The Creating Belonging Podcast
In the book, Creating Belonging: A Practical Guide to Accelerate Belonging in Organizations and Communities, Justin Reinert describes a model where belonging sits at the intersection of authenticity and acceptance. In The Creating Belonging Podcast, host Justin Reinert will continue the conversation of creating belonging by discussing others' experiences when they've been at various levels of authenticity and acceptance in their communities. Our goal with this podcast will be to help others find new paths to belonging in their communities.
The Creating Belonging Podcast
S2E11: Cultivating Inclusive Workplaces for Thriving Teams
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Ever wondered why some teams flourish under certain bosses while others flounder? Corporate relationship expert Tony Chatman joins us to peel back the layers on how value and respect are cornerstones in creating that coveted sense of belonging within teams. Tony shares his invaluable insights on relationship-based leadership, emphasizing its impact in the workplace and how it's not just about hitting diversity quotas. It’s about building genuine connections that go beyond the surface level. Prepare to be enlightened on the nuances of empathy and unconscious bias, and how these elements, when addressed with care and understanding, can either spell success or doom for a company's culture.
As we navigate the complexities of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and belonging in the corporate world, Tony and I swap stories that underline the triumphs and trials of carving out a space in the DEI arena. We dive into the concept that true belonging isn't a box-ticking exercise, but the organic result of an inclusive environment where everyone has room to thrive. From personal anecdotes of culture shocks to the challenges of being a minority in a professional realm, this episode isn't just about highlighting the 'leaks' in organizational culture—it's a clarion call for leaders and companies to patch these gaps and create a thriving, diverse workforce that stands the test of time. Join us for a candid, transformative conversation that might just change the way you view your workplace.
You can find Tony on tonychatman.com, or on LinkedIn & Instagram.
You can order your copy of Creating Belonging on Amazon.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Creating Belonging podcast. Today I have with me Tony Chatman. Tony, thank you for joining me and if you would just take a moment to introduce yourself, hey, Justin.
Tony:So thanks for having me. I'm a corporate relationship expert and really what that means is, when we look at the workplace, a lot of people focus on products and process, but I feel like most people don't come into the workplace prepared for the people dimension, right. And so if we learn how to leverage the relationships, literally the people side of the workplace, that can either be our competitive advantage or, if we don't, it could be our Achilles tendon. And you know a little backstory for me. I got side, but I quickly learned that I got a lot more done because of how I treated people than because of what I knew.
Justin:That's an amazing realization and glad that you're in and doing that work. As so with typically with my guests, I like to ask them to disclose any identities that they'd like to share, just to kind of ground us in the conversation and understand perspectives we might be bringing to the table. What identities would you mind sharing with our audience?
Tony:Black cis heterosexual, us Gen X. Yeah, I think that's pretty good.
Justin:Great, thank you. Thank you for sharing so kind of before we hit record. We started talking about kind of belonging and perspectives on belonging, and so before I go there, I want to talk a little bit about the work that you do and kind of how belonging plays into that. And so, in particular in your work you talk about relationship-based leadership, and so I'd love to hear how belonging plays into relation-based leadership.
Tony:Sure. So, you know, I think we all have to look at how we're going to define belonging, right. I think that that's part of the challenge, and there are so many ways. I know you have an incredible framework for it, which we may or may not. Talk a little bit about.
Tony:One of the things that I have noticed, after surveying thousands of people, when asking them you know, what do you want in the workplace, and especially in the phrase, what makes you feel included, right? Although belonging that word came up, the trend that we saw was that there were two words that seem to take, you know, compose everything, and that was value and respect. And so, really, from my vantage point, what I look at a lot is how do we ensure that, when people are in the workplace, that they are valued, valued as human beings, valued for what they bring to the table, and respected? And in many ways, although it's hard to get to a lot of the nuances of what different people will determine as actual belonging, that seems to cover a lot of it in a lot of the situations, and so that's kind of the starting point and the reason that I do it is, you know, realistically, when I got into becoming a professional speaker, I had a lot of things I could talk about. Right, I had a strong background in leadership. I had a strong background in change management, strong background in communication, but I kept thinking to myself.
