Improving communication and the workplace with Meagan Pollock (A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts)

Communication challenges in engineering? Dianna Deeney interviews Dr. Meagan Pollock about improving communication and the workplace. They explore how improving communication within cross-functional teams involves active listening, continuous learning, and adapting communication styles to create a more inclusive and productive environment.

Meagan and Dianna talk about:

• Diversity Drives Better Outcomes
• High-Performing Teams Prioritize Communication
• Communication Styles are Shaped by Diverse Factors
• The Role of AI in Communication
• Continuous Growth and Expansion

What can you do today?

• Visit Dr. Pollock's website (EngineerInclusion.com) to access free resources on communication and inclusive leadership.
• Actively engage in continuous learning by seeking out diverse viewpoints and perspectives through various channels (conferences, podcasts, social media, etc.).
• Implement the LISTEN framework to enhance personal communication skills and contribute to more inclusive workplaces. LISTEN framework

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Take it to the next level with Meagan in her workshops. "How to Communicate Effectively Across Cultures and Styles" is happening November 14, 2024. Meagan offered QDD listeners $20 off enrollment with code: DESIGN.
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Visit the podcast blog for more detailed show notes, information, and extra links.

If your team is still catching problems too late — let's talk.
→ Schedule a free discovery call: Dianna's calendar

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ABOUT DIANNA
Dianna Deeney is a quality advocate for product development with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. She is president of Deeney Enterprises, LLC, which helps organizations and people improve engineering design.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Quality During Design podcast. This is a special interview episode where I'm interviewing Dr Megan Pollack about communication and improving our workplaces. The Quality During Design podcast is dedicated to people working in new product development. Quality During Design is a philosophy that emphasizes the benefits of cross-functional team involvement in design, and it's also a methodology that uses quality tools to refine design concepts early. So, whether you're a seasoned designer or just starting out looking to improve your existing designs or start from scratch, quality Drain Design is meant to have resources to help you. This interview is part of our series A Chat with Cross-Functional Experts. Our focus is speaking with people that are part of engineering projects and we discuss their viewpoints and perspectives, the values they bring and how they're involved and work with product design engineering teammates. I learned about Dr Megan Pollack's work a couple of years ago and I've been watching what she's been doing and it's just very impressive. I wanted to bring her on the show to share her knowledge and her wisdom with you so that we can make our places better, to make our workplaces better. Let me tell you more about Dr Megan Pollack after this brief introduction.

Speaker 1 1:28

Hello and welcome to Quality During Design, the place to use quality thinking to create products others love for less. I'm your host, diana Deeney. I'm a senior level quality professional and engineer with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing and design. I consult with businesses and coach individuals and how to apply quality during design to their processes. Listen in and then join us. Visit qualityduringdesigncom. Welcome back.

Speaker 1 2:00

We're interviewing Dr Megan Pollack. Let me tell you a little bit more about her. She envisions a world where personal and social circumstances are not obstacles to achieving potential and where kindness, inclusivity and conservation prevail. Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Megan holds a PhD in engineering education from Purdue University, an MS in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University and a BS in computer science from Texas Woman's University. As an engineer turned educator for diversity, equity and inclusion, megan focuses on helping others intentionally engineer inclusion in education and the workforce through her company Engineer Inclusion and Engineered Organizations. An international and TEDx speaker, consultant, teacher, engineer and equity leader, her mission is to provide services, tools and resources that inspire awareness and initiate action.

Speaker 1 3:07

Part of Megan's work is holding virtual workshops, and she's holding a virtual workshop in just a couple of weeks, on November 14th. Megan is hosting how to Communicate Effectively Across Cultures and Styles For the Quality During Design podcast listeners. She's created a special coupon code, design, for $20 off the workshop fee. I will link to the registration page on the podcast show notes. And while you're thinking about that, let's get into the interview with Dr Megan Pollack. Hi Megan, hi Megan. Hi Diana, you are a fellow engineer. How did you get into engineering, or what is it that you really like about engineering?

