In this episode of the pod, Tripp talks with Shan Foster about health masculinity, the imperative of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the corporate world, and how they have both grappled with 'wearing masks' in different situations.
Shan Foster is a former professional basketball player, SEC player of the year in 2009, and all-time leading scorer at Vanderbilt University where he graduated. He is currently the VP of external affairs at the YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee, and the Executive Director of the AMEND Together Initiative, a program dedicated to preventing violence against women and girls by educating young men on these issues. Additionally, Shan is on the board of numerous organizations which help increase access to education and teach healthy masculinity and the author of his memoir, "What Hurt Didn't Hinder".
Tripp and Shan both enjoy using their 'hyper masculine' experiences -- professional basketball and military service -- to help others navigate the complexity associated with healthy masculinity. They met with Shan presented at a CEO leadership group, Vistage Worldwide, and Tripp knew he wanted to amplify Shan's message.
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In this episode of the pod, Tripp talks with Shan Foster about health masculinity, the imperative of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the corporate world, and how they have both grappled with 'wearing masks' in different situations.
Shan Foster is a former professional basketball player, SEC player of the year in 2009, and all-time leading scorer at Vanderbilt University where he graduated. He is currently the VP of external affairs at the YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee, and the Executive Director of the AMEND Together Initiative, a program dedicated to preventing violence against women and girls by educating young men on these issues. Additionally, Shan is on the board of numerous organizations which help increase access to education and teach healthy masculinity and the author of his memoir, "What Hurt Didn't Hinder".
Tripp and Shan both enjoy using their 'hyper masculine' experiences -- professional basketball and military service -- to help others navigate the complexity associated with healthy masculinity. They met with Shan presented at a CEO leadership group, Vistage Worldwide, and Tripp knew he wanted to amplify Shan's message.
Links for Shan:
Links for Tripp:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, spend, experiences, basketball, mask, business, vanderbilt university, diversity, happening, impact, identity, organization, person, learn, workplace, wearing, leading, diverse groups, vistage, thinking
SPEAKERS
Tripp
I just finished your book. Awesome. What do you think I really enjoyed it, I think a couple of things, you know, the your use of the wearing different masks is something I want us to, you know, get into a little bit because that's been a big part of kind of my, I guess just evolution as a person, right. Like we have to wear these different in different situations. So that was, that was one of my key takeaways that I really enjoyed.
Love it, man love it, it's so true. And it certainly was a huge part of my life. And I didn't even realize it's kind of like one of those things where you just, you don't even realize what's happening until you get older and you start to really reflect on your life. And you're like, you know, there's been very few times where I feel like I was just legit myself, and inhibited not trying to impress anybody else or anything like that. I'm just being authentically myself, you know,
right. And what was I gonna say on that one? I don't know. I have no clue. I'm going to read. I'm going to read the intro, which I sent to you. But um, we'll probably I'll probably record this again separately, but we'll just kind of I'll read through this and then we'll hop into it and get it edited. And I'll send it over to you. Sounds good. Is there anything you want me to cover or not cover? I don't know if you saw the list I sent kind of beforehand. No, I mean, I'm, I'm fair to talk about whatever, man. It's all good. All right. We're good. All right, here we go. What does it take to be a man a real man? This question has many different answers. And for many of us, we've been socialized into a particularly destructive version of manhood. Those of us who've grown up in dysfunctional homes or who have been around domestic abuse have often only seen a model of masculinity, which involves abuse, bullying, and domination. To help address this work is being done to equip young men with a better understanding of masculinity. Today's guest has always been passionate about this work, but his route to his current professional career is far from ordinary. Shane foster is a college and professional basketball star. He's the all time leading scorer at Vanderbilt University and was awarded the SEC Player of the Year in 2008. Nowadays, Shan is the Vice President of External Affairs, the YWCA in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, Executive Director of amend together a program dedicated to preventing violence against women and girls by educating young men. And he's the founder of fostering healthy solutions, a consulting practice that provides organizations with solutions to diversity, equity and inclusion issues. Shane also sits on the board of numerous organizations dedicated to increasing access to education and mentorship to young men. I recently read his book, what hurt didn't hinder which tells his own story of upbringing and overcoming trials and tribulations. So Shan Welcome to the business of human flourishing. Well, thank you so much for having me. So chant chain I, we got connected when you came to speak at our Vistage group. And for people who don't know what Vistage is, it's a peer kind of mentorship group for executives and CEOs, owners of businesses. And you were the first in person speaker we had since the whole COVID-19 kicked off. And you are an incredibly gifted speaker. And you really, I think, you know, provided our group with a lot of things to take home and think about, so I'm just really excited you join us today. I know our listeners just heard me read your bio, but could you give us a quick background on kind of your life and career?
