The Power of Acceptance: Unlocking Inclusive Workplaces with Cynthia Fortlage

Welcome to this special episode of The Real Life Buyer podcast. Today, we delve into the powerful theme of "Acceptance without Understanding."

ABOUT THE GUEST

Cynthia Fortlage, is a transgender woman with over three decades of corporate experience, that brings a unique perspective on fostering a sense of belonging for all genders in the workplace. In this thought-provoking conversation, we explore how acceptance, without the need for complete understanding, can reshape our professional world.

Cynthia's personal journey and her commitment to creating safe spaces are awe-inspiring. Join us as we uncover the transformative impact of acceptance, share real-world examples, and discuss practical strategies for building inclusive cultures. If you're a business leader, procurement professional, or simply someone passionate about inclusivity, this episode is an absolute must-listen. Get ready to re-imagine acceptance in the corporate world like never before.

Discover more about Cynthia here:

Website:        https://www.cynthiafortlage.com/
Facebook:     https://www.facebook.com/acceptancewithoutunderstanding/
Instagram:    https://www.instagram.com/cafservices/
TikTok:           https://www.tiktok.com/@cafservices
LinkedIn:       https://www.linkedin.com/in/cfortlage/

ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Dave Barr and am the Founder and Owner of RLB Purchasing Consultancy Limited.

I have been working in Procurement for over 25 years and have had the joy of working in a number of global manufacturing and service industries throughout this time.

I am passionate about self development, business improvement, saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues, and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

CONTACT DETAILS

@The Real Life Buyer
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Website: https://linktr.ee/thereallifebuyer

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https://rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk/
Email: contact@rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk

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Transcript

Intro  00:00

Welcome to The Real Life Buyer podcast. In this podcast, you will hear interviews with business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors and technical specialists in their field. These professionals will hasten your development accelerate your career and broaden your business know how now introducing your host Dave Barr interviewing with a purchasing twist.

Dave Barr  00:21

Hello and welcome to The Real Life Buyer. Today I delve into a powerful theme of acceptance without understanding. My guest today is Cynthia Fortlage, a transgender woman with over three decades of corporate experience, Cynthia brings a unique perspective on fostering a sense of belonging for all genders in the workplace. In this thought provoking conversation, I seek to explore how acceptance though the need for a complete understanding, can and should reshape professional relationships. So without further ado, I welcome Cynthia onto the podcast. Hi, Cynthia. 

Cynthia Fortlage  00:57

Hi, Dave, how are you? 

Dave Barr  00:58

Very well, thank you so much, just before Christmas for us. But yes, by the time this goes live, it will be well past that date. But there we go. Now, we met a little while ago now on a virtual networking event. And I've been inspired by your strength and commitment in the face of some may say, your personal situation. Would you help my audience take a peek into your journey from being a VP of Information Technology as a man who changed genders and transformed into a celebrated speaker and pioneer of diversity and inclusion?

Cynthia Fortlage  01:40

Wow, Pioneer that's a strong word  but thank you. Yeah, so for the audience, what Dave's referring to was that, like many people, I was married, we had two kids, a son and a daughter, the kids are now sons 30, daughters, 26, both live in Canada, hence this accent, but I'm actually Belfast by birth. So I'm actually British by birth. And so coming back to London and 2020, via South America was just, again, a very squiggly life that brought me back to the UK, where I now call home, but really through the first 50 years of my life, you're right, I enjoyed that perception of being male, while as I talked about in the work that I do with corporate clients, and so forth. These days, I talked about the idea that, you know, the identity that I've always had, I was born with it, you know, I like to say Lady Gaga was right, I was born this way. And it was really that iteration that I forced to put it away to comply with everyone else's desire or what they wanted from me, so that I could be that person without actually ever knowing how to be that person. And then at the age of 53, things collided very simply, my youngest was completing the high school regime. And for those that have children in school, you know, that you become their parent. So you're known as your child's parent, and you almost lost the part of your identity. And, and I was getting that part back. And it was like, Okay, well, who, like, who am I, I also happened to be 50 years old, which many will probably see as a very reflective point of our life. And I was reflecting on who am I. And the final piece was, I was on a bit of a health mission. At that point, I went through a couple of failed attempts to kickstart that and it was on the third attempt, where I had finally started to reconcile what I'd hidden since I was young. And the earliest recollection that I have is four years old, being told to kind of men up be the boy you're supposed to be. And I can only take from that, that I must have been showing and expressing very feminine ways of behaving, that was seen as not appropriate. And of course, when I say that, you know, at four years old, we're talking late 60s, early 70s, so a very different time than it is today. And so I had learned to package it up. And that was actually through that lifecycle. What I had gotten really good at was trying to figure out what was considered a good male behavior, see someone that had that behavior and copy it, not actually having an innate sense of what that behavior was. And so that's what I did all the way through until, through my career, I ended up achieving, as you said, the title of vice president of it information technology, slash CIO, chief information officer. And so I had an executive level role. I was in that I had been 28 years on the job and, you know, related to your core theme, it was actually in the supply chain industry. So I spent, you know, 30 years in that space, but from a tech Knology perspective, not necessarily an operational perspective, although at times the software drives it. So you do have to get into the trees. But the reality was that, as those three life events kind of collided, I started to have the mindspace to kind of, you know, figure out who I was. And in that came up this really kind of old buried history that I could no longer hide, and I had to deal with I went, and I was blessed to have a wonderful therapist counselor that they would probably say, here in the UK, that I worked with. And in doing so, that person really helped me kind of figure out. And when I say that, it took six weeks to go from zero, to moving out of the marital home and actually beginning to what we call socially live my life. Very quickly, through the next three years, I was working executive still. And I was transitioning on the job into a female executive, which brings up a whole bunch of interesting stories of what is it like to be a woman in the corporate space compared that I actually had a comparison to what it was like to be a male in that space. Obviously, there's lots of personal life, things that were going on, disowned by family lost my marriage. And really, for the first year, my children only communicated about three hours with me, we've children and I have rebuilt the relationships. But with my ex, even though we had 32 years of marriage, 28 of them broke fairly good. We do have, we have no communication, and I still have really no communication with my birth family. So that's kind of a short version of that. Along the way, I pivoted my career from the technology side into the diversity field, I moved from living in Canada or growing up in Canada, because it was actually the troubles in the early 70s that chased my family away. That's why I grew up in Canada. And then as I said, it was through a very squiggly journey coming after living, actually the first part of lockdown, COVID lockdown that we all went through, I actually spent it living in South America. And once we were able to leave, I ended up coming to the UK to deal with all of the various government paperwork associated with my identity. And I thought it would be here for six months. But living in London, it's the big city. I'm a small town, Canadian prairie girl, and I fell in love with the big city. And so that's why I pivoted and brought my career and basically started building. So when we met, I was continually working on networking, and really extending the relationships and bringing the insights that I have from three decades of corporate experience, as well as the last eight years in the diversity space. And really trying to help folks understand what that looks like for women, for men, for LGBTQ, and of course, trans folks within a workspace. And that's what I do today.