Tony:Number one most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work, so in many ways, that begins to define their experience. Number two most people have never had multiple great bosses. You know what I mean, if we're going to just be real when you talk about not decent, not good, but great. However, you define a great boss, asking people have you ever had two great bosses in a row? They look at you like you know you're asking them to find Bigfoot. I mean, it's just, it's one of those funny things and I thought this shouldn't be. And a lot of the issues that people have revolve around their relationship with their boss, supervisor, manager, whatever phrase you want to say. And so those two things really kind of cemented the direction I wanted to go and I realized that looking at it through that lens framed how to look at a lot of different things and helping to more easily define a lot of the phrases that we use in buzzwords in ways that are a lot more simple.
Justin:I want to ref a little bit on the. So you mentioned value and respect. As you know what people want at work and kind of playing into that belonging and and I see those related to so in in the creating belonging work. I talk about belonging being created at the intersection of authenticity and acceptance and I think value and respect sit really nicely in that acceptance piece.
Justin:And one of the things I wanted to ask you about you talk a bit about kind of getting people pushed out of their comfort zone and one of the things I wanted to ask you about you talk a bit about kind of getting people pushed out of their comfort zone and I think that oftentimes accepting others can push us out of our comfort zone. Right, it may require us to challenge or suspend our own values, you know, not valuing others, but I mean, like our own personal values. That may, you know, present some challenges there. So I'm curious you know, how do you work with folks to push them out of their comfort zone, to create that acceptance or value or respect of their people, to build those relationships?
Tony:Sure, I mean a lot of it really comes down to empathy, right? We're all trying to have a human experience, whether in society or in the workplace, and so really, that empathy helping to see another person's vantage point, looking at the world through their eyes, walking in their shoes is really a great starting point. Now, what I happen to do in a lot of my work is I combine that with really giving people an understanding of unconscious bias, and in a way that I think is different than many people have experienced that phrase. But understanding biases, although we often think of it in terms of, you know, prejudice and discrimination, it's a much larger umbrella and it really is a focus on how we make decisions, how we interpret our realities, and that a lot of it. Number one is we're using our most ineffective part of our brain to do it, but the other part of it is most of the narratives, because I like to use the word narrative.
Tony:One of my close friends, she's got me thinking this way and she would say well, you did this, and so the story I told myself was this right, because we're filling in blanks and to help people understand a lot of the ways that we fill in those blanks, to tell our story is a function of our previous experiences. It's how we were raised, who raised us, where we were raised, our education system, our religious experiences, our personal experiences. When you start looking at all these different things, you realize we have a very subjective point of view and we begin to expand that and take other people's points of view into consideration. It allows us to rehumanize them, and so I really feel like it's a lot of making, it's remembering that everyone's a human being and I think we forget that we we look at them as well. They think differently, they do, they have very different values, and so then what we do is we demonize them.
Tony:But the way you demonize someone is you first have to dehumanize them so that you can demonize them without having a lot of cognitive distance right and not a lot of I'm a bad person because I'm demonizing. Well, no, they. No, they deserve it. Look at who they really are. And so you start taking that away and you rehumanize people.
Tony:Then it's harder to demonize and discriminate against them, and so I think that is kind of the foundation that I lay so that we can start having these conversations, so that we get to value, and I really, I intentionally use the word value even more than acceptance, and I do it because of conversations I've had over the last few years. As the world's going through this social conversation and I constantly hear people saying you know, we need to be more tolerant, and I would just ask them so are you tolerating me right now? Is that kind of what we're doing? Because I need to know if you know what I mean. If the best we're going to do is that you tolerate me, that's not an acceptable level and I want to make sure that we can get beyond that. I think acceptance is a good level, but I like the idea of valuing people for all the various reasons we can talk about.
