Revising the stories we hold dear with Denise Hamilton (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Adam Grant:
Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to ReThinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

My guest today is Denise Hamilton, an inclusion strategist. Denise is the founder and CEO of WatchHerWork, a digital learning platform for professional women. And All Hands Group, a work culture consultancy. Her debut book is Indivisible, and in a world dominated by division, it's a force for unity.

Denise never fails to make me stop and think. She's a master of injecting complexity into oversimplified issues and shifting the DEI conversation from outrage to insight.

All right, let's do this. Hey Denise.

[00:00:56] Denise Hamilton:
Hey!

[00:00:57] Adam Grant:
I wanna find out how you became an inclusion strategist.

[00:01:00] Denise Hamilton:
Well, I have been the first or the only woman or black person in almost every job I've ever had. And people started asking me about that. They started asking me how I was able to navigate these spaces so successfully, what's the secret? What are the cheat sheet notes? And I was prepared to say things they weren't willing to hear. And that became an opportunity to kind of build and develop this whole school of thought around how do you actually successfully navigate difference? And here I am today.

[00:01:38] Adam Grant:
One of, one of my favorite stories that you've shared is the George Washington's teeth story, and I think it's, it's a good window both into the work that you do day to day and also some of the resistance that you're facing.

[00:01:50] Denise Hamilton:
One of the things that I think is really important, um, in this work is understanding the importance of being a truth seeker. There are two groups of people. There are keepers of the story, and there are truth seekers, right? And those are wildly different. And this story really exemplified the difference between the two.

A whole generation of people was told that George Washington's teeth were made of wood. And I'm kind of fascinated like, why was this story told? Because that's not what his teeth were made of. They were made of ivory like elephant and the teeth of slaves, and that story’s horrible and I understand not wanting to tell that story, but I didn't really understand telling an alternate story.

I can't imagine people were walking around saying, I wonder what George Washington's teeth were made of? I just can't imagine that was a thing. So this idea of like, not necessarily even hiding a bad story, but creating a counter narrative around that story. So I shared that in one of the videos, and the videos were sent to a group of executives for screening and one of the executives, he was furious. He called my contact within the company and said ‘that woman needs to be fired. This is propaganda. This isn't true.’ Well, you know, I'm from Texas. This wasn't my first rodeo. I had all the documentation, I had all the notes, all the citations, and so we sent it to him. And it was so fascinating.

The next day he called back and he said, ‘well, I checked and I see that there's some truth to this. I see that, but I still don't think that we should share this story because it's not helpful. It doesn't advance the narrative.’ And I thought that was fascinating. Yesterday, this story was so explosive and so horrible that I deserve to be fired over it. And today it doesn't matter at all. And to me that's a perfect example of people who have taken the responsibility for being keepers of the story, right? The idea that a certain narrative needs to be presented in order to protect our identities and just who we see ourselves as. And we see that in so many different situations all over society, and that's the benefit of being in the role that I am. I get to see really powerful examples of the challenges of doing this work.

[00:04:23] Adam Grant:
I, I have so many questions just about that story. First of all, what did you do?

[00:04:29] Denise Hamilton:
Well, I mean, the bottom line is we need to be truth tellers. He and I had a conversation about the importance of sharing stories that broaden out the understanding that we all have about our past.

We are a resilient, powerful, incredible country. We're not frail and fragile. We can handle the truth. I promise you, we can. One thing he said that I thought was really interesting, he said, you know, ‘you are telling people that George Washington shouldn't be a hero.’ And I said, I, I actually haven't said anything of the sort. What I do think is that I have the right to decide if he's my hero, and I can't do that without the truth.

[00:05:16] Adam Grant:
The, the words you you used were, you said, that's fascinating. I think we all know the value of, of responding to, to defensiveness with curiosity, but we really struggle to do it. How do you do it?

[00:05:28] Denise Hamilton:
Well, I have a personal rule. If you love America, you gotta love Americans. And it's a hard, hard rule that I really believe in, that you have to actually care that the people, even if they disagree with you, that the people that you are dealing with improve, get better, because I see my success as tied to their success.