Speaker 2 3:54

Oh gosh, my journey into engineering started with a love of my Palm Pilot. If we can remember it back that far, I was an early adopter, a freshman in high school with my little Palm Pilot trying to solve all of my organization needs, and I thought I want to create the device that puts all these together. Now, I didn't invent the iPhone, but I thought it was a great idea back when I was carrying all my little devices, and so that was really the beginning of me deciding that I wanted to solve problems that were really practical and to create products that helped people. And so then I went into computer science and electrical engineering. I worked for Texas Instruments for a few years as a product engineer and I worked on MEMS technology. It was a digital light processing device which you know is probably known for its, you know, going into projectors, but it has lots of other applications, but it is still a projection kind of solution.

Speaker 1 4:54

Yeah, you started with the Palm Pilot and then you found your way into Texas Instruments, where all engineers use a TI something at some point in their engineering career and education. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But you worked on other applications in Texas Instruments. And what happened after that?

Speaker 2 5:16

Well, I think, like a lot of people, I actually got caught in the big reduction in force in early 2009. And so, but I was already looking at doctoral programs, trying to figure out how I was going to get a PhD and give up my salary. But the universe had a plan for me, and so when I got hit in the Big Reduction in Force, I think it was like 42% of my business group was let go or forced to retire, and so that's when I immediately applied, within the week of that hit, to the Purdue University's PhD in engineering education, and I moved out there within about six weeks and started that program or started working, and then the program started in the fall, and so my PhD. When I started that, I started with the mission to create a more equitable and inclusive culture for engineers so that women and people of color could not only enter into but thrive in those environments, and that's really been the foundation of the work that I've done since 2009, is to work with organizations, to work with people, to try and to create more equitable and inclusive environments where everybody can succeed, where they can show up, hopefully, as their authentic selves and do work that matters to them and that matters to our world.

Speaker 2 7:02

No-transcript. I very much had on some very thick rose-colored glasses for a long time and didn't realize that there were any challenges specifically for women or any other traditionally marginalized or excluded population. I knew that women were underrepresented because I was in a program in college called the Women in Engineering Program. The whole point was to get more of us into industry. But it wasn't until one of the VPs of the organization said Megan, you will be going to the Women in Manufacturing Special Interest Group and you will get involved. And I was like no, no, no, I don't need't, I don't need help. Like I don't need to remind people I'm a woman. Like it's fine, she's like here's lesson number one when a VP tells you to do something, you don't say no.

Speaker 2 7:51

So I showed up to this meeting and you know sitting around this boardroom table with these you know amazing women that I had already looked up to and admired, and they were sort of talking about some of the challenges that they were facing and I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, like it's not okay for these things to happen.

Speaker 2 8:09

Because I didn't know right. Like I didn't know that some of the things I was experiencing were sexist and that were deeply problematic and then so, as soon as those sort of rose colored glasses were ripped off, I was on a mission to try to create a better environment and I certainly did experience some challenges. And again, I'm not disparaging TI. I think overall TI is a fantastic company, but it's made up of people right who come with their own lived experiences and perspectives, and I had had some pretty intense issues as I was working on extending my master's thesis work and disclosed a patent for that, and then, when the data was looking good, I was really bullied to sign it over to some men who said I thought of this before you were even born.

Speaker 1 9:02

And so.

Speaker 2 9:03

I was like this shouldn't happen to people and I want to do work that changes this, and so that was my motivation for pursuing this path and the work that has really grounded everything that I've done and is the central focus of my business, and it's very often sort of branded DEI, which has somehow become curse words in our society in many ways now, but it's not that right. It's how do we create environments where we have improved collaboration and productivity and we have trust and, you know, we are able to work through conflict and we are being innovative and supporting growth of our organizations? All of those things are the foundational things that I'm helping people and organizations work and strive towards, and a lot of that's by improving communication, by improving the way that people experience those environments, and so, you know, relating to your audience around product design just like we design products, we have to design our spaces.

Speaker 1 10:15

We have to be intentional about designing teams in which everybody can show up and be their best and contribute at their best levels. So engineering work is sometimes a deep dive, or where we get some inputs and then we're, you know, in our own heads designing something, designing products. But there's been studies that show that if we develop these design inputs, at least with a cross-functional team so someone that's representing from marketing, from manufacturing and, of course, the people that are doing the deep dives in in engineering, and customer representatives but then not only that, but I I think what you're also striving for is people with different backgrounds and experiences contributing to the same design ideas. When teams develop ideas like that, that they better results. There's better design results, the products are better received in the market, there's a higher market share and all of those things. Is that what you've been seeing in your research and in the things that you're focusing on too? Is that collaboration really makes a difference in the end?