Dave Barr  07:52

It's fascinating, that you mentioned as a young boy, yeah, that you were copying from other people, the perception of what was right fit fit for your gender. Now, I'm interested to know, at that time, who would you say would have been a good role model for you? Who was your role model? And who would that be now?

Cynthia Fortlage  08:14

Great question. So the reality was, there was no one person, clearly at that point, my father was a big part of my life, and but I wouldn't say necessarily, that his behaviors are the ones because it's if I'm in, you know, primary school, secondary school, he's not there, and he's obviously not young. So I had to look at other boys to figure out how they were behaving, and try and copy it and never fit, it never really worked. I guess you could say that very much. I had a persona that was very kind of beta male, if we think kind of in an alpha male culture, a very beta male. And so I got really good at copying it. Obviously, I enjoyed, quote, all the success that comes from male privilege in that life. But the reality was, I had no idea what I was doing, I was just copying. And so when I get into, for instance, business, I would look at, you know, people who were my mentors, I would look at bosses and so forth them. And it was like picking and choosing from everybody in order to do it. And the same very much happens today. I mean, my daughter is clearly, as one of the closest females in my life, she very much has a huge influence. But, you know, we don't see each other every day she lives in Canada, but it's really just the interaction. But what has changed was in the male behavior, I would see the male behavior and copy the male behavior. And today, what happens if there was something that I'm not sure like, I see female behavior is I take it away and I process it to how do i attentively show that or is it even authentically something that belongs to me? And so I've learned this skill of rather than copying, actually analyzing and processing and making it my own. And it could also mean, that doesn't fit. To give you an I was a very initially, almost eight years ago, very pink, frilly, girly girl. And I would say I'm very much kind of in the middle, you know, you meet me at a business event, I'm going to be very professionally dressed and so forth. But, you know, not every aspect has to be perfect, girly girl for me anymore. I found myself I found my style, I found what makes me authentically me. And I adhere to that, because I now understand what that actually means. Does that make sense?

Dave Barr  10:36

Yeah, I believe so. I believe so. Yes. Yeah. In your work, you refer to this statement I made in the introduction, acceptance without understanding. Now, I take it that's your path towards a more inclusive society. Now, for people who don't really understand the context of that statement, can you explain what the essence of that phrase means? And share perhaps examples of how your teachings have positively impacted perhaps a male dominated work culture and the results that you've seen as as as an outcome of that work?