Absolutely. Man, I was born in Mississippi and Laurel, Mississippi and have a lot of my family roots and background that goes back to Columbia, Mississippi, a small town called Blue Springs. And I spent the first six years of my life with my grandparents in slat, Louisiana, before moving and spending the rest of my childhood in New Orleans, Louisiana during a time when I was a murder capital the world. And basketball really was my escape. It was a way for me to get away from all the trauma and conflict and yelling and screaming and violence that was happening in my community. And over the course of that time. When you're having to survive every single day, you really learn things that make you who you are that are foundational and pivotal. My grandparents taught me the value of respect For others and for yourself, and in particular respect for women and girls, which ultimately led to the work that I do now around engaging men to end violence against women and girls with the YWCA, basketball being my escape from that, where I spent so much of my time, and really, in some ways, probably saved my life saved me from going down a lot of tough roads, I became the all time leading scorer and valuable basketball history, after you know, playing well enough to earn a scholarship in the first place, and then being a vendor bill for four years graduating and playing some of the best teams in the country. Some of the best talent in the country, has a phenomenal games played in March Madness beat the number one team in the country a few times and was drafted in the NBA to Dallas Mavericks spent time with the Utah Jazz and overseas in Italy, Belgium and Turkey traveled this entire world playing this game that I fell in love with. And it truly became an escape for me. But then I realized after six years of playing professionally, that while I always had that dream, less upsetting because this a scam call, I don't know.
We can either edit it out or leave it and we're pretty casual. So you get to travel the world playing basketball.
So I got to travel the world playing the game that I love. And it got me really exposed to so much more than what I had originally been exposed to. And I realized pretty quickly after a six year professional career that I wanted to do more than just play basketball, I wanted to impact people, I wanted to make a difference in the world and then communities. And so that led me to come back to Nashville, after retiring after just six years and try to figure things out, figure out what specifically, I wanted to do what areas I want to make a difference in and I found violence against women and girls being something that I was passionate about and wanting to make a difference. I use my platform there. But then also looking at the issues around social justice and racial justice, and diversity, equity and inclusion for corporations. You know, after doing so much work around sexual harassment and violence prevention and learning about domestic violence, but then also working in organization whose mission was eliminating racism, right? There was just so much learning that I was able to do I have so many examples of discussions that we lead and coaching, we did have executives and and really thinking about, you know, how do we do this within a corporate construct? How do we make sure that the message is not just one that falls on deaf ears, and not offending people and dating individuals, but truly inviting people to think about things differently. And so out of that work, came the passion inside of me to start a my own consulting firm, which focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion, and and really works with companies across the country to really reimagine our corporate culture, to really look at it from the standpoint of not just race and gender, but also all of the diversities that make us all who we are. And when we tap into those things, when we celebrate those things, when we have the gall to look, adversity in the eye, and say the same thing that we did when we started our businesses, right, that we're not going to fail, we're not taking no for an answer, we're gonna figure this out, we put some intentional efforts behind it, then we're able to reach the full potential of that word that I loved so much as a kid that were called team, where together everyone truly achieves more.
