How to Foster and Lead a Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Business

Diversity and inclusion efforts were brought to the forefront during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Many leaders took notice but not as many were able to drive change. Today on the Atlanta Small Business Show, we’re pleased to welcome Jennifer Brown, award-winning diversity and inclusion expert, entrepreneur, consultant, and author. We’ll be discussing the second edition of her best-selling book, How to be an Inclusive Leader, out now.

Brown has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, CBS, and more.

Transcription:

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jennifer Brown:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure. You had to go through all those smaller media companies to cut your teeth to be ready for us. I get it.

Jennifer Brown:
That’s right. I’ve been waiting.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I totally get that. So thank you so much for joining us. Tell us about the second edition of the new book. What’s new, and what was the inspiration behind writing it?

Jennifer Brown:
Yeah, so when I wrote it in 2018/19, it was a different world. We say the before days, and inclusive leadership was a passion of mine. It was something I really wanted to explain in very accessible terms, and give leaders a model that they could follow that was step-by-step that demystified this topic that can get really overwhelming, I think, for a lot of people, and give people a path forward. So the update of the second edition gave me an opportunity to reflect on all that has changed, which is just so much over the last couple of years. What we’ve learned, how we’ve deepened our understanding of each other, ourselves, how the workplace has been challenged, and told really hard truths. And how leaders have had to ride that storm through and where it leaves us now.
I loved updating more pithy, direct stories, making sure everything is super relevant, super timely, very hard-hitting enough, because we really have gone through a step change in terms of our willingness to look at ourselves and change and challenge the way we’ve done things. So the openness of my readers is at a different level now than it would’ve been in 2019.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure. So a lot of the people that are listening to us have this conversation today, have this question on their mind as they listen to you talk about diversity. How do you even start the conversation? I know it sounds pretty simple, but it’s one of those areas, and I’m one of those individuals that, you feel like you’re walking on eggshells just even starting the conversation among your team, among your leaders, among your staff, your company, and shareholder and such. So talk to us about that.

Jennifer Brown:
Yeah. I think that was the other reason I wrote the book in the way that I did, which is literally, hey, let’s read this together on the team.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure.

Jennifer Brown:
And many teams and organizations are reading it, and it’s providing a common language, which I think is that important first piece and a very neutral, gracious language. It’s not a language that is critical of who we are as people, but really frames all of us as learners. All of us, I don’t mean they know everything, we know nothing. Not that. I think it’s a very generous, neutral stance that enables an invitation to the learning process. I see it as an evolution. Look, we evolve on all kinds of things all the time, and we challenge ourselves to grow, and develop new habits, and become comfortable with what’s uncomfortable by practicing and building that muscle. I think that’s the energy I bring to the writing, and people have told me it’s open, it’s accessible, it’s kind, it’s welcoming, it’s non-judgmental.
I believe we all learn from a place of feeling encouraged, and seen, and acknowledged for maybe efforts we’ve made, and good intentions, but then I think we do need to make those intentions real. So I think it’s a different vibe than a lot of books that are written on this topic, which are either really academic and impenetrable for the reader, or perhaps very specific around particular topics like anti-racism, or homophobia, or sexism. This is more a human evolution book. That is really the invitation that I want to make.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
In the book, you share ways to challenge biases and stereotypes that many leaders have. Can you elaborate on that?

Jennifer Brown:
Absolutely. Look, I’m in a certain generation, Gen X, maybe you relate.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I do. I’m in the generation before you.

Jennifer Brown:
Oh, well then we were told very different things, right?

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.

Jennifer Brown:
We were told, for example, to say and believe, “I don’t see color, or I don’t see difference.”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right. Kind of naive.