Speaker 2 11:23

Absolutely. I mean, there are tons of examples of when you have diverse groups of people around a table contributing to a solution, that the end result is improved, and the sort of case that diversity is good for business is not new. That case has been made over and over and over again. For me, that's that's not my motivating factor. So it's not just the business, you know case for diversity and creating environments. I think mine really comes down to like it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do to create environments where everybody gets to show up and contribute. Everybody gets to show up and feel valued, included, affirmed, like.

Speaker 2 12:05

These are basic human needs and as much time as we spend at work, work should not harm us, it shouldn't traumatize us, it shouldn't make us feel all kinds of things that don't build us up. Right, and so you know, I think there's a responsibility of every individual contributor to intentionally engineer inclusion for the people around them. Right, because it benefits the whole. It's a collectivist mindset that says, hey, if I'm really thinking about not only my experience but the experience of other people around us, it raises all of us up, it helps all of us to achieve the outcomes that we want and so a lot of my work is helping people to recognize that to actually take a minute and look around them and think about the experiences of others, because when you have a group that is dominated by one population, there becomes a sort of dominant way of knowing and doing and being, and so there isn't often the sort of question of that.

Speaker 2 13:10

I think about a friend of mine who listened to my TED Talk and emailed me right after and he said you know, megan, I was an engineer in oil and gas for 20, 30 years and he's like I never thought about how women might feel in that environment. We never treated them any differently, we never, you know, caused harm. And this is this guy that was like an amazing colleague, but for him to have the aha moment of like I never thought about how women might feel in this space and how that might impact the way in which they engage on the team. Those are the kinds of aha moments that I want people to experience, of like what is it that I'm doing to contribute to other people's experiences and why does that matter to them and to me and to our team's outcomes?

Speaker 1 14:03

and to me and to our team's outcomes. I see, and part of that, that aha moment is you're you want other people to take off their rose color glasses too, and that's what. That's what you're really trying to do and working for in within an engineering. Yeah, so if I am an engineer design engineer and I'm assigned to a cross-functional team and the team is diverse both in personal experiences and race and religions, but then also just backgrounds of what it is we're focusing on, Because when you get a group of people together, you all eventually want the same thing. You're working toward something success, but there's slightly different definitions of success. Sometimes it's competing, and that can be a good thing. Team, what are some things that I would be able to do to help prepare my line of thinking for working with this new team? Like, how would I prepare myself first before starting to work with them?

Speaker 2 15:17

Yeah, so you know we can. I think about this sort of literature of Ron Friedman and his company at Insight 80, and he did this work and it's on Harvard Business Review that you can look at. But like, what are the sort of functions of high performing teams right? So at any rate, the goal, whatever the shared outcome, is like we want to be high performing. Nobody sets out to be a low-performing team. You're right.

Speaker 2 15:40

And so the things that these teams share is that they invest time in bonding over non-work topics.

Speaker 2 15:46

They are more authentic at work, they give and receive appreciation more frequently, they keep colleagues in the loop, they share credit, they believe disagreements make them better, they proactively address tension, they don't leave collaboration to chance.

Speaker 2 16:04

These teams are more strategic with their meetings and they're not afraid to pick up the phone.

Speaker 2 16:08

So, of these top 10 things that high-performing teams do, 100% of them require communication, and so what we can do so if you're the engineer wanting to contribute is recognize that I need to be a better communicator and I need to begin to understand the nuances of how communication plays out across different identities and culture, because our personality, our cultural background, our upbringing, our education, our lived experiences all of these things shape our communication style, the way in which we communicate, and so if I just start communicating to you the way that I know how to communicate, that's not actually communication.

