-depleting. And our friend Lynn showed up, you know, ready to go at minute zero of the conversation. And I think, I mean, my, my optimism about what she's gonna do on Monday morning—

[00:29:32] Frances Frei:
Oh my goodness.

[00:29:33] Anne Morriss:
—is off the charts. And no surprise that she's thriving in this space.

[00:29:41] Frances Frei:
Thanks for listening everybody, and we'd love to hear from you too. If you wanna figure out your workplace problem together with us, please send us a message. You can do that via email fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-fixable. That's 234-349-2253.

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Frei.

[00:30:13] Anne Morriss:
And me, Anne Morris. This episode was produced by Daphne Chen. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Sarah Nics, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, Ban Ban Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer.

[00:30:35] Frances Frei:
We'll be bringing you new episodes of Fixable every week, so make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:30:42] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing: If you can please take a second to leave us a review, we love hearing from our listeners, particularly when they have nice things to say about us.

[00:30:51] Frances Frei:
We’ll see you very soon.