Justin:I really like that and, yeah, I think tolerance it's an interesting word because then if you ask someone if you've ever felt tolerated and then ask them, did that feel good? They're probably going to say no, right. So we definitely need more than tolerance. And I like this idea of value and rehumanizing people Because I definitely I talk about bias too and from that perspective that you know you have bias because you're human Right, end of story. And I think for too long we've built up bias to be a bad thing, but it's it's not a bad thing. It actually keeps us alive, like the structure of our brain that's doing that thing. It keeps us alive on a daily basis. But it also gets in the way of modern decisions and you know exactly that of like it, it helps us dehumanize people and so we have to then work kind of more consciously to rehumanize people. So I really like the way that you've described that and and your perspective on on how we rehumanize people.
Tony:Yeah, thank you. Well, one of the things I'd like to say about that is people. Yeah, thank you. One of the things I'd like to say about that is you're absolutely right. Bias is a human condition, right? Although we can reprogram some of our biases, I agree with you. Bias in and of itself is not bad. It's the fact that we're not conscious that is making the decisions right. Like, quick example, I was in Juneau, alaska, doing some work in February of 2017, I think it was and so I wanted to go see Mendenhall Glacier, right and so so I'm at the glacier, but it's kind of this weird time. It's like 40 degrees, so it's it's not. Things aren't as frozen as they should be, but you know, there's ice. It was an ice storm, and I don't know if you've ever been to mendenhall glacier, or do you know? Alaska um?
Tony:but, there's like a frozen lake that you walk across to get to the actual glacier so you can see it from the state park. But you can walk across this frozen lake during the winter and like get to the glacier and like walk inside it and so. But I'm like it's 40 degrees, so I'm kind of walking and I'm like am I gonna? You know, I go like 40 yards. I'm like, you know, I don't know if this thing's going to like crack or whatever.
Tony:And then in that moment I turned to my left and here come three guys geared up right, they got the spike boots and the ski poles and they do this every day and they just walk right past me like it's nothing and they've said nothing to me. But in that moment my conscious bias was oh, they know what they're doing, I can follow them right. That's still a bias, because I'm telling myself a story based on incomplete information, but because I was conscious of it. It's a very different thing than if I'm unconsciously treating someone based on an urge or a feeling I'm not even recognizing.
Justin:Yeah, yeah, when I think the trouble, to your point the trouble is when we feel like our decisions are 100% made in our conscious brain, that we have control over that. I think that's where we get in trouble. We have to understand that our brain is wired to be efficient. It makes decisions for us on a regular basis, and once we understand that, we can then start to think about okay, how do I override it when it needs to be overridden?
Tony:Yeah, exactly, and to your point. Functional MRIs show us that about 90% of the decisions we make on a daily basis originate out of our subconscious right, 95% of our buying decisions. So when you start to understand that, it makes you really rethink everything.
Justin:Yes, yes. So when we were talking earlier we were talking a bit about kind of belonging and the positionality of belonging with the greater deib and or any other letters we want to throw into this body of work that that we do, and you know the role of. I want to, I want to tee up the topic of the role of belonging in diversity, equity, inclusion, um, accessibility. I think I think I've captured the most of the the things we're throwing in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility.
Tony:I think I've captured the most of the things we're throwing in Justice sometimes.
Justin:Sorry, what was that? Sometimes people put in justice, oh, yes, justice. So yeah, I'm curious your thoughts on the positionality of belonging in that greater kind of sphere of work.
Tony:All righty, here we go. Here's our phone conversation, Because we did start. I just kind of shared my bottom line thought with you, but I think it's a much more complicated thought, right? So I think that belonging is a critical component of culture.
Tony:An organization's culture and if you want to have a component of culture, an organization's culture, and if you want to have a healthy workplace culture, belonging I mean the studies show that when people feel like they belong and they think they're cared about and they're valued, right, you start talking about production increases, innovation increases, resilience increases, retention increases, right? The business case is nearly overwhelming. I mean, it's just mind-blowing when you really think of all the things that are there. That being said, I struggle to have it in the conversation of diversity, equity and inclusion, and I do that for a few reasons. Now, on the positive side, or if I were going to argue for it, there are organizations that come to the realization that they need to focus on, you know, dei or whatever, because some type of climate or culture survey has told them that certain demographics view the organization differently and they view that they fit in differently. They view that they you know that they are valued, that they belong very differently. That being said, here's why I struggle.