We're all in the same boat, no matter if we're sitting in the front, the back, the side, downstairs, like we're all in the same boat and we need to look at these issues through the lens of shared, interconnectedness. I, I just really believe that. I'm gonna start every interaction ascribing good intent. I understand the power of stories and I understand that we've been told quite a few untruths. We've been told a lot of bad stories, but those stories are still shaping us. Those stories don't go away. They don't release us super easily. So when I am talking with someone who I disagree with, I really think it's important to take the time to understand what fact pattern are they coming to this conversation with?

What is their intent? We're really quick to ascribe ill intent, and I just really work hard not to do that. Where are you coming from? What do you believe? What's shaping the decisions that you're making? And can we test those things? Can we validate them? I didn't call the executive and argue with him. I sent him the research so he could read it himself and then we could talk about it.

We have to equip people for excellence even in these subjects, and I think sometimes we skip that step. We, um, relegate ourselves to emotional discussions. And I don't know that I think that these are always emotional discussions. I think there are objective facts that we need to be able to reckon with, and we have to do that in a atmosphere of respect.

[00:07:26] Adam Grant:
Well, I think this goes to the point of your book, which is that we need to take the idea of indivisibility seriously. Tell me what that means and what it looks like.

[00:07:34] Denise Hamilton:
I'll tell you what it looks like for me. Really valuing and appreciating and understanding the beauty of each and every person. Seeing their value, just the ability that we all have to work together to accomplish great things.

The best example I can think of of that is the human body, right? The heart and the lungs, they don't argue. Which one of us is important? They understand that they're both important. When I think of leadership, I think my job is to make sure that every single member of my team can be the best at their function, can be the best at what their giftedness allows them to do. And quite frankly, disparate treatment, discrimination, racism, sexism, they waste valuable, precious, priceless energy, priceless giftedness. And so if we seek to be indivisible, we understand how important each and every part of us is.

[00:08:37] Adam Grant:
One of the things I, I love about your take on being indivisible is it takes this old word that we all recognize that's supposed to suggest we remain undivided. And you say we can be indivisible even when we have plenty of differences.

[00:08:53] Denise Hamilton:
Hmm. I think we have to be indivisible when we have plenty of differences. Like to be indivisible requires work. It's not a passive state. It's not something that you just inherit, right?

I like to think of, of America as a beautiful old house with great bones, but it still needs renovation. It still needs updating, it still needs fresh paint and fixing of the foundation, right? So if you are an heir to this, great, incredible asset. There's work to maintain it.

And I think, um, if there's one thing I would call every person to do is to step into their work. You are not a passenger here. You are an heir, right? You're an owner, and I believe there's a big difference between owners and renters. Right? Owners fix the foundation, or if they do electrical work and plumbing work, stuff that nobody ever sees. Renters use peel and stick tile, right? They're temporary. They're seeking to extract temporary value from an asset. We have far too many extractors among us, just far too many, and perversely, we've even gotten to a point that we celebrate some of these people, which is equally weird. We need to be owners of this space. What is the work that each one of us has to do to make this space, this place, this little hunk of rock that we all live on the best it can possibly be?

[00:10:29] Adam Grant:
One of the things I find compelling about that articulation of America, uh, where you say, look, this is a building with a great foundation that needs renovation, is you're, you're probably pissing off people on both extremes. You have people who are saying, no, the foundation is fundamentally broken. The whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. Like, let's, let's just knock it all down. And then on the other extreme, you have people saying, no, actually nothing needs repair. This is not an old building. It's not falling apart. It's actually, it's the shining city on the hill and it's gleaming right now, and it always has and there's never been anything wrong with it.

What do you say to each of those groups, because I think one of your superpowers is, is kind of bringing them along to your reasonable nuanced position.

[00:11:18] Denise Hamilton:
I actually am a big believer in America. I, I wanna say, I have to say that right out the, the gate. I think that we have made some absolutely horrific decisions. We've had some practices that were absolutely unacceptable and I could list them for you, right? I list a couple in the book because I wanna honor that that truth is in fact the truth. But I also, you know, have to be honest, like, I take those things almost as victories. Look how far we have come. Look how much we have changed. Look at our capacity to take a situation that seemed absolutely impossible and correct it, and create an entirely new reality, right?