Speaker 2 16:52

That's just me talking right, because communication is a two-way street. You have to hear it, receive it the way I intend it, and then provide feedback, and this is that sort of loop, and so, in order for us to reach those outcomes, you know, the best team players are going to be the ones that begin to understand the sort of nuances of communication and that you learn how to adapt and change flexibly to meet the needs of the people that you're communicating with, and so that would be sort of. My first start is learning that, and I can certainly provide some tools and strategies for that if you want to go into it.

Speaker 1 17:29

So communication is key, is king, it sounds like we're clean whatever.

Speaker 1 17:35

Yes, yes, thank you for that. And just understanding not only your communication style but how it affects and relates with your teammates and if they're receiving the message that you're giving, which can be complicated. That's sort of like the follow up and follow through. I remember that earlier in my engineering career I would communicate, communicate, communicate, and I felt like I was over communicating but I was missing that step of making sure that what I was communicating was being received. Sometimes I would send it in an email and then it would be a TLDR too long to read, so you know, people didn't get it, or I was portraying my message in a certain way that people weren't understanding. So that is a hard lesson learned and I find I continuously have to practice that, have to practice that, and that's just being aware of that is the first step, would you think.

Speaker 2 18:46

Yeah, awareness is always the first step.

Speaker 1 18:49

Now part of communication. I want to ask you about AI not to go down the deep end or anything, but I've talked with other engineers that they are trying to improve their communication, to get to the point earlier, to make things more clear. So they're using AI as a tool and I've done this. Also, I say this is my scenario. I'm writing to these people and this is can you clean this up or I'll give it some sort of task? Can you make this easier to read? Can you make it shorter? And it kind of helps me with that. Is that something you see more people doing? Do you do that for yourself or are you at a pro? At this point, you don't need that kind of help.

Speaker 2 19:37

I use AI on a daily basis. So, yes, ai can absolutely help us. One of the things I often use it for is because I've sort of reached an academic level. I often have to ask AI to like, tone it down, to like a more accessible language, and so it's really helpful in helping me to do that, so that I don't use big, you know, phd words, and so it's helpful in that.

Speaker 2 20:01

However, one of the nuances that AI is probably not a pro at yet we can say yet, because it's constantly evolving is there's differences between direct and indirect communication, or high context versus low context, right? So typically within the Americas, we have a very direct style of communication. I will tell you what I mean with. I will use the words, I will use the facial expressions, I will use that like I will. There's a typical sort of way of communicating that's understood, whereas in many Asian cultures it has a very different sort of indirect of, like an assumption of.

Speaker 2 20:41

You read between the lines.

Speaker 2 20:43

We aren't, or they may not always be as direct.

Speaker 2 20:46

You want to be really careful not to stereotype, but it's about an awareness of different ways of communicating, and so where AI may not be able to help you is to be able to ask those clarifying questions to help you learn to read between the lines with some of your colleagues who may not have that same very direct style of communication and that's where a lot of mismatch can happen is that they're communicating in the way that their culture, lived experience and background has trained them to, and I'm communicating in my way, but yet we're just not getting to the kind of end goal that we want.

Speaker 2 21:24

And that's where we have to learn to adapt. I mean, both parties should learn to adapt, but for me, as a very direct kind of communicator, I need to learn to ask the questions that help me get to the message that may not be so discreet, you know, like intentionally written within those messages or said within our conversations, and we don't know that unless we sort of build that awareness of like hey, people communicate differently, this might be happening. How do I begin to bridge that barrier that could be manifesting in our conversations, in our email exchange, in our Slack messages or whatever ways that you're kind of communicating? So, yes, to answer your question, I do think AI can help us. However, there still takes some actively thinking about the other kinds of cultural barriers that come with, the sort of high-context, low-context communication styles, barriers that come with the sort of high context, low context communication styles.

Speaker 1 22:29

Now I can imagine some people thinking that the project managers, who are managing this diverse team, are responsible for creating those lines of communications for the team to be able to well communicate well, to be able to well communicate well. But there's a personal responsibility here that we all need to step up and you know, if we need help or if we find out that there's a problem, it's not really anybody's fault, right, but it's something that we may need to bring up to directly address. How would you bring that up? You were having difficulty with communication. You knew that feedback loop wasn't really happening. Well, how would you ask for help? Like, would you ask for help or would you try something different first? What would be your steps to help address that?