Tony:If you looked at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right, and you can argue whether Maslow's hierarchy of needs is, you know, the perfect model or not, whatever, but there's this idea that kind of at the bottom level. There's these psychological needs, or physiological needs. I should say that are things like, you know, food, water, sex excretion, breathing. Right Above that there's safety and a lot of this is. Although we often talk a lot about psychological safety, this is physical safety, in many ways right, but there's also economic safety. You know, the safety of employment, the safety of having resources, the safety of your family. There's all these things Above that, normally on the pyramid is where way and it's arguable, obviously, is that before you can focus on this third tier, if you don't have two and one done, if you don't feel safe, if you can't eat, you're not thinking about belonging.
Tony:So my challenge with putting belonging in the DEI space is, when you look at equity and inclusion, those are hitting the physiological and the safety needs You're talking about. Can I get a job? Can I afford to feed my family? Am I? I'm coming to work, but you know, know, I was the second African-American to ever graduate from my university with the degree I had. I know lots of people who were the first Black person, the first Chinese person, the first Mexican person I'm being very specific with these identities to ever work in their job and their lives were threatened. Their tires were slashed, some of them. Their houses were vandalized, right? I mean, you're talking about real safety issues and I think that people who have yet to get equity and inclusion don't have the luxury to think about belonging.
Justin:Yeah.
Tony:So that's my challenge with this conversation about belonging. I think it applies to everyone and I think that in many ways it can be an indicator of, you know, strong needs in the diversity, equity and inclusion space. But what I see is I see a focus on belonging at the expense of equity and inclusion, and I think that is going down a very dangerous road.
Justin:Yeah, okay, let's have some fun with this. One thing I want to share, something that I don't think I've shared it on the podcast or publicly and I think it's interesting to this conversation. So I wrote my book creating belonging over two years ago, and a year ago was really getting settled into my business and kind of, you know, working through how I'm going to market all of that, and was working with my coach, how I'm going to market all of that and was working with my coach and you know, working through, like Justin, you need you need the one thing like what's your one thing that you're really going to focus in on, and or kind of that kind of the marketplace focus. And I had three things and I was like, well, here, here and here. And she's like, no, justin, we need one. And she kept pushing me into DEIB. She's like you do DEIB work? And I said no, absolutely not. That is not where my business sits, that's not what I do and I don't want to muddy the waters because I think there are people that do pure DEI work differently and better than I do.
Justin:Yes, I wrote a book titled Creating Belonging, but I think it sits a little bit different and it can sit in that greater DEIB space. But I'm like there's other pieces to this puzzle that aren't I'm interested in them, I'm passionate about them, but I don't think that I'm the one to go fix them necessarily right as far as where my interest, where my talent lies, and so I wanted to throw that out there as an interesting positionality of you know, I've tussled with this a bit in my own work of where does Justin and his business sit in the world, and so kind of to that point of you know, where does it sit? I kind of. Here's the way I think about it. I want to tee this up and I'm curious your reaction.
Justin:I think that inclusion, specifically inclusion, are acts like we do things that are inclusive of people, right, we do things to include people. When we do inclusion through a diversity lens, we're ensuring that we're creating a, you know, getting a diverse population of people that are included in that. And if we're doing it equitably, we're doing it in a way that gives people what they need, not just equal treatment. When we get all of that stuff right, belonging is the outcome yes, I could not agree.
Tony:Listen, number one. You and I probably share more similarities, as we're having this conversation, than we realize. I fought against being in the dei space for the first nine years of my business, even though I was constantly being asked to and pushed into and what we haven't. So now it's my turn to ask you a question. So if you wouldn't mind sharing and I think people who listen to your podcast already know this, but we haven't had this conversation would you be sharing some of your identities?
Justin:oh yeah, absolutely so. Um, uh, white cisgender gay man, um, I I something that I talk about a lot. I grew up in rural Iowa, so most everyone around me looked like me, but I now I live in Chicago, uh, and you know so very different space, and I share that because it's it very much influences the lens that I have and the blinders that I'm constantly beating back, and the, the, the program bias that's inside me that I'm constantly beating back, and the programmed bias that's inside me that I'm constantly trying to fight and overcome. So, yeah, that's a bit of mine and yeah, I share that a lot, but we haven't had that conversation, so yeah, Number one.