So to say all of these horrible things that have happened in history have rendered us inert or ineffective or incapable of improvement to me doesn't really make sense. It's not really true. And I can't denigrate the incredible work of generations of people that went before us to say, this is hopeless. How dare I say this is hopeless.

I was thinking the other day about the Montgomery bus boycott and, Adam, the Montgomery bus boycott happened in Montgomery, Alabama for a year. In Alabama, those people walked through incredible scorching heat. They didn't have jobs like you and I where we're pushing, pushing paper and, and typing on keys. They had grueling physical backbreaking work, and they still walked home for a year to change policies, and we're exhausted by tweets. We're worn out by every single commentary that people make. Like we need to soldier up a little bit and pull ourselves together. This is ours. We have the capacity to make it better, and that is an incredible gift, and I don't think we should squander it.

[00:13:29] Adam Grant:
Beautifully put. I have no notes. It's a message that a lot of people need to hear. When I think about the, the other extreme, why do we encounter so many people who are attached to old stories.

[00:13:40] Denise Hamilton:
Ah!

[00:13:40] Adam Grant:
And who don't wanna recognize the mistakes of our past? Like, sometimes I wanna sit them down and, and say, listen, like studying the wrongs committed by your ancestors is not an indictment of you. It's a lesson for us.

[00:13:55] Denise Hamilton:
So this group is tough because I think there's a deep grief that's associated with the loss of your story. And I don't think we honor that grief when we talk to them.

One of my favorites is Vick's Vapor Rub. When I was a kid and I was sick, and my mother and my grandmother would rub Vick's Vapor Rub on my chest and on my back, you could not tell me it was not the healing Balm of Gilead. You just couldn't tell me! I knew instantly, oh, it's just a matter of time until I get better.

And I think that old stories don't release us easily. They shape us. And so when somebody comes along and says, hey, this thing you believe, it's not really true. It's not a hundred percent accurate. There's a grief associated with that loss. And that's why I'm gentle when I talk to people about this work and try to unravel the stories because I don't think that people are just horrible and bad and terrible and want oppression and want everybody, uh, wanna keep a foot on everybody's neck. I think they have a narrative that it just takes a little time to unwrap. We make our stories revolve around our reality. That's what we do, right? We have to understand the difficulty of releasing even a broken story. And our approach, our narrative has to center around that challenge. And we also need to have the patience required because, you know, I don't have to tell you it, it's hard to get people to think again.

[00:15:38] Adam Grant:
It's funny that you say that because as you're talking about the grief associated with letting go of an old story, I'm thinking about what I think is the most highlighted sentence in Think Again, which is, who you are is not a question of what you believe, it’s a question of what you value. And I think that people are making a fundamentalist mistake if they start to take an opinion, um, a story as part of their identity, they've then robbed themselves of the opportunity to grow and evolve.

If I define myself as somebody who believes that George Washington was a hero, then I have closed my mind to any information that might complicate that picture. If I define myself instead as somebody who admires a specific virtue of George Washington’s, like, he was a reluctant revolutionary, I stay open to anything I might learn about him. Which I think is is, is where we all want to be. I, I guess it's hard for me to even fathom why people do this. Why do you wanna make a story part of your identity? Can you help me understand that? I see people do it, and I've written about it and I've studied it, and as a psychologist, I can't quite explain it.

[00:16:50] Denise Hamilton:
They become organizing truths. We organize around our stories. And so if I have a fundamental belief that water is wet, and I've aligned myself with a bunch of people who think water is wet, and then somebody comes along and says, actually, water can be steam, it can be ice. Then I have to decide what my connection is to all of these other people. It's not as certain. It's not as sure.

We see this particularly with religious beliefs, right? If I challenge a core religious belief, well wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. I have to believe that women can't preach. I have to believe that. Who am I if I don't believe that? Right? We have decided that only certain people are important, significant, capable of impacting culture, capable of creating change. And the reality is even the most flawed among us has the capacity to create positive change.