Speaker 2 23:19

Yeah, I mean, I definitely don't think that the responsibility for effective communication lies on a project manager. I do think that they create a sort of setting and a tone for that. I do think project managers can help, you know, initiate cultural sort of norms of how a team might choose to operate. But any person I want to believe has the ability to influence those kinds of directions, and so a lot of it is about level setting. It's about coming together and saying, you know, as you said, admitting it's the first problem, like, hey, you know what? I think we're having some disconnects, some communication issues. Can we talk about those?

Speaker 2 24:00

I have a framework that helps people move through that.

Speaker 2 24:02

It's the LISTEN framework, because at the heart of any kind of communication is our ability to listen, and so the LISTEN framework sort of breaks down how to become a culturally intelligent communicator, and that's on my website.

Speaker 2 24:19

I encourage people to look it up at engineer inclusion, just Google culturally intelligent communication. What I came up this last week. I had a workshop with 1111 systems, which is a security tech company, and so I actually adapted that listen framework as a discussion protocol that would help the team members to work through this framework in order to improve the outcomes of their team. I haven't published that on my website yet, but I will get it published up soon because I just created it this last week. But I think that helping people to think about how they're actively engaging by giving people a framework for addressing this and having hard conversations, that's really helpful. Right To just say, hey, we have a problem but we don't know how to address it by using this protocol and the protocol isn't just about solving your communication problems, it's about solving the team's problems that they're trying to address it just gives a framework for sort of moving through that in a culturally responsive kind of way.

Speaker 1 25:30

Depending on the communication problems that need to be fixed, is this something that an external facilitator would be best at doing, or is this something that an individual contributor can take on themselves?

Speaker 2 25:45

I think if you're having massive issues, then sure, having somebody to come facilitate that conversation is helpful, but that's not a long-term solution. You've really got to help train and empower your people with these skills to be able to manage communication challenges on a daily basis. And so, you know, I offer tons of free resources through my website on how to do these things, so people are welcome to access those. I have a course on communicating across cultures coming up on November 14th. People can participate in that and certainly there'll be recordings of that as well. And, of course, I'd love for people to hire me to kind of help. But really, really, what we need people to do is to learn how to have these conversations, and they're not it's not rocket science, right Like it's just a scaffolded protocol for helping people to work through these kinds of challenges and issues.

Speaker 2 26:46

The first part of the listen framework is learn.

Speaker 2 26:49

So it's you know, each letter is its own meaning, and so there's a responsibility on us, if we want to become culturally intelligent communicators, that we have to take the responsibility to begin to learn, and to learn about our colleagues, to learn about other ways of knowing and doing, so that we can increase our awareness of how these things might be showing up and how we engage.

Speaker 2 27:14

And what's interesting is, when I did a poll for this with the group I worked with this past week on like which of the six parts of the framework so listen is learn, inquire, synthesize, translate, empathize and navigate Learn was the least selected element. However, I think it's one of the most important. I think it's one of the most important, but what's interesting is like that's the one and I started with that and the framework is that, like it takes our initiative and our effort and our gumption and curiosity to begin to ask the questions and to learn about other ways of knowing and doing and how they might be different from our own, and that and understanding the barriers that could happen because of those differences In the LISTEN framework.

Speaker 1 28:05

learn is the first part. Now, is this learning a different mindset or is it learning skills? It sort of seems like it's learning a different mindset.

Speaker 2 28:17

It's all the things right. It's just learning different ways of knowing and doing. That might not be about you Like to be a culturally intelligent communicator. I need to learn about the people that I'm communicating with. What are their preferences, what are the ways that they communicate?