That's great. Tell me, there are a couple of directions I want to hit from what you just said. But let's, let's talk about kind of masculinity first. I know, before we started recording, I brought up the you know, in your book, you talk about wearing different masks. Are you familiar with the term code switching as well, I imagine something you learned early on and have had to, you know, use that skill set in a number of different settings. And for me, I think we actually have very dissimilar kind of through high school years, and probably in very dissimilar home situations, but at the same time, I think we both have, you know, really been effective because we've been able to wear different masks. For me as a, you know, heterosexual white man, I often don't have to ever hide my identity. But I know from different experiences. I talk a different way around the athlete friends by friends that were in the army. Now that I'm in a, you know, I started a company, I'm a pretty liberal guy, no surprise, but also, you know, our the work we do, you know, really focuses, everyone has a vested interest in diversity, equity and inclusion. And that's almost the exact opposite of what I came from in the army. So I'm used to some of the code switching. And I guess, could you tell me a little bit about how you've leveraged it your background as a professional athlete to maybe make an impact with young men, especially who might not listen to someone without that kind of background?
Well, I think, you know, you bring up a good point in terms of wearing a mask, we all do it, you know, we all do it, whether we admit we do it or not, that's a whole nother story. Right. But we all do it, we learned as kids, you know, when, when you you can discern what's acceptable and what's not, right from when you hang around your parents, you get in trouble for the things that are not accepted, acceptable, you know, you know, people start yelling, you know, you get disciplined those kinds of things. So you learn very quickly, okay, I don't need to do this, or I don't need to do this around them. Right, which is the other part of it, right. And that's what that's what wearing the mask is, it's literally taking that skill set that you had innately in you as a child and applying it to life situations, right. And so for me, growing up as a kid, we were in church all day, every day, really all day, every day. But when I grew, when I went to New Orleans, and was in the neighborhood, I had to, I had to switch it up, right in order to survive in New Orleans, Louisiana, you know, being the Shane, who people saw and respected in church, I had to use a different skill set, I had to speak a different language, I had to fit in in a different way, in my neighborhood and in community, and the same happened in my household, and then again, on the basketball floor. And then at every level, you climb, it's something different, and surely going to Vanderbilt University didn't match any of those identities. And so I had to switch it up again, in that regard. You know, I remember being a freshman at Vanderbilt, and so many people would tell me saying we can't understand how you speak, we can't understand the words that you're saying. Right. And that's because I talked with that southern New Orleans, Tom, that that slaying, that that doesn't translate well into corporate America doesn't translate well into the prestige of Vanderbilt University. So I had to learn a different mask, or code switching, whatever terminology you want to use, right. And what I think that has done for me, is allowed me to have a message that is palatable, regardless of the environment that I go into. So whether I'm back in an inner city school, talking to middle and high school kids, or I'm in a boardroom talking to executives, I know how to show up in the way that allows that message to be heard and translated in the most effective manner, because of all the mess that I've had to wear over the course of my life. Now, that's the positive side of it. The negative side of it, which is something that I talked about a little bit in my book, what hurt didn't hinder, is that when you spend so much time, assimilating to the environment around you, then at some point, you look in the mirror and start to wonder, well, who am I really? Who am I, at my core? How do I want to show up in the world? Who am I, when no one else is around? Who do I want to be? And how do I get to a place where I can truly be even more authentic in all of these spaces, as I've matriculated throughout my own journey of really deconstructing masculinity and who I was as a person in my core, and begin to talk about the experiences that I've had to begin to heal some of those broken wounds of the past. Now I get to choose for myself how I show up and not be seeking the approval of others, but more so using my experiences to be effective. And that's what those experiences have done for me.
Do you feel like as you've you know, matured into the person you are today, which is, you know, always changing? And I think you bring that up in your book, which I really like is that the idea that we're, you know, we can have an identity that is always changing, but it's important to know what our current identity is anyway, do you feel like as as you've kind of developed into your own person and gained, you know, maybe more understanding of who you are, that some of those masks instead of feeling like you're wearing masks that you you have an identity and yes you can you can be appropriate and different situations, but it doesn't feel as disjointed it doesn't feel like you're going from, you know, whatever, what it's like to be on the streets straight into the border, right? Like there's a little bit more of an integration, or do you think there's, you know, or are there still times where it feels like, Hey, I gotta go play the game that they want me to play?