And I talk about it in the book with Bill Cosby. This idea of, here's this person that was so central to my rearing, my education, like he taught me about money, about boys, about dating. Like The Cosby Show was my, my third parent, really. And so how do I reconcile all of this information that he has done these horrible things? Can I appreciate the positive impact that he's had on my life, but be brutally honest about the harm he's created as well, and maybe land someplace in the middle.

That's a really complicated thing for people to do. It's complicated even further when you perceive yourself as being under attack. Right? When you feel like your way of life, your way of thinking is being confronted or challenged, there's a temptation to like lock in and, and hook arms with your fellow, you know, believers and fight against the truth no matter how true the truth is. And that's what we have to resist. We have to be actual truth seekers and not just keepers of the story.

[00:19:08] Adam Grant:
As you talk about the ideals that people have for their heroes, that's such a flawed understanding of what it means to be a hero. I mean, what inspires me about somebody I'd consider a role model is not that they lack flaws, it's that they did something extraordinary despite those flaws.

I think of W.E.B DuBois, who wrote about Lincoln? Here's the quote, I, I love this quote. He said, “Lincoln is to me, the most human and lovable, and I love him not because he was perfect, but because he was not, and yet triumphed. See this man? He was one of you, and yet, he became Abraham Lincoln.” Unquote. Denise, that's a hero.

[00:19:52] Denise Hamilton:
Absolutely. We have become wimps. We are addicted to hopelessness and helplessness. I don't think we are, right now, embodying the sheer power, the sheer capabilities that we have. We have come to a place that we define ourselves by what we don't know, and where we can't go, and what we can't do instead of what the capabilities are for us to completely impact our space, our corner of the world.

The best example of this for me is Harriet Tubman. I'm absolutely obsessed. Here is this woman, she was petite. She was disabled. She couldn't read, couldn't write, had never been more than a mile, I believe, from the plantation. Yet she ran from the south to the north to freedom by herself. There were a million reasons that she should not have been able to do that, but she did it. And if that wasn't miraculous enough, she went back. She turned around and came back and got people time and time again and, and I'm amazed by how she did it. It was three people on one trip, seven people on another trip, five people on another trip.

I don't know that we have the patience to do small things over and over and over again. But that's really the only way we change the world. So now we have this kind of culture of punditry where everybody talks about what needs to happen. They talk about what other people made happen, but they don't see the responsibility that they have to make things happen. And consequently things are falling down around us.

This idea that some superhero is gonna swoop down and lead us into a better way, to me is so anti-American. Stop waiting on somebody to come down from the sky and be phenomenal. You step up and be phenomenal because you have the power and the capability to do that.

[00:22:11] Adam Grant:
Denise, let's go to a lightning round. What is the worst advice you've ever received?

[00:22:16] Denise Hamilton:
You have to be twice as good. You have to jump twice as high and run twice as fast. Terrible advice.

[00:22:23] Adam Grant:
I have to follow up. Why is that bad advice?

[00:22:25] Denise Hamilton:
‘Cause you are enough. The biggest lie that marginalized people are told is that they have to be more, be greater, be better.

No, we all have to create spaces that everyone can be enough and still have an opportunity at the American dream.

[00:22:42] Adam Grant:
What is something you've rethought lately or are rethinking right now?

[00:22:47] Denise Hamilton:
Scuba diving. I'm a surface dweller. I don't go too high. I don't go too low. I'm a surface dweller, but my husband and my daughter are both avid scuba divers, and there's something about doing something together as a family that's making me think maybe I should give it a try. Stay tuned.

[00:23:08] Adam Grant:
You are very thoughtful and nuanced when it comes to language. Is there a word or a phrase that you think we should abandon from our vocabulary?

[00:23:18] Denise Hamilton:
Authentic.

[00:23:19] Adam Grant:
You're gonna kill authenticity?