Speaker 2 28:32

It's building a cultural competence, and one of the things that's been part of my journey as a you know, a white woman who does this work is that I had pretty minimal cultural competence and awareness until I had this sort of aha moments and started to really unpack and explore all the sort of ways of knowing and doing that were different from my own and different from my own lived experience. And it's an ongoing journey of being a lifelong learner and trying to learn about other cultures and other identities and the just sort of amazingly beautiful, diverse ways that people participate and work and participate in this world. And so it doesn't mean that you have to again go read all the books. It could be as simple as like you're just following different people on social media that have different worldviews than you or different lived experiences than you. You know you listen to different podcasts from different people, you watch different shows or movies about different cultures, but it's giving you that sort of expanded awareness of different identities and the sort of second part of the framework is the I is to inquire, and this is that deep curiosity and that asking and learning to ask questions in a way that takes an active interest in other people's viewpoints, and it really helps to sort of unpack things, especially when we have this sort of difference between the high and the low context. It's so critical for those of us who have the low context, which is the very direct way of communicating.

Speaker 2 30:07

We have to get better at asking questions to sort of unpack and untease the sort of indirect ways of communicating or, as we call it in literature, the high context communication. It could be as simple as like okay, can you tell me more about that? Oh, I'm not familiar with that perspective. Can you tell me about how you got there? And it's learning to ask questions? And it's absolutely a skill, the sort of skill of questioning, and that's something that we can all learn.

Speaker 2 30:37

But again, we've got to continue learning about other people. But again, we've got to continue learning about other people. We've got to be curious and ask the questions and help us unpack what people are doing and thinking and saying. And then the sort of next part of this process is to synthesize, and that's making sure that we're integrating diverse perspectives so that we're making sure to engage multiple kinds of stakeholders and there's a diversity of view in that and then synthesizing all of those messages, especially in our decision-making, that we don't want to be making decisions about broad swaths of people and not having diverse opinions at the table to help us make those decisions. That's not equitable and it's certainly not inclusive.

Speaker 1 31:22

Yeah, for a design engineer, they're helping a team to make decisions about what a product's going to look like. The first two steps are just something that we should be continuously working on. Like you said, continuous learning, exposure, learning to ask questions. I can see these sort of things impacting not just work life but then also personal lives also. Now, another way to just continuously practice. You mentioned podcasts and just practicing talking with people. Part of your story is that you went to this other group, manufacturing group, and that's where you said that rose colored glasses were ripped off. I would imagine that some professional groups, if engineers would join them, would help provide some of that diversity viewpoint. Or even going to, maybe going to a professional society's conference that you're not a part of that profession but you interact with people that are part of that profession, going to those conferences and listening and talking to people. Is that something that you promote a lot or do you do that a lot? Is that good advice? I guess is what I'm asking.

Speaker 2 32:39

Yeah, I mean, the more that you can expand your work, the better. Last year, a year ago, I was at the World Usability Congress, which was in Graz, austria, and I was invited to speak there. It's all usability, ux, professionals and, first of all, it's an amazing conference. If you ever find yourself there, go. It's literally the best, most fun conference I've ever been to in my life and I will plan to go again someday. But what was so interesting is like it's so different from, like, the academic conferences that I go to here in the States, because these people, like they're UX people, like they're designers, like they think about the user experience. So imagine thinking about the user experience when you plan a conference. And so going to that conference was really, really fun for me because I was able to one see so many amazing parallels between what I do as a sort of workplace designer with that of a UX designer. You know, like we're thinking about the user, we're using empathy and inquiry to guide the work that we're doing, and good product designers are using these same kinds of things and their design processes, and so, yeah, I think finding conferences are fun.

Speaker 2 34:00

Tomorrow I'm heading to the Texas Master Naturalist Conference. Again, I've never been to a conference like that, but I'm just curious, and so I'm actually been to a conference like that. But I was. I'm just curious, and so I'm actually going to be teaching some of my work at that, and I'm a new certified Texas master naturalist, and so I'm excited and interested to explore these different kinds of ways that people engage and do work. So, yes, the more that you can explore unique and different things, the better it's going to help you, you know, become a more curious person and maybe a more interesting one too.

Speaker 1 34:34

Well, now you mentioned something interesting that you know usability, ux, design, engineers are thinking that way about their customers and stuff. So there's already some skill set there that those same sort of skills apply to the team that you're working with and the people that you're interacting with, that some of those are transferable and yeah, and that they would. If you know it for one, you can apply it to the other, and, and so maybe it's not, so may not be such a huge leap or like learning something. I mean, this is something that we should responsibly do as human beings and I understand your message for that. I guess what I'm trying to get to is drawing some parallels between how we're already thinking and just applying it more broadly to be better engineers.