Jennifer Brown:
Yes it is, and now we see it in hindsight but to be kind to our older selves, we didn’t know what we didn’t about so many things. So now we’re playing catch up, and now we’re taking a critical look at what we were told, what we weren’t told, what we weren’t taught, who we didn’t ever know, somebody from a certain community or identity. And I think rectifying that is undertaking this journey. It is examining, what do I think and why do I think it? We’re not going to eradicate our biases, but what we can do is see them in action in ourselves and others, and then we can make different informed, educated choices, more intentional choices about what we allow to steer our behavior and our decisions. If we could just do that, that would be half the battle.
And then we need to familiarize ourselves with recency bias. Oh, the last person I talked to is the most credible. It’s the thing that I remember, or bias towards people that went to the same school as I did, or who look the same as I do. We have those levels of comfort and our go-to, and what this work is all about is just looking at that lovingly and saying, Of course we’re all human. We seek comfort. It’s wired into us. But inclusive leadership is about getting comfortable with what’s unfamiliar, perhaps, the new, the unknown, the things that we can learn about and then bring those into our leadership and into our humanness like parenting, being a partner to somebody, every role we play can be enhanced, I think, by this conversation.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Is diversity just as hot today as it was just after George Floyd’s passing?

Jennifer Brown:
Well, there was a spike at that time, and I think preceded by the pandemic, this shifted reality that we were in, and then to have George Floyd’s murder be in our living rooms and hit us in the way that it did really led to intense interest, an intense conversation.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure.

Jennifer Brown:
It was an intense time. I might argue it was not a very sustainable level of intensity, but it was such an important time that we went through. There was so much that was brought to the surface and really looked at for the first time. A lot of us looked at ourselves differently after that.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right. We all looked inward, even as leaders, and company owners, and business owners, and managers of companies. We all said, Okay, what’s going on in our backyard?

Jennifer Brown:
That’s right. And what can I shift? What can I take accountability for, perhaps?

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.

Jennifer Brown:
What can I do more? What did I think was enough before this moment?

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure.

Jennifer Brown:
That’s the most beautiful question. So I do think, have we settled in? I think we’re through that intensity. I think the fear is, if it’s not on fire, how are we going to continue to feel the urgency of an urgent situation? How does it then compete with all these other dynamics in our world that are going on? It’s battling for priority. So I think that the pain is still there, though. Look what’s happening now with employers. People are saying, I don’t want to come back to work. And employers are saying, You must come back to work. And I’m saying, I don’t want to come back to work.
What the research has shown us is that for many of us who were not in the majority group in the workplace, we found that workplace toxic. We literally want to avoid it at all costs, and we’ve seen another way, and we feel like we can be just as or more productive in this other way, but we don’t want to fit into these boxes anymore that felt like they were never a good fit to begin with. I think that’s the most important piece. We’ve got to remember that. Let diversity thrive, of all kinds. My question and our question should be, where do you feel you need to be? When do you feel you need to work, and how, in order for all of who you are to truly be aligned and enable your best performance, your best contribution? If we could start from there and architect the future of work from there, I think that would behoove us.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So if the leaders out there want to hit a reset and have finally realized that differences, that change has to be put into action here, but yet you do have some of your workforce not coming in because they feel it’s a toxic place to work because of some of the prejudices that they find out there. How do you that when you say, Okay, we’ve got to change this, but we need the employees to be coming back in so that we can show them the change?

Jennifer Brown:
Oh, very good question. Look at how much we’ve improved. Look at how we’ve taken a hard look at ourselves, and how we’ve done business in the past. You’re right, the proof of a new concept is going to be in the eye of the beholder. It’s not necessarily, oh, we did this, and we did that, and we offer this, and whatever. It’s going to be a high bar because we’ve been shown-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
No, I agree. I agree.

Jennifer Brown:
A very different world. But you’re right to ask the question which is, according to whom? Who gets to decide? Why would I want to be in this workplace? How will I feel different? How will I feel more comfortable, more psychologically safe, more respected? How will I experience less bias based on how I look, how I express myself, or my ethnicity, or how I dress? I think that’s the fundamental question. And companies have to prove that they’ve actually done the work and the proof has to be validated. But you’re right, if we can’t get people back in, how can we show the change? Then also the follow-up question is, how can we get more feedback about what good looks like-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.