Cynthia Fortlage  11:12

Absolutely. So let me take your audience back to the founding of the idea when it came to me, it unfortunately, it came to me when my marriage was dissolving. And all I can say is that after the number of years that we had, there was no doubt there was love between my partner, I have no doubt. And I would say we still care for each other. We just don't love each other anymore. And certainly through our kids, we have this common co parenting responsibility, even though they're adults, they're still our children. And the idea was that in that moment, where, when we were working through couples therapy, we had defined the values of what makes a strong relationship for us. And we defined it as 10 bricks. If you think of a wall, and you start and you put your foundational bricks, the children were one of them, the children we absolutely agreed on, there was no debate about that brick, it was solid, every other brick that we had decided upon, that we worked through one at a time through therapy, the answer, unfortunately, came that it was a no, when we looked at compromise, when we tried to find a middle ground to all of this, the answers very simply, were no, it was I had to adhere to my spouse's way or no way. And it really occurred to me that at that point, we probably were never going to do it. And the reality for your audience was my ex, she's not a lesbian. So to be in a relationship with me as I am today, it would mean she's a lesbian. And that's not her. So as difficult as it was, that's when we began the process of divorce, when I realized that wasn't there. So now I was naive enough at that point to think this idea of acceptance was just applied to me in that moment. And then I started to realize that it actually was much bigger than that. And that, you know, it applied to the entire LGBTQ plus community. And depending on what stat we're talking anywhere between 16 to 20% of the population. And then based upon my own identity, I realized, Oh, well, it applies to all women, because women are the largest group of marginalized people in the planet, and obviously, the workforce today. And those are my own lived experiences. And I realized that hang on, this actually applies to everyone who has is marginalized within society, which is lots of people, quite simply. And the idea simply says that this society today says, and we're trained through, you know, preschool, you know, we're asking, Hey, you know, why is this? Why is that you go into school? And it's a why, because we're learning? And why is the question we asked to gain understanding, and therefore, as a society, and certainly as a technologist at the time, you know, we had a troubleshooting technique called The Seven wide technique, which was all about getting to root cause analysis in solving the problem. And that was all about, again, understanding, which means as a society, we are completely tuned to try and understand in order to accept something, and if we can't understand it, we traditionally have not accepted it. And I realized that as human beings, that's very difficult because as human beings, we are all wholly unique, not just an identity or sexuality, but in all aspects of our complete identity. You know, the idea of my gender or my sexuality, that's just a small part of me, I like to say, it's like judging a book by its cover and missing all of the great content on the pages and chapters in between. And our identity is very much like that. So I just say, can you look at me as a human being first, and that's really powerful. Because when somebody can see you as another human being I'm Not asking them to agree with me, I am not asking them to tolerate tolerate such a negative word. And nobody wants to be tolerated, we want to be accepted. And the idea is that you don't know the path that I've took just like I don't know the path you've taken. So I won't judge your path. But I'm asking you to not judge mine either. And can we just accept that we are human beings, coexisting in this time and space. And in doing so, again, we don't have to be mates, we don't have to hang out. But we may work in the same company, we may need to just get the job done. And in doing so, when we can accept the human being, which is almost asking to accept without judgment, to start figuring out how to remove judgment, that we actually create the opportunity to have a safe space in in that safe space, we can have a dialogue and through dialogue, we can actually get to know each other. And that's the problem is right, we get so stuck on our points of view that we never get to the middle to talk about compromise. And, and that middle ground. And that's the problem today is that everybody is stuck on their point of view. And nobody's saying let's talk about it. And certainly in 30 years of corporate, I have never seen a decision made at an extreme. It's always made in the middle. And so I'm asking people, can we come to the middle? And not everybody might be able to? Some of your audience might go, I don't care what that person is saying. But like, no, no, no. And they have every right to it. But they don't have a right to tell me. No, because this is my life. And so they can say no, for them, that's perfectly valid. But that no can apply to me too. And to me, that's where, quote, the red line in the sand is in understanding that you accept, not agree and accepting is the human being element of it. So that we can figure out how to coexist. And really, all we want to all do is just get through the day, be able to do the work that is meaningful to us, hopefully, and you know, go home, in the holiday season, enjoy time with family and friends, and just get on with life. But that seems to be difficult for some people. So the idea of acceptance is begin with acceptance without understanding. But through that safe space that I talked about, that we created, which requires work that in that we can grow to acceptance with understanding because we are human beings, and we are curious, but in order to be curious, safely, especially for the person who may be marginalized within that conversation, you need to create a safe space first. And that's what acceptance does. So acceptance without understanding but grow to acceptance with understanding, again, not tolerating not agreeing, but simply allowing us to coexist and figure out a way forward.

Dave Barr  17:52

Yeah, so a lot of things to take in there. I'm gonna reflect I'm assuming, as that seems to be the case that your colleagues in the C suite, as you were in, yeah, we're predominantly male. 

Cynthia Fortlage  18:04

Correct. 

Dave Barr  18:05

Okay. This, for them may have been a difficult thing to get their heads around. Yeah. I'm fascinated to understand in that male dopant dominated environment, that culture, yeah. What kind of reactions did you experience? And how did you manage to change the situation into one that was more positive than negative? 

Cynthia Fortlage  18:29

Yeah, great question. The The reality is that, in my own personal journey, other than a couple of a handful of individuals within the organization that were willing to just say they were very much in the no side. And again, I respect that you have every right to be on the no side. But they were imposing their no upon me. And to give your audience some framing of it. The language that was used was like, oh, Cynthia, you've changed your name, you've changed your looks, when are you changing your job? Or you weren't sure about your gender? How can you be sure about any other decision you make? So very much undermining the human being? And, you know, really, putting out something that was not reflective of the 28 years of incredible career that I had within that organization? It was just with those particular individuals, everyone else actually was good, but generally with men, I think there's two aspects that kick in. One is the disbelief that somebody well, most men will tell me there's no such thing as male privilege. And I can absolutely tell you there is there is a gender base privilege that men enjoy more than women. It's not the patriarchy, the patriarchy is the system and men are a victim of the patriarchy as much as women are a whole other conversation, but I just wanted to put it out there in that definition, though. The reality is that men go okay, if there is male privilege and you We're here, you gave that up and went over here, like, how could you do that. And then because I felt I required medical and surgical intervention, so if you have had surgeries top to bottom, and in doing so many men can't stand the fact that aspects considered very male physically, I did not see as a part of my identity. And I needed to have those changed. And they have been, and it's given me a greater sense of self that I would ask your audience to think back to the the first time they looked in a mirror and saw a reflection of themselves, their body. And when that's me, most people that I've talked to so far, over the last seven, eight years, will say that's in their teenage years. And the reality for me was it was at 52 years old, that when I looked and I said, Yes, that's me. And it's really been, that was 2018. So 2018, today, where I see myself when I look in the mirror, and you know, like every other human being, I want to change this so that it has nothing to do with my identity, it just, you know, would look nice, maybe with a bit of a tummy tuck, or, you know, I want to get this snipped, or that tucked or whatever. And that's really where we're at. But when you remove those elements that are considered very masculine, and you move fully into the space as I have, and again, not everyone who identifies within the trans identity fields, they require that kind of intervention, I did. And in doing so, it puts me on the outside that a lot of men just kind of go, Hmm, I don't know, like, they're not sure. And so it's really helping them understand that concept of you wake up and you're not in the skin that you feel in, you know, it takes a bit of work for, to help another human being trying to imagine what it's like to be in a body that didn't actually feel like yours. And I do correct that because this is my body, this has always been my body. I like to refer to it as I had some birth defects that surgery could take care of. And that made me whole, and that was wonderful. So it's that journey is what I find that most men kind of repel. So when we talk about what men don't realize is, what do women actually experience on the other side, right. And I talked about it that it was one day I was treated like this in a given situation. And the next day, it was here, you know, the pay gap is the perfect example. My pay was never reduced. But the reality was that it was seemed very odd that as a female head of technology that I was kind of in the pay band. And what I first saw was my bonus structure accelerate on the decline to almost flat before, after three years before I ended up agreeing to leave the organization under a nondisclosure agreement with it, but it was really helping men see what women are experiencing. And the easiest example is safety. So if I was to explain to your audience that when a woman walks out the front door much as any marginalized person, the idea of having to be hyper vigilant about safety kicks in immediately. I certainly did not experience that in my male identity. And then learning literally within five days of living this myself walking down the street, and that was in North America. And the streets are not cobbled like they are in London. So I would wear my my heels and everything else. And I had to learn to for safety reasons. Look at the street ahead of me to see who might be coming towards me that could be a threat assessing who might be following behind me, that might be a threat, who's on the other side of the street that might be trying to cross over towards me that might be a threat where the exits to the street? Do I kick off my shoes? Do I pick them up and use them as a weapon? Do I leave them behind short of the shoes part of it as a male never had that conversation never crossed my mind. It never weighed on my day to day living. But as a woman, it exists every single day, the moment we walk out our front door.