Speaker 2 35:31

Yeah, I love the Stanford dschools. You know design method and there's a lot of parallels between that design method and my listen framework, and that's because of my engineering training, right Like it's because of my background and learning how to solve problems. It's about learning how to ask questions. It's about really trying to empathize with the people that you're creating a solution for, and that requires you to have some understanding. It's a human-centered design element, and so I absolutely took my training as an engineer and as a computer scientist and have applied it to the principles that I now teach in the sort of organizational development and you know sort of human dimensions of organizations as well. And so your product engineers can too. Right, like, they have the skill set, they have the ability to do these things, but instead of, you know, honing in and focusing on the product, like looking up and saying, like what if we use these same principles to help us work better as a team? And they can do that and so, and again, like I said, I've got tons of free resources on my website to help facilitate that skill and practicing those kinds of things, because it is both a mindset and a practice.

Speaker 2 36:50

The mindset is this choice that you make to want to create the environments that help people succeed. The mindset that I want to be an inclusive leader. I want to be a kind of person that is thoughtful and considerate to the experiences of other people around me. I want to help people be their best selves. I want to create an environment where people can show up as their authentic self and they don't have to hide parts of who they are.

Speaker 2 37:16

That's the mindset and the choice of this is the kind of person I want to be. And then the practice is bringing in those skills of learning how to employ these things, learning how to ask the right questions, learning how to think about the way that systems are at play in everything that we do and it creates tremendous barriers and that if we are from a background where the system has worked for us, we don't see those barriers. So it becomes both a mindset and a practice to begin to say I'm going to look for those barriers. And the practice is constantly reviewing what are those barriers that people are experiencing and what can I do to not only remove those barriers but to add supports for the people around me to be successful?

Speaker 1 38:04

I feel like my next step is to look at your learning resources and then maybe choose a few more sources for me to listen to and to watch maybe a different conference, like that UX conference that you talked about Just to continually expand my knowledge base and so that I can continue to learn too.

Speaker 2 38:29

Yeah, these are so critical because for us to be interdisciplinary practitioners which we all are, whether we recognize it or not we must learn to work across disciplines. The more that you can expand your knowledge base and understand the way others think and to see parallels Again like that's what I thought was so amazing by attending that UX conferences, I was like how can I pull this into my work and how do I see the connections? And that's just what being a lifelong learner is is learning to see those connections, but seeking them out, learning to identify them and then employing them in different kinds of ways in the work that you do to hopefully create a better culture and climate for your team, which would lead to better outcomes.

Speaker 1 39:21

Do you have any final thought that you want to leave our listeners with?

Speaker 2 39:25

Well, I would love for people to join us, if they listen in time for the November 14th workshop. It's going to be in the middle of the day and I created a discount code for your listeners, so if they use the code design, they'll get $20 off the registration. But there's a banner at the top of my website that'll help you get to that. So just go to Engineer Inclusion, look for the November 14th banner to register at the top of the website, and I hope to see you. And even if you can't make it, I encourage you to join my mailing list.

Speaker 2 39:58

I have a really intentional goal to always send things that add value to you and that are going to help you put these things into practice, and so I welcome people to use some of the resources that I had created and so that they can intentionally engineer inclusion within their teams and within their organizations and honestly like within their life. Like so much of the stuff that I teach is like it's my own journey, to like how to become a good human 101. And so these skills are transferable in life and in work and in our communities. And so, again, diana, thank you so much for inviting me and hosting this conversation, and I invite your listeners to reach out and let me know how I can support them. Thank, you.

Speaker 1 40:47

Thanks, megan, for being on the show and for sharing your background and your purpose. It's been very inspirational. Thank you, and that's a wrap for this episode of a chat with cross functional experts. I encourage you to link up with Megan somehow. Visit her website, bookmark it, find her on LinkedIn. I love Megan's growth mindset and continuous learning mentality. She is really somebody to follow because she's continuously evolving and changing her offerings. There might be something there for you. Thanks for joining us on this conversation about improving communication and our workplaces. This has been a production of Dini Enterprises. Thanks for listening.