Jennifer Brown:
If folks aren’t there to interact in the new system? I don’t have a great answer. I think though, that it’s the right question.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. In our last moments here together, what advice would you give to business leaders to actively get involved in change?

Jennifer Brown:
I would say don’t obsess about being perfect. When we started this conversation, you said, “How do I even begin?”

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah.

Jennifer Brown:
We are not going to know the language. We are not going to know the right thing to say, or how to begin it. I think the point-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I think the biggest concern about that is you don’t want to make it worse. You know what I mean?

Jennifer Brown:
Yes.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
You don’t want to step on a bomb and go, oh, I said the wrong thing-

Jennifer Brown:
I should’ve seen that.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And I’m trying to effect a change and open up a dialogue, and yet I stepped on this. I might have done it myself once or twice, where it’s just, I want to be a positive person and I want to live in this new era that we’re in where it is all about inclusion, and diversity, and promoting. It’s a difficult thing I know, for leaders. That’s why I asked that question because you don’t want to start off on something and then trip right over it. Then people look at you. I can’t believe you just said that. And you’re like, What have I… What I… I just wanted to… Anyway.

Jennifer Brown:
Oh, I was trying.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah.

Jennifer Brown:
So I would say, obviously read this book. Really?

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yes.

Jennifer Brown:
I mean, I really wrote-

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Read the book.

Jennifer Brown:
I wrote it for that reader. The reader who’s stuck, the reader who doesn’t want to make a mistake, the reader that doesn’t want to cause harm. So to have grace with yourself about your journey, see where you are because you are in an evolution. And it’s a big shift. It’s big. It’s challenging for all of us. I think that. Then I think surround yourself, do your homework, learn about other identities so that you’re prepared, so that you can see around the corner, you can anticipate, you can spot bias, you know enough that you can show up as well as possible. And then I would say surround yourself with folks of different lived experiences and identities and build trusted relationships with people. Those are where you start.
You can have these safe space for you to say, I want to do this, I want to start this. I want to have this conversation. I want to talk about my own story. How would I lead around this? And what would resonate and what wouldn’t resonate. And I think if you can invest in those relationships and come to them with generosity, I think a lot about my privilege, privileges, plural. And I’m LGBTQ, so there’s areas I don’t have the privilege, but there’s a lot of other areas that I do. And I like to also talk about those. I like to talk about what am I doing with what I have access to, what I can advocate for, how I can use my voice? And I think if you come from that direction, it’s not about, Oh, I made a mistake. It’s more about here’s how I’m earning this every day. Here’s how I’m bettering the system, by asking hard questions or challenging a peer or saying, Why do we have a bias for this?
I think that goes a long way in terms of how we tell our story and talk about our evolution. Hey, I’m not going to be perfect. Here’s what I know. Here’s what I’m uncomfortable with. Here’s what I am doing. Here’s what’s within my control to do, and here’s how I’m exercising that. If we could come back to that as our core, people will begin to trust us. They will begin to say they’re doing their work. I see that. And I also appreciate how they help behind the scenes. They’re quietly using what they have and can do to shift things for the better. That’s the leader I’d like to have in my world. I’d like to work for that person. I’d like that person working for me alongside me. So those are just some ideas.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I agree. I agree. Jennifer Brown, award-winning diversity and inclusion, expert, entrepreneur, consultant, and author. I’m sure a bestselling author once you get this book. But this is the book, we’ll show it on the screen. It says in my notes here that the book releases October 4th, right?

Jennifer Brown:
That’s right. We’re so excited.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Awesome.

Jennifer Brown:
Yes.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
So you guys out there listening, you can get your first copy right here. So we’ll show all the information, we’ll link it to the areas that you can get the book. But Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. We very much appreciate it. Love to have you back to do a follow up because there is so much more to unpack on this very important topic.

Jennifer Brown:
I would love that. Anytime.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Great. Thanks so much.

Jennifer Brown:
Thank you.

The Atlanta Small Business Network, from start-up to success, we are your go-to resource for small business news, expert advice, information, and event coverage.