Dave Barr  24:18

That is extremely impactful. And it creates a a picture that you honest I hadn't anticipated. Yeah, I can certainly understand ladies feel a lot more nervous when they move out side on their on their own particularly at night. Yeah, yep. But I've never thought about it in to that depth and context. So yeah. Certainly takes getting my head round. So thanks for for sharing that. Yeah, but I could just reflect a little bit in reverse. You had a very difficult situation, but you stuck out three more years. I believe you said Roll. Yeah. Did you manage? She says I don't know. if that's the right word, but did you manage to create a situation where a number of your colleagues, maybe even the majority, grew to accept and understand how things were.

Cynthia Fortlage  25:14

Understand would be a stretch. I honestly think as human beings, we're so complex that very few people ever get to even close to understanding they can appreciate. I get the word brave, courageous, thrown at me a lot. And I fully accept that I understand why people see that as brave and courageous. But definitely a lot of people got the acceptance part. And we were able to just coexist and get the work done. And some became better workmates than others, my team were all better. But one of the perspectives that you probably wouldn't anticipate I didn't, was the fact that I actually had to go back to uni, to challenge reading, redeveloping my skill set as a leader and as a manager, as a woman. And so I went and took a women in leadership program, in order to retune my skill sets, which I'd developed over 28 years, that were not working as a woman. So a woman cannot take the way a man manages, and just translate doesn't work. And I had to learn how to apply them all very differently as a woman, and that became very effective. And really, the elements break down into kind of two components in that the relationship between women and somebody is much more, has an emotional layer to it, that doesn't exist in men's relationships. And the second is that it's much more collaborative by default, not that every woman is collaborative. But the simple fact was that it was to bring everybody along. And don't assume that it was a nurturing journey. It wasn't it was a collaborative journey of bringing everybody along, rather than, by default, being okay with more of a command, you know, dictate kind of mode, especially in an emergency situation, where as a woman in an emergency situation, it was about collaborating, and bringing everybody along, much more collegially, in order to be equally successful getting it done. The second component that came in was, and many people are surprised by this was when I knew that I was preparing to transition. And I normally had a portfolio of many, many projects that we were managing within the organization, across my team members. And I ended up getting to the point where everything was, was in good stead and was being managed. And I would say, reduce kind of my effort to about 60%. So I took my foot off the pedal a bit and was, you know, just gently cruising down. Definitely not pausing. But nobody noticed. Nobody said a thing, because I was still delivering still being effective the whole bit, because I was getting saving my energy for what I knew was coming up now, post transition in the workforce. I'm in the role I'm doing that. I am Cynthia, I ended up ultimately having to scale up to 150% of effort just to be perceived as doing the same effort that I was doing before at 60%. So more than doubling the effort to be perceived as a woman outputting, the same deliverable? Nothing else changes except their perception.

Dave Barr  28:33

Okay, yeah. So, yeah, you do hear about a lot these things where women do need to perhaps even be more competitive than guys do. So I think that that statement reflects that.

Cynthia Fortlage  28:47

Absolutely. And the competitiveness that women face is due to scarcity, right? If we look across all industries today, women account for 23% of senior leadership and board level roles across all industries. Some industries are higher, some are even lower. And that says there's a scarcity of roles that women can achieve into senior and board level, it's not 50%. And even if we were matching the EU targets which were originally set at 30%. Now they've been rejigged to 40%. And that's because organizations would achieve the goal and plateau. In other words, they wouldn't advance yet we're talking over 50% of the workforce here. So the target still doesn't say 50%. And many is still struggling to train even get to the 40% target. So in reality, that scarcity that women are faced means they're having to fight each other, and so forth, a lot harder in order to secure those roles where men are, you know, within a structure fighting to get the roles in there, but they actually have the ability to actually have more roles available to them. More seats are given to them. More investment. If you starting up a business and looking for venture capital is given to them. And we just go on and on with all of these perspectives. So there's a scarcity concept that women face, which is why we see this idea that women are actually competing with each other for scarce resources, and that we see it in sport, women aren't paid the same. I mean, hopefully, we're gonna get to the point where women's football has proven that they can draw the audience's that they can create an exciting game. And we're starting to see that they're starting to be renumerated, similar to the men, at least at a national level, not within individual teams, necessarily. But again, it's that scarcity of resource which makes that position on that football team, such a scarcity, that other women will fight for that role versus what No, let's, let's get the money in the game, let's make sure that we have the right models, so that women don't have to fight that difficult nature. And again, that's that's just another example, within society, of what creates this reason why women behaving in that manner, or have to behave in that manner, we can definitely learn to behave differently, which is certainly something that I do with the networks of women that I partner, because we're all about uplifting each other as one get success, helping uplift others, so we all enjoy success together.