[00:23:19] Denise Hamilton:
I know that's gonna shock everyone. I would kill it. We are really good at bastardizing words. I think that we have decided that being authentic means being unfiltered. Being authentic means being uncooperative. I don't like that framing. I wanna be effective. So if I'm going to France, I authentically speak English, but I'm gonna do everything I can to learn at least a few words to be able to navigate that environment. I don't think that makes me inauthentic. I think it makes me effective and I think we've lost that.

The other thing about ‘authentic’ that I don't love is it's kind of a, a neutral state where ‘effective,’ it takes a little work. I wanna actually be impactful. I wanna make sure that the ways I move through the world are kind, helpful, positive. And, um, I authentically wanna be in my pajamas about 90% of the time, so I don't know if authentic is pulling it off for me.

[00:24:24] Adam Grant:
I, I've had a lot of trouble with authenticity over the last few years too, and as I've written about it and we've, we've tackled it in podcasts, I just, I don't want anyone to be fake. I don't want you to express something that you don't believe, but like authentic to what? Should I be authentic to my values, to my personality, to my current thoughts, to my mood state, to the concerns of the people around me? There are a lot of options there and the idea that there's one sort of fixed standard that I need to have fidelity to, I think is, is just absurd.

[00:24:58] Denise Hamilton:
And we all have to interrelate, like we have to talk to each other. So what does it take for us to be ourselves, but to stay in relationship and stay in a communication? I think that's the important thing for me and that's what effective means for me. Like if you are authentically in a silo, I don't know that you're helping anything. As you can tell, I have a big commitment to forward progress. And we have what I think has become a culture of naming problems, which is important. I think we need people that name problems, but we also need some solutions. We need some people who are actively engaged in making things happen and committed to that. And I think the kind of social media, kind of doing-things-for-likes culture has created this incentive structure around naming problems and declaring them, and we need a little more balance there.

[00:25:56] Adam Grant:
What's a question you have for me?

[00:25:58] Denise Hamilton:
How do you think about the fatigue around inclusion? We had a big burst of energy following the murder of George Floyd, and we're starting to see this fatigue and this exhaustion. It's like you have a pair of glasses on that blocked out the color blue and George Floyd's murder knocked the glasses off. So now you can see blue and you're horrified by it. And then it's like, wait, there's blue in healthcare and there's blue in education and there's blue in all of these other areas, and you get overwhelmed and fatigued by that and kind of wanna just reach and put the glasses back on so you can't see as much blue. Do you think fatigue overwhelm is shutting down our capacity for progress?

[00:26:59] Adam Grant:
It's a different kind of challenge than the one we had a few years ago. Particularly when I think about this from an allyship perspective, right, because you, you've been seeing blue for a long time. It took a lot of people a long time to, to recognize, hey, we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that people who have been historically disadvantaged have a voice and are treated with respect and are given the same opportunities as everyone else.

I think earlier a lot of what we were seeing was a problem that's called psychological standing. Which is, you know, it's not my place. Like as a white man, what do I know about the experiences of black women? And, you know, it's, it's not my right to weigh in on these issues. And I think that psychological standing problem was solved. Or at least it evaporated, or it faded into the background for a lot of people who realized, whether I know exactly what to say or not, it's better to say something than to sit there watching people suffer in silence. And I have a responsibility to speak up and advocate for progress as opposed to forcing the people who are disadvantaged to now do that extra work.

And I think, I think that was exciting for me to see. As somebody who, who went through a version of that in being afraid to talk about the data on sexism in my own classes and having colleagues sit me down and say, you have a responsibility to teach the evidence. And me getting a little defensive and then saying, you know, actually you're right. And I think that to me was progress.

And then what happened was a lot of people realized this is a lot of work. And there's also a lot of backlash, and I think it's actually the backlash more than the effort that's causing the exhaustion. I think that you have people trying to help and then being told they're making things worse. Like, well, what's the point? Why should I keep feeding a hand that bites me? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn this back to you, Denise. What are you thinking about the, the backlash issue? A lot of people are suggesting that we abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion altogether.