Well, I think is a little bit of both. One of the best compliments that I received from a former teammate of mine was that after watching the operate as a professional now, he says, Shane, the thing I admire the most about you is that you're the same person, regardless of where I see you being effective. And what that simulated to me was that I've gotten closer to truly living out authenticity, and being able to be the same person. Regardless of where I am, I think my values stay the same. As I continue to grow, learn and, and have my thought processes be exposed to differences, then I'm always changing, I'm always evolving, but I'm evolving into a better version of myself, as opposed to evolving into something completely different. And that is the hope, right? That you get to a place where you can be so confident and who you are at your core, that everything else that you gain, all the exposure that you get now enhances who you are, as opposed to taking you further and further away from who you were before. You know, when I talk to people now, especially young people, you know, there's a, there's a keen sense of awareness now around who I am, like, I want the ability to be my authentic self, right. However, based on how we've been socialized, who you are at your core today may or may not be helpful to who you want to become.
Right?
Right. And so there has to be some evaluation of where you are versus where you want to be. And what are some steps that it's going to take for you to get there, there may be some things that you have to stop doing today that are a part of who you are, because it's not serving you well, right. And I have this conversation with folks in the workplace around our policies and our procedures and operations, right? There's so many things that we've been doing for the sake of history, it's how we've always done, but that may or may not be serving us well in relation to where we want to be. Right. And so there's an opportunity to reflect and to really be critical of the data around that. How is this serving me? is it helping? Is it harming? How is it serving the people that we serve? How is it serving us internally, externally? You know, what impact does this have on the community? Are we able to attract the top talent that we want to be able to get outside?
You're an important guy that's just shows how we got lucky to have you on, man, I appreciate you having me.
Yeah, all of those things. It's, it's a part of our DNA, it's a part of who we are. And our businesses are no different.
Well, and I want to hit on one point, maybe ask a question before diving into kind of your consulting practice and what we can be doing as business leaders to implement some of these best practices. But, you know, for for myself, I went through again, somewhat of a similar journey being a I was a competitive tennis player, really thought I was going to be a professional athlete decided that I instead of just fitting in with the tennis kids, I also wanted to fit in with the cool kids. So I started drinking and smoking a lot of pot and my, the mask that I was wearing, you know, in your terms previously was just of this, you know, athlete, like that's all I was, then I became kind of a partier. Then when that mask didn't serve me, I needed a new mask that would take me into college and everything else. So I ended up you know, getting lucky getting to go to West Point, I was in the army, and I wore this other mask of just kind of work hard, play hard, and just bounce from stimulation to stimulation, right? I you know, we'd be out training hard for a few months or we'd go deploy, as soon as we got back from the field or from a deployment it was, you know, balls to the wall party, you know, just the most toxic hypermasculine kind of environment that again, is very similar, I think like the army and professional sports. You've friends playing professionally and it just the way we talk about women, you know, and the behaviors that are kind of normalised are not are not good. And in general, and so what I would ask is for someone so for me, I had to go through a very deliberate process of, you know, kind of discovering my authentic self and continuing to rediscover it. Right. But that I was fortunate because I had great male role models, especially my father, who, when I called and said, you know, what I'm doing is not working, I'm not any closer to being the man that I want to be, what should I do? And he said, Hey, I know this is gonna sound crazy to, you know, vodka, chugging, Copenhagen dipping Army Ranger, but I think you should try yoga and meditation. And I said, Well, I guess I'm just desperate enough that I'm gonna go to a yoga class and start meditating. And that was really useful for me. But, you know, if you're, if you're working with a young man, maybe 22 to 2524 25, I think we're all going through this practice of like learning how to live in the world. What advice would you give to a young guy who's struggling to figure out their identity?