Dave Barr  31:20

Now, we reflected on your journey, when you're part of an organization, or perhaps just an internal team, shall we say? Now, there are obviously many businesses that traverse the globe, yet to have a footprint that obviously can cover not just Europe, but the Far East, the Middle East, Americas Africa, etc. Yes. And in businesses where they have such a huge divergence of cultures and beliefs, if you were giving given a role of helping that business as a whole to transform their organization, their culture into one of acceptance, what process would you follow to help them achieve those those kind of targets? Particularly when it's so widespread, the beliefs are so far apart from country to country?

Cynthia Fortlage  32:10

They are they are absolutely right, Dave. The reality is that mean whether we looked at women, whether we looked at LGBT, whether we looked at trans, I mean, you're right, that the customs within, you know, different nations, within regions are very different, as well as kind of some of the social laws, you name it. They're all very different. And the reality is that, in the process of acceptance of an organization said they really wanted to buy into this, the first question is, actually, are you prepared for acceptance, and I make it akin to the day that I had to admit in in with a therapist that, you know, I'm a woman in my own body, it's just, it doesn't match. But this is my own body. And it's not the identity that people perceive me, as, was that moment where I had to be prepared to start asking all the hard questions for the journey. We're not taking the journey, we're just saying, Are we ready for the journey? That's the first step. And we know that, at least when we talk about for women, when we talk about LGBTQ when we talk about trend, the United Nations has established standards, to the end, think of this, like a baseline. And so the idea is, when we begin, the first place we have to do is we have to learn to accept ourselves. So within an organization, you know, they have to reflect on as an organization, who are they? So this is going to kind of go back to Simon Sinek. Why Why does the organization exist? What's its purpose within society? Within culture? Yeah, they want to make money for shareholders. But why are they here? There? There wasn't why that they were created the salt. And in doing so, the question is, is the culture of the organization in alignment, and I worked with some brilliant folks through my history. And they talked about branding from the outside. In other words, the organization is not who you say you are, it's who other say you are. So it's the exercise of looking externally and getting input. And it's not just suppliers and customers, it's the community. It's it's the industry that you're in, and getting a wide feedback, including your staff, and then putting it all together to realize are you who you think you are. And if not, for most organizations, there's a disconnect between their culture and their why. And so you have to bring that in alignment. And when we start looking at it, in a very macro perspective, that's when we talk about like ESG reporting within organizations, and it kind of moves out, because it moves up to a much more corporate level of saying, No, we're going to look at, you know, the environmental, social and governance aspects of this corporation. And we're going to kind of bring it all in alignment because when the first two elements of the why and the culture are in alignment, now the strategy can affect and I'll give you a simple example. If the strategy That was set without putting in alignment this and said, We want to go global. And you had an organization that culture says, Well, we're happy working in the UK, and we don't really want to grow outside it, you are going to find a cultural backlash against that strategy. And therefore, you may have some success, but it's not going to be as successful as it could. And so the importance of putting these pieces in alignment come in, when we talk at a global nature, the United Nation guidelines can be used as a baseline across all the nations and all the differences that older societies and laws of achieving it, is it the same in every country, no, if an organization in the UK wants to say that they are LGBTQ plus friendly, well, they can't say that in North Africa, because it's illegal there. So but they can meet the baseline for how people are treated and how the culture exists to create a safe space for folks in those regions. And therefore, around the world, an organization is going to be kind of all over the map, in terms of where they're at. But what they've done is reached a commonality. And very few organizations are thinking and seeing that at that kind of global scope. Most are not global, first of all. And secondly, it's really looking at where they fit, ie some companies really focus on being in western based kind of countries, where there's similar values, similar cultures, and they kind of work but those that are truly global, to face this idea of actually having to establish a baseline. But even organizations that aren't, can use that same baseline. And guess what, if you are in a place where you can advance it, that then you can reset the value expectation of the organization to maybe a little higher, and not just the low baseline that set the United Nation level, you can actually expect a little bit more. And through that, they can actually start creating cultures that are in alignment with creating strategies that the organization can be considered successful. And this is where when we talk about diversity, we've seen from the Big Four consulting firms, we've seen it for years now. They've done numerous studies, and they talk about diverse organizations on the bottom line have a 30%, performance improvement 30%, bottom line performance improvement these days, I think it's something worth talking about. And going after, as a way to be where we are economically and societally. And in doing so that journey is what we need to look at. And there are models that can be used, how those different levels that I talked about that organizations, there's models that can be looked at from, you know, somebody who's basically, you know, doing like in a country where do no harm, you know, basically aligning very closely to the cultural and societal values where they're at, because they really don't have much of a choice. But they're still adhering to the baseline they set as a corporation, to those that may embody the embassy model, meaning, okay, society, it might not be safe to be LGBTQ. But at the end of the day, inside the corporation, we can make it a safe space to be LGBTQ plus to the final level would be organizations that actually want to help influence the society and policy and so forth. And then they become an advocacy model. That's where they actually step out and say, No, we're going to say publicly that this is what we stand for, this is what we're about. And they're going to try and help influence a change in regulations and so forth in order to create what they see as a much more inclusive society than what they might be existing in that particular country. And so there are these different pieces between the UN models between these kind of three different types of organizational models of how they operate, that you can look at as you kind of journey through the idea of acceptance, but the first level of acceptance is being ready. The second is accepting yourself. So an organization that would be being sure of who they are. And so when they get to these other things, they know, this is this is us, this is a value fixed value of inclusion, and we have trans peoples, I don't care if you don't like them, we believe they belong. And, you know, we, we want to openly accept them into this organization. And then we have to figure out operationally how that happens, again, within laws and regions and everything else, versus you know, having a model that says no, we're not inclusive. It's, it's helpful to know who you are going into this because the next stage in the journey of acceptance is you start asking others to accept your stance, and we've seen how that's happened for some companies over the last six months, couple of years. Some it's worked extremely well, some it hasn't worked as well. And that's because they weren't really prepared. They weren't prepared for the backlash, they weren't, they didn't have the game plan ready to go. And that obviously becomes further steps, the more that they're doing outreach, and that they're trying to get to, really the impact that they want to make. And obviously, you know, marketing and sales to accomplish probably the goals that they set at a strategic level. So all of those pieces come in, the last caveat I'd put on it is, in my experience in corporations like oh, well, we're going to do this work. Okay, we're going to do it for this quarter, or this month, or this year, the reality is creating an intentional culture, last the lifetime of the organization, it should be experienced the first time somebody encounters your organization through to when they exit the corporation. And most people do not see that work as a continuous lifecycle of constantly validating and ensuring that the organization is true to who they are.