Tony:Thank you for sharing, because, I mean, these vulnerabilities are not things that are always easy and, in some cases, aren't always welcome, so I really appreciate it. You know. So, you know, going to this conversation we're having, there are probably, at different stages of your life, various times that you did not feel like you belong, sometimes based on some of your various identities, right, I mean, you can go through it and sometimes it's based on an identity that people don't think about, right? You grew up in Iowa and moved to Chicago. I grew up in Kalamazoo and moved to Chicago. That was a culture shock for me and for everyone else around me, right.
Tony:So, but the thing that you said is that if we do all of these things right, belonging becomes the outcome. I think you can say that about almost every component of DEI, b, a, j, whatever letter. Right, that the goal is not to manufacture diversity. The goal is to do things in such a way that diversity is the outcome. The goal is not to manufacture equity or manufacture inclusion. But if we do things correctly, then equity, inclusion, diversity, acceptance I mean, I just think about this. We had to say, hey, we need to add inclusion to diversity, because somebody was doing diversity without inclusion, right, we had to say, hey, we need to add inclusion to diversity, because somebody was doing diversity without inclusion.
Tony:We had to add equity. I've said for years really it's D&I diversity and inclusion because equity is an aspect of inclusion. How can you have equity if you don't have inclusion? How can you have accessibility? If you don't have inclusion, how can you have belonging? But I understand the need to keep some ways to keep parsing us out, but but it seems like we go after the labels instead of understanding. And this is where I think, because I say we're similar. For me, I fought this and I always tell people I am not a dei expert. I tell, I tell my clients I'm not a DEI practitioner, I'm not. I do understand workplace culture and if we do culture right, then we deal. We will get this as an outcome. And yes, at times we need to focus on this. Just as you know, if you were in ICU because you just had a stroke, there's parts of your body you must focus on in that moment, but that does not mean that you don't care about the whole body, and so I think that's kind of how we should be thinking about this.
Justin:Yeah Well, and I like that you focus on it from the culture perspective, because I think any organization that doesn't look at the big picture is going to fail at it, whatever it is that we're defining it as. So you know organizations that don't have their culture right, the inclusion pieces, but that you can go and hire diverse talent. You know talented that doesn't look like the talent that we have today, look like the talent that we have today. But you now have people that, if we don't have our unconscious bias under control, we don't let right. Those people are not going to last very long, and I've I've been in those organizations where the focus is just on the diversity numbers, but the diversity numbers never stay where they want them to be, because the higher turnover is in the marginalized populations, because those people still don't feel like they, and for me it's it's that they feel like they don't belong, they don't have, we don't have, the right inclusion, and so they're like peace out, I don't belong here, I gotta go somewhere else, and so that's where I, I I don't mind, I don't know, I don't mind lumping it in there, because I do think it's an important component, but I also really respect the identification that like there's a lot of moving pieces here and they all have to be working right.
Tony:Yeah, I appreciate you saying it that way. You know, I look at the whole thing as too often we're trying to build a pipeline, but if you don't fix the leak, the product's never going to get to the right place, and so it is. You can't just build the pipeline.
Justin:You have to fix the leaks of not belonging, fix the leaks of not being inclusive, fix the leaks of not being equitable, and that will solve a lot of the problems chatted through this um, because I think it's good to I just I think it's good to to really dig through some of the definitions and how we're viewing things to be able to move forward productively. I would it kind of last transition of conversation. One thing I would love to hear is I always love to hear people's personal stories of belonging or not belonging and I'd love to hear is I always love to hear people's personal stories of belonging or not belonging? And I'd love to hear from you, kind of in your journey. You've already mentioned one thing coming from Kalamazoo to Chicago. You know there's, there's that I'm just I'm curious if there's some story that you wouldn't mind sharing of either finding belonging or not having it belonging or not having it?