Well, I think it's first and foremost, you want to, you know, really spend some time thinking about who you want to be. And, and what do you want to do? Right, like, like really understanding the core of your identity, as you want it to be and where you aspire it to be. And then from there, do some evaluating of yourself of your circles of how you're spending your time. Right, I was having this conversation with a gentleman who had worked with for a number of years. And he went off and is getting ready to graduate school and looking for a job and asked me to help him with an internship. And he was asking me a similar question around identity. And I told him, I said, You know, I want you to take a week. And, and I want you to keep a calendar. And I want you to write down every single day, everything you do in that day, from the time you wake up in the morning, until the time you go to bed at night, right? We get 24 hours in a day, you got five days in a workweek. And you got two days on the weekend, right? I want you to start tracking, what do you do with your time? Right? And from there, you can begin to evaluate what things in your day are helping you to get, where you aspire to be, what things are hindering you from getting where to where you are aspiring to be. And one of those things that are just dull moments,
right? Where you're not being productive, maybe you're not doing something that's, you know, that's harmful, but you're kind of just existing, right? How can you be more intentional, even with those moments, to ensure that everything you do is heading in the direction of where you want to be? what your goal is, I had a mentor of mine who would often say, you get what you inspect, not what you expect, right? And so at the end of the day, even as it relates to your own personal life, we have to do some inspection to truly understand how we're showing up in the world where we're spending our time, what are our outputs, what is what is our time producing? Right? For me, it was all about wanting to make a difference in the world. And, and as I realized, after playing ball for six years, and I've talked about this in the book, that I had no work experience, I played basketball all this time, I had done all this stuff and had a lot of transferable skills. But unless I was going to be an entrepreneur, go start my own business, I had no work experience to be able to offer. And on top of that, in terms of being able to truly impact the world, there were some things that I needed to learn. There were some some communities that I needed to spend time in and with, there were some people who I needed to, to spend some time cultivating relationships, and basketball didn't give me the opportunity to do that. And so that's why inspecting my own life, even as a professional basketball player who many would say you accomplish the dream, you got to the promised land, but it's like in terms of where I wanted to be and what I wanted to accomplish with my own life. There was more that I wanted to do, and I needed to get back some of my time in order to do it. And so that level of inspection is so critical and so important. And, and quite honestly, organizations are the same as people, they're living their breathing. And in order for us to get to where we want to be organizationally and professionally, we have to be in spective of that as well.
I've really liked that. I think I've done that. And if A few different ways. I think the exercise of writing down everything you do, one of the twists on that we've all I've done is you put an arrow, whether you gain energy from it, you lose energy from it or it's neutral. And then, you know, you really get some insight into what you enjoy doing. Because sometimes it's not what you think. And when you actually document what you do with your time, it's easy to say that you value certain things, but where you spend your time, that's ultimately what you value. And it's really difficult to and I think we often get frustrated, because when our values and the way we're spending our time is not aligned, we feel an internal sense of friction, like there's a constant anxiety. And that's actually I love that, because that's one of the practices I'm kind of doing now in my journal every day is just going through and saying these are the things I value, how much time did I spend towards those. So I think that's, that's awesome. Let's jump into some of your professional work. Because I, you know, obviously, this is how we met, you came in and spoke to a room, maybe you've done a 1000s of Vistage presentations. Now, we're probably not the most diverse group of people. But one of the things that you mentioned in your book was the three C's, I think it was clarity, coaches, and CEOs. And so one of I really think that the way you're going about the consulting practice and building something that really is for the benefit of everyone in an organization, but really starting from the top down, could you talk a little bit just about the work you're doing with CEOs, and you know, take it take that anywhere you want?
Well, I think it's so critical, you hit the nail on the head that any any amount of change that has to happen organizationally, it has to start at the top, if it doesn't start at the top, and as a bottom up approach, you run the risk of being shut down. In the event that there's there's not buy in at the top right. And so when you have conversations with CEOs, and our work is primarily around, you know, reconnecting our heads with our hearts, just put spending time, you know, putting away the noise, not listening to the noise, not thinking about, you know, political affiliations, or what's being talked about in all of these media spaces. But let's really think about the issues as it relates to us individually. And then from there, let's think about how these things impact the people we love and care about. And then from there, as we peel this onion, continue to peel this onion. Now let's think about how these things are impacting those who we've hired. Those who are following us those who were leading, right, and and the more we can stop, and really take that kind of approach. It brings us back to the humanity of business. If you're employing people, then you're in the business of people, right. And those businesses that are thriving are those who can take a team and have everyone on that team operating at their highest capacity. Well, there are some social things that are happening that are taking away from individuals being able to perform at their highest capacity, whether that's domestic violence, or it's sexual harassment in the workplace, it's discrimination based on age based on sexual orientation, based on you know, language barriers, whatever it is, there are things that are happening organizationally, that have really been pushed on the back burner when we think about our society as a whole. But in the workplace, it's detrimental to our overall goal, mission and vision. And the things that we're trying to accomplish. Not to mention, we also have, you know, this little red devil this on our shoulder, that continues to say, well, that's how we've always done it. As if history somehow is the greatest parameter for future success.