Dave Barr  40:58

Some really interesting points you made there, certainly about the standards that are out there. Now try it. So I can understand how do you measure success in this respect, is something it's very difficult to put into a succinct way of creating some data and having a score. So how do you measure how well a company is doing, how they're progressing? What's the scale? What's the KPI that you can look at?

41:28

Well, there's more than one KPI. There's actually many KPI's that you can look at and implement to this, many people have written about it. Certainly leading companies that have won awards in this space. Typically, they're talking about, you know, dashboards that may share reports, which gives you a sense of KPIs, the tracking, obviously, there's a bunch of demographic data related tracking, if there are people there in the financial sector, the FCA, FCA, I believe it is, they have just come up with brand new regulations, which extends that data collection to both a regulatory requirement and even much further than most people are aware of. And so they're kind of going, we collect this data because we don't even collect it today. And it's through that those measurements that we actually understand much like how do we know what the pay gap is? Well, people had to start capturing the data and reporting. And therefore we get a KPI as to what the pay gap looks like, in many different vectors. But obviously, when we talk about that we typically talked about with women what the pay gap is. So within the diversity sphere, we have all of this, you know, what's the percentage of your employees? What's the employees? You know, what is the demographic look like? What's the demographic by job title role? Meaning, you will see that, for instance, given the model that we know of, say, women's representation, senior leadership, you should be able to look at the data and see that women are slowly getting removed out of the process. And again, does that mean you've got bad data? No, that means maybe you got a bad process, and you got to go back and look at well, why aren't women going past them that may give you a clue organizationally? Well, if they're not going past this level, then what's happening at that level, and you need to, you know, now do the micro analysis to actually figure out what's happening in your organization, it wouldn't surprise me that it might be language based, it could be culturally based, you know, becomes without the negative, but the boys club and, you know, women are having a hard time break into that. But the people that are used to it are used to going and looking for candidates that come from the same schools that look like all the other executives, and so on and so forth. And I always say that, you know, if that's the problem that you have, that somebody goes, well, I want to hire, you know, more black employees, we don't have enough representation from the black community go great. I mean, you've got a lot of things you got to do. But I use a fishing analogy, I go, Well, if you're in a pool, and you go, I want to catch bass, and the pond that you're in is only stocked with trout, you need to find another pond. And if you don't know where it is, the first problem you have is you gotta go find out where you can find candidates. And most people at least on the recruiting side, they're not doing that. And then when you have the man and it's like, okay, well, how do we advance? Because, you know, we know about mentorship programs that we know about coaching programs, what about sponsorship programs? Again, there's all of these different kinds of programs that can be implemented in order to ensure that, for instance, we are, you know, bringing in the right candidates, we are bringing in women, we are bringing in, you know, candidates or ethnic minority candidates, and we're creating a path to success for them, because we know that the current path is going to filter them out. And so that means you actually organizationally have to start breaking that down and peeling it away. And again, the culture is really a key part of how you drive that because that speaks to what are the values that you're looking for, that justifies, you know, making an organizational change in order to be a better Corporation?

Dave Barr  44:53

We've talked about predominantly big business. Yeah, quite a few of the people I speak to are small to medium Sighs enterprise owners, and they may be unsure about how to approach their employees and educate them in in aspects of gender diversity and inclusion. Right. So for those business owners are perhaps limited resources and knowledge and support, what kind of practical steps and advice could you give to them to help them in this journey?