I, I just had a conversation yesterday with a, a very influential c-Suite executive who said, DEI is ruining campuses. It's ruining companies, it's ruining our country. And I said, whoa, don't throw out the baby with the bath water. You might object to some of the ways that this cause has been advanced and policies have been implemented, but the idea that we're, we're gonna just pretend that there aren't people disadvantaged, would be a huge step backwards. So let's talk about how to do this more effectively. Okay, so now what? How do we do this more effectively?

[00:29:34] Denise Hamilton:
You stole my answer. That's my answer. We can all discuss policies. Right? We can disagree on, um, different strategies and how we move forward together. We're negotiating new terrain, but we're allowing people who are not committed to the challenge or the problem to frame the argument and to, to validate or invalidate the work.

It's like they're walking around saying, I hate chemo. I hate chemo. My hair falls out. I'm nauseous. I'm, I'm sick. I'm tired all the time. I hate chemo too, but I hate cancer more. And we all need to agree that we have a cancer that needs to be addressed. So I'm open to anyone who has a better idea, but I'm not hearing a lot of solutions. I'm not hearing a lot of alternative policies or procedures. I'm hearing, let's go back to the good old days. And that's a no-go for me. And not only is a no-go, it is contradictory to everything you've been saying for the last three years. What are your values? So you have a different way of doing it? I’m all ears, let's go. Can't wait for that conversation, but just shut it all down. Throw the baby out with the bath water. I, I, I think that's ridiculous.

And I think more than that, once again, we have excused people that don't do any work. I just don't move my life around critics. I wanna hear from people who have actual ideas and solutions because they see these problems as shared problems, shared issues that need to be addressed. And if you don't really come at it from that posture, why am I listening to you? Why are you the voice of what's good for America? That isn't really a, a caring posture. So to me, if you don't honor the fact that there's a real problem, and if your observations and characterizations of where we are today completely ignores the challenges, you are not an honest broker in this conversation. We're not really having a conversation. You are just shutting down progress and, and I don’t follow people who don't believe in progress.

[00:31:57] Adam Grant:
As we wrap up, one of the things I thought was most profound in your book was the idea of listening to your echo. Talk to me about what that means.

[00:32:08] Denise Hamilton:
I think we have a lot of leftover stories, a lot of messages, and they're echoes. Things that are hearkening back to a time that is even appropriate anymore. So many people hold on to kind of echoes of old practices and that would be harmless if they didn't superimpose that on today's opportunities and today’s realities, right? We can be so much more creative, but we can't really be fully creative if we're holding on to old baggage, old stories, old concepts that keep us stuck, right?

And so I think that one of our homework assignments, and that's every one of us, not just leaders. That's every single person that hears this is what are the echoes in my life? What are the things I still believe, I still hold onto? You know, what do I really think about who should be cleaning my house? What does a president really look like? Do I have those echoes kind of bouncing around in my head? Because if I don't release them, they won't be released. Our shared story is in fact shared. So if we can purge some of those echoes and those broken stories, we all progress so much farther, faster.

[00:33:32] Adam Grant:
Beautifully put. We need more of your voice in the world. Denise.

[00:33:37] Denise Hamilton:
Thank you so much for giving me a space to share it. It's so beautiful to make room for other people and we're strong enough to make room, and I always appreciate you for doing that.

[00:33:50] Adam Grant:
Well, I always learn something new when I talk to you, and I love how you not only consistently challenged my thinking and assumptions, but also make it fun. I, I look forward to seeing what I'm gonna rethink when I talk to you as opposed to begrudgingly accepting that you're gonna shatter one of my beliefs.

[00:34:08] Denise Hamilton:
Fantastic. The future is fun. It's exciting, it takes some work, but it's fun.

[00:34:17] Adam Grant:
What really hit home for me in this conversation is that we should never be too attached to what we've built. Being proud of some of the foundations shouldn't stand in the way of renovation. No company, country or person is perfect. Every structure should be open to improvement, and every story should be open to revision.

ReThinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. This show is part of the TED Audio Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley-Ma and Aja Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winik, Samiah Adams, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington Rodgers.

[00:35:08] Denise Hamilton:
If you laid out your intestines, I don't know why you would wanna do that, but let's say you did that.

[00:35:13] Adam Grant:
I don't plan to, let's be clear.