Yeah. And if you keep doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep getting what you always got, right?
Absolutely, absolutely. And, and even that takes a level of vulnerability to stop and be honest about what we've been getting. And not only who's benefited from it, but who has it, and why. And most importantly, how does that negatively impact us? So just to just make this conversation a little more plain and go a little bit deeper, how does it impact you as a white male CEO that people have Color don't get equal and equitable opportunities in your company. When you think about that, I'm not asking you to answer that question. But when you think about it from that perspective, and you think about value, right, when you think about value, and you think about, as I said before individuals operating at their highest capacity in the event that we don't have a diverse workforce. Number one, we can't say that we've hired top talent. Because the the data actually says that teams that are diverse, actually outperform their competitors.
Yeah, there's a really McKinsey and Company study that I'll be sure to share in the show notes sorry to sidetrack you, but great data on that. Absolutely. You know, so So we know that we know that exists. So in the event that we don't have a diverse team, then the data says we're going to be underperforming.
So the fact that people of color or those who identify as LGBTQ plus or those who have experienced handicaps or disabilities, the fact that they can't come and work for you, or they come and work for you and aren't able to operate at their full capacity due to the social issues means that as a company, we're underachieving.
Absolutely, and, and as a leader, one of our top priorities, I think has to be creating psychological safety for everyone to show up and actually, you know, be able to perform and that that is largely based on creating a safe environment where we're not constantly kind of in the limbic brain and the fight or flight mentality. So I think I think that's great. As far as I mean, go back and give us a few more points. Because I imagine knowing what my social network looks like, and who will probably be listening to this, it will probably be a lot of white guys, potentially a lot of business leaders. And there are a few points, I know, there's one I want to circle back to but if you were going to give us some kind of quick hits on what we can be doing. You know, why don't you lay that on us as far as like, what's step one, and two, and three, as far as Shane sees it?
Well, I think first and foremost, the most important thing is the education. We got to take the time to truly educate ourselves on the experiences of others, so that we can adequately and appropriately diversify our talent pool where we're looking for talent, right? I think that's important. And again, it speaks to the value that I was talking about earlier, it's very difficult to see value where you're disconnected. Right. And so because of that disconnectedness because we're we're not, you know, we're not going to places of worship with vastly diverse groups, we're not going to eat dinner with vastly diverse groups. We're not, we're not hanging out, we're not friends, right? If you were building a board of directors, and you needed 20, black folks and 20, folks who are non black, could you do it? Right, like, we're just not connected in that way. And and and there's a drawback from that there's opportunity cost there. So I think we got to educate ourselves about the experiences and the cultures of people who look very differently than us. I think Secondly, we got to realize that diversity is about more than race and gender. And we got to stop excluding other people, there are some white males who are discriminated against in the workplace. And we don't even think about that part of it. We don't even we don't even conceptualize how that's even happening. Right. And so we got to get out of this binary mindset, that diversity is just one or two things, because it's not it's so much broader than that. And we got it, again, educate ourselves on the experiences of people that may have the experiences that are different than ourselves. Understanding that how you experience something is not all that there is. Right? And then lastly, what I would say is that we have to be intentional, about inclusivity. The most important piece of diversity, equity and inclusion is inclusion. For individuals to truly feel like they have a workplace and a culture where they belong. And as the CEO as the executive as the leader, you don't get to judge that. That's the space where you got to listen. Right? For example, if if I'm feeling sick, right, yeah. feeling sick, then you don't get to tell me how sick I am. Because you're not in my body, you don't know what this feels like you don't know what I'm dealing with. Right? Right. You can only see how I look and feel, but you can't feel it for me. The same is true for inclusion, you might, you might have the best intentions in the world. But if you don't come and sit down and ask, How am I experiencing your best efforts? Are we accomplishing the goal? What are some areas where we can improve? What are some innovative things that we've not