Cynthia Fortlage  45:25

Wonderful question. So I would say that, you know, one of the foundational elements that we talked about, again, for all of the identity, all marginalized identities is, do you have a fundamental belief and inclusion? And do you want to make your organizational culture a culture of inclusion in order to meet these goals? And if the answer is no, that is equally valid? Now, you know that, so you're not going to try and create something because it looks good knowing you have absolutely no belief in it. And so if you do, then that's where the work begins. That's where you need to understand where are you at? I think it's Peter Drucker had said that every organization has a culture, the question is, is that the one you want, and so that leader needs to figure out is this the culture so if not, the first thing you have to do is go on a journey, to begin the intentional exercise of creating that organizational culture that you're going to live for the rest of the lifespan of that company. And that means you're going to need to get dedicate time and resource, it's not something you do off the side of the desk. And remember the culture, or the behaviors, sorry, the beliefs, the behaviors, and the language that's used within the corporation. So that's where the first part of the education from all of the diverse communities may begin to help people learn, you're not going to go create policy, much as I was part of a team creating culture. Even though when I was at the table, there was three women and three men, but we were all white. That was that was the executive team driving this. And that's not diverse, we at least had a gender balance, but it wasn't diverse. If we wanted to be diverse, we need to bring a lot more different voices to the table, and be able to give them the space to not only participate, but be heard, and take that as difficult as it might be, and start the process of really creating this intentional culture of inclusion that you want. That's where it goes. And that's going to again, it's going to challenge you on your organizational values, on your behaviors. And then on, you know, the language that you use. And the simple example that we hear about today, all over is if I come work for you, what's your policy on bathrooms? And how do you ensure that I can show you that I legally meet the requirements to be a woman under even today's standards? The question is, how do you protect me in your workforce? And what's your disciplinary policy? So I talked about policies? It's not just the wonderful, good, warm, you know, we're welcoming, and it's all nice. No, it's like, how are you actually dealing with this? And, you know, what does that really mean? I would say the same thing. If we're talking, you know, for women, it's, are we doing the right things in order to look at women, we know that there's a bump in women's careers about the age 30? And about age 50? And what are you doing to analyze and break down why that might happen in your organization? And what policies and things can you do in order to minimize that, because if you're losing those women, you're losing diversity, that's not going to exist when you're trying to move them up into higher roles. So you do have to address all of these things. And it's a journey. And it's not overnight, and it's not a snap of the fingers. And you're going to find people that don't want to go on that journey with you. And what are you going to do about that? That becomes another organizational chart? What if they're your highest performer, but they create such a toxic environment? Because they are so against your organizational values of inclusion in the example that I've been using? How are you going to deal with that? Are you prepared to get rid of them because they just create toxicity for everyone else that's still there, your highest performer and I've seen that case, many times. And so that's, again, some of the very simple challenges that leaders in SME small to medium enterprises need to start thinking about, you know, if they're looking at this journey, the other aspect that I would say is you have to take note of your applicability to your future workforce. We do know that from studies that have been done that those 18 to 24, which are the future workforce that are coming in so forth, finishing school, 46% of them based upon a recent study, suggesting that not only did they look at the talk that you talk, but they're fact checking Are you walking the walk, they're going every they're checking. So it's not just oh, let's say this, let's put up these pretty words on our website, let's know, like, you need to be doing it. And you need to make sure that everyone is experiencing this the way that you intend, which is why you can't just do it once and go, poof, we did that work, let's move on. Now, it has to be embedded, even if you're giving the fourth quarter financial results. And if inclusion was what you drive, you need to talk about why inclusion is important when you're talking about the fourth quarter results, they have to be integrated. Somebody had once called it and I love the phrase, you have to embedded in the DNA of the organization. So those are the things regardless of the company size, but definitely on the SME, I mean, I worked in a company was 150 people, it was privately held. So I won't talk about what their financials were. But at the end of the day, you know, they're in that same space.

Dave Barr  50:53

Yeah, yeah. Now, we've talked about in business question as a procurement professional, in my position, what about where you have to form business relationships, that where you have limited control? These are going to be international suppliers partners, you can't you know, unnecessarily exert your own standards, morals behaviors on those companies. Now, in your experience, how do businesses who want to deal with obviously external parties, manage those relationships where you're trying to get this appropriate behavior? Shall we say, enforced?

Cynthia Fortlage  51:30

Yeah, I mean, behavior is the one aspect, right? It's really, that you want to deal with suppliers who perhaps share similar values to you so that you're, you're mutually benefiting, because you're, again, from a societal level, you're working on something that yeah, it's the business you're, you're buying selling goods, whatever it happens to be. But you're doing it for that, why is a much larger societal impact, that's really where supplier diversity programs become critical. I know that, you know, for instance, here in the UK, there's Out Britain, that's an LGBT Chamber of Commerce. And what they're doing is, they're helping businesses, as an example, wanting to deal with LGBTQ owned businesses and so forth, create supplier diversity programs that can kind of, you know, give them all the criteria and all the process of how to do that. And of course, that then becomes a boilerplate that you just can go from organization to organization, most larger organizations will already probably have the inputs directly to, you know, your supplier diversity products, especially if you're an SME, the larger organizations are most likely way far ahead. And if they're not, then the question is, is that really the kind of supplier can you get that widget somewhere else, you know, and that's really where, again, from a purchasing perspective, it becomes the challenge of looking at the international scale and scope. But even that there's some amazing techniques. And when I've talked about it, historically, I get a lot of kind of dumbfounded stares. Because when I stepped way back into my my international trade, logistics, career space, I talked about the idea of, for instance, tariff engineering, and that was something the organization I was with really started, we had some brilliant minds in the international trade space I, I was the support behind this, they were the brilliant, but I was at the table many times because technology was an enabling tool. For a lot of this some, the example I use was that somebody was in the clothing, business. And they were looking to make a pair of women's slacks, dress slacks, and in doing so they wanted to have the tummy control panel in this was very early days. It's very common today, but it wasn't back then. And when our organization looked at the design proposal, because we had that kind of relationship, we started to talk about how the garment was being made. And it was made overseas in China, it was being sent to Canada to be finished. So that would meet all of the various tariff regulations and so forth for transforming and be able to get it as preferential rate textiles typically been some of the highest duty rates in the world. And at the time, the garment, I believe was it like 18%, that could have been as high as 22%. But through tariff engineering, which really talked about a different way to design that part of the path. It was reclassified from a government interpretive point of view. We clearly as a trade consultative space, gave the government some guidance as to how we arrived at that, but they agreed and it was considered a sport path. And in being a sport Panther it was duty free. So somebody just knocked off 18% duty by creatively thinking about reengineering the product design rather than just say I need this, which in the role we were in would be an afterthought because we would be dealing with The finished garment was arriving on the border. But somebody said, Hey, let's ask for this consultative input upfront, before we even do it before we place their first order before we manufacture said garment. And that's where we redesigned the tariffs. So they went and asked for something different. And they ended up having a free duty rate, clearly, in early days, it gave them a market advantage, having that extra pop, you know, 18 points on their bottom line. Fantastic idea. So So yeah, so that's kind of the idea that in all of these spaces, you're really looking for who can bring these different ways of thinking, you know, into that conversation that makes you go, Hmm, let me think about that, because it's not just doing the same old, same old. And so from a purchasing supplier perspective, supplier diversity, again, is following that cultural value set is following the why. And you're making sure that you're actually looking at what you're doing. And that may involve, especially if it's product manufacturing, maybe it means looking at different manufacturers who can manufacture it differently, and help you kind of do something like that tariff engineering with a particular product, obviously, clearly, not every product could fit. But at the end of the day, if you could knock off a few points, just simply, you know, maybe changing the propeller on a motor to something else. Or perhaps it's a different kind of input, you know, Apple changing its power supplies to the USBC to comply with EU rules versus, you know, having it's firewire design, right, like all of these changes, if you can anticipate them, maybe that saves you some money along the way, and therefore makes you even actually more competitive.