even thought about that you could bring to the table? Right? It's one thing to invite someone, it's another thing to include them, to include them in the decision making to include them in the process to include them in the thinking. Right. And that's the place where we have to get to because like I said before, as companies as businesses, we are under achieving not because we're not great, not because we don't have the best strategies, not because you know, we're not doing things in a way that leads to success. But because we're not including all of the talent pool that we have access to. Absolutely. When I think back to my basketball experiences, the teams that did the best. Were the ones where we maximized every single resource we had. If we had a guy that was a great shooter, we put him in position to shoot if we had a guy who couldn't shoot a lick, but he was great at penetrating and getting other people to ball, we got him to basketball and let them use pick and rolls where he could get downhill and find open people, we had a great defender, he was guarding the best player every single night, right? And it's through the process of the offseason, that we learn each other's strengths and weaknesses, right. And the goal of the coach is to make sure that we're exposing all of our secrets. And we're working on those weaknesses so that they don't get exposed. Right, right. It's the same thing that has to happen in our corporate environment when it comes to our culture.
Yeah, I really like that. I think, and I think diversity in particular is one of the ways we can, you know, I think I'll speak for myself, we're not the most diverse organization. And I know that, you know, when I think just strategically, from a business standpoint, if we don't have a lot of different opinions and different perspectives, looking at a problem, and we can't solve that in the optimal way, you know, he who sees reality, the best is, is going to make the best decisions. And we There is not a single reality, right, we all have our own perspectives. And we all have a, you know, a similar but different reality. And so we need those different perspectives and opinions, and everyone has a role to play. Even if they're not the the guy in charge of that high scoring person, whatever it is, everyone's got a role to play. One of the I know we're running a little bit short on time, I do not want to miss because I have stolen a phrase from you. And I use it all the time. And I think it's when I think about setting up an organization. I think that this, you know, these two words operational are three, operationalize upward mobility that was incredibly impactful and is something that I think is important for us to think about all the time, especially as leaders and when we're shaping organizations. But yeah, I'd love to hear you just riff on on operationalizing upward mobility, because I think those three words, if you don't take away anything else, it's incredibly important, because I think in order to do that, as well, you actually have to understand you have to have an inclusive workplace. Because operationalizing upward mobility is not just getting a pay increase, right? It can be a lot more than that. So tell me about why that's important, and maybe a few tips on how we can do that as leaders.
Well, again, as I did in the VISTAs group, I just want to brag on my wife or for example, just because, you know, she's the one that really made this resonate for me as she walked into her dreams up this dream position. She said, I miss out identified and said this is where I want to be. And on her first day of work, she comes home and I asked her what was the highlight of her day? And she said my supervisor asked me where do I want to be in two to three years and how can I help you get there? That's great mine. Yeah, this is I thought it was gonna be something immaculate something I don't I don't know some some some type of Chinese proverb or something, but just came back with Right, because the the intentionality of truly caring about people, right? And understanding that if we can make this relationship mutually beneficial, now, you're almost guaranteed to get all that I have, not just what I have left. So operationalizing, upward mobility is literally having a plan for every single position that you hire, I love that none of that is about pay increase. Some of that is about moving up the corporate ladder. Some of that is about just professional development. Right? So many companies have really thrown professional development out the window, and we're paying for that exponentially. I was on a call with a client. Earlier today, were brainstorming about, you know, what their strategy would look like. And the number one thing on the list was to ensure that there was professional development for not only their managers, but for the employees who would become managers. It's so critical and so important, but the data says that more than 55% of managers in today's workplace have not been properly trained to manage staff. That's a huge liability. On top of the fact that we are diversifying more. So now you have individuals who for the first time in their lives are being supervised and supervising people who are different than them.