Dave Barr  56:42

Yeah, some brilliant insights there. Thanks. Now, there's one final question I want to ask. But before we dive into that, I see the time is very short. Now. Where's the best places for people to learn more about you and your you know, things you talk about?

Cynthia Fortlage  56:57

Well, certainly on my website, triple www.CynthiaFortlage.com. Certainly find it there. I am very active blog, blogging at least weekly, if not more often, obviously, on LinkedIn, I'd love to connect with the audience. If they wish to find they'll hear more. I do that on LinkedIn. So just Cynthia Fortlage on LinkedIn. And you can also find my organization CAF Services, but all one word on both Instagram as well as on Tiktok. And I have material that I've put out there for audiences on those platforms.

Dave Barr  57:29

Brilliant. Thanks for sharing that. 

Cynthia Fortlage  57:30

You're welcome. 

Dave Barr  57:31

Now, we've only got to say very brief time now. I'm interested in looking ahead. 

Cynthia Fortlage  57:37

Yeah. 

Dave Barr  57:38

I'd like to know what you see, as the future markers and  symbols of success for diversity and inclusion in future decades are 1020 30 years away from now? How do you suggest we each contribute towards achieving these success factors be at What's your thoughts on? What should we be looking at in 10 20 30 years? You know?

58:02

Great question. So very quickly, rapid fire is with acceptance without understanding, I am putting out an audacious goal starting in 2024. That is to teach 1 billion people about acceptance without understanding by the year 2050, keep following along, find out how you can be a part, if you're interested in learning more, please reach out. And we can do that the aspect, you know, at a least a national level, and we look at it this in 2024. There are 52 national elections for houses of parliament, presidents, etc. There's 55 and 2025. So from a whole political regime, we could be a completely different world over the next two years, I would certainly hope that it is people who are open to the ideas of inclusion and acceptance in a way to go forward. If not, then we know we have four to five years to go in between elections in order to kind of get us to the next place and and next year and 2020 Forward, US Canada and the UK are just three of those 52 nations that are actually having national election. So again, lots of power shifts that could be going on. And I think ultimately, the idea of rather than focusing on what's different about us, which acceptance talks about and accepting who we are going forward is a path, not an immediate, it's not a snap of the fingers. But it puts us like an organization on that path to create societies where everyone can have the right to feel that they belong. Rather than feeling they're excluded. They're kicked out they're not part of we're all human beings. We all belong. I'm not a religious person. Otherwise I would quote certain scriptures but you know what, at the end of the day, all we want to do is just be part of this called society and all be here. Human beings, I don't understand why that's so difficult. But I wouldn't be doing the work that I'm doing if I didn't know that it was difficult. And so I am going to stay committed till my last breath one day of doing this work, because it's not going to change overnight. And I'm hoping that I'm here to see some brilliant changes in the future. I believe it because the youth get it, the youth are my heroes. And as they come into the workforce, they are bringing a different way. They are about the collective we not about the individual, me. And they are looking to see all of them be successful women, men, regardless of their race, skin color, ethnic origin, gender, sexuality, gender, it doesn't matter. They all collectively want to see things advance and move forward. And we see that today. We just got to get out of their way and let them be leaders today that they actually already are.

Dave Barr  1:00:57

Thats a brilliant note to finish on. Superb interview, I really enjoyed everything that you've helped us to understand, much better. Thank you for enlightening us somewhat and certainly, you know, tremendous respect for the journey that you've been on and what you've achieved. 

Cynthia Fortlage  1:01:14

Thank you so much, David. It's been a pleasure chatting with you bye.

Dave Barr  1:01:17

Bye bye. So there's another Real Life Buyer podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it. And it has given you some ideas and inspiration for greater action and achievement. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes, and a five star review will be most appreciated. If you would like to discover more about me and what I do. Take a look at www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk. Bye.