Tony:Sure, and I think it's fascinating, I think they both can happen at the same time, which sounds like a strange, almost an oxymoron, but I mentioned earlier. So I said I was a chemical engineer, but technically my degree was in paper science, which is a specialized form of chemical engineering. When I graduated from Western Michigan I was the second African-American to ever graduate from that university with my degree. It's highly specialized, highly valued, highly competitive and we walked out with the highest salaries as underwriters, right. But that also meant I walked into an industry that's not used to having meat, and often I was going to paper mills in very small areas where I maybe there you don't think black people, when you think Moralton, arkansas. When you think Mattawaska, maine, when you think international falls, minnesota, right, I mean, there are places that when I went you had the combination of just the unfamiliarity of dealing with someone like this, but also the very conscious biases. You know me sitting in my boss's office as he's talking to a client, the client not knowing that he's on speakerphone and I'm in the room.
Tony:And he's saying. So, yeah, you know that monkey that you sent up to the mill last week got lost Right Speaking of me. So that was a very real, very constant experience for me. Experience for me.
Tony:At the same time, while working for that very same organization, I can think of one particular regional man, I can actually think of a regional sales manager, but a district manager who I won't even mention his name, I don't even know if he's still alive, but he, just he saw me and I think that's the word I would use. He saw me. He saw me, he saw my intelligence, he saw my social skills. He saw that, even though all those things I just mentioned are very real, by the time I was in a client space for a half hour, they loved me and he knew it. And he always said listen, if you ever want to come into the field in my district, I will always have a spot for you.
Tony:And I tell people to this day I'm a business owner. I've been a business owner for over 20 years. I can't imagine being an employee. I just you know it's no way. If I had to, I would consider it for him. He was that guy because he valued me and had a vision in me and so within his sphere I felt like I belonged, even though in the greater ecosystem I didn't Thank you for sharing that and I think there's.
Justin:You know, I talk a bit about the fluidity of belonging. Right, it can go up and down and it depends on who we're with at the time. Can go up and down and it depends on who we're with at the time. And you know, belonging, our state of belonging, doesn't stay static with a greater organization. It can vary from team to team or, in your case, kind of being client facing. You know you could go into one, one organization in an area of the country that is, you know, not as enlightened I don't know, trying to think of a better word that works, and then you know, or go to another client that is, you know, very, you know open, accepting, and and you know.
Justin:So, yeah, I think that it can be very fluid and it's interesting in the podcast, the conversations that I'm having, we talk a lot about that fluidity and you know, even being able to parts of ourselves, parts of our identities, being able to be open and feeling belonging with them, and some that maybe we can still kind of hide away but still feel belonging, and so it's an interesting, interesting dichotomy with that.
Tony:Yeah, if I could add something to this idea of fluidity, I think part of the reason that our belonging, part of the reason that our belonging is a fluid thing, is because, going back to the word we used earlier, bias is also a fluid thing, is very situational, right? When I lived in New York, I played basketball with this group of guys four times a week. Half of them were NYPD, right, and we're to this day. We have a group chat and it's a wild ride on that group chat. But we are buddies and I know if I ever need anything every one of them will have my back.
Tony:But I also know from their very own mouths when they enter into their beat mode, their cop mode, and they're in certain areas they are very different people Because there's very different dangers, very different experiences, very different realities, all of these things. And I'm not saying it's justifiable or good or bad or whatever, but I'm saying that is the reality, that this person can be this way in this environment and step into a completely different environment or have a completely different emotion and have a very different response yes, yes, context can, yes, yes, context can absolutely shift, you know, heighten our biases, shift our biases.
Justin:But yeah, the context can really really shift that and thank you for that, absolutely, tony. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I've enjoyed our conversation and I have a feeling we could keep talking forever, and maybe we will, but for this conversation I want to put a bow on it, but I do want to make sure that people can find you. So if people want to reach out to you, tony, what's the best ways to find you?
Tony:The easiest thing. If you can spell my name, which is the last thing the C-H-A-T is in Tom, it may end I'm TonyChapmancom. So my website's there, links to all of my socials there, emails, there, social media I'm either Tony Chapman or on Instagram and TikTok on Tony Chapman Speaks. This is because Tony Chapman was taken, and so you know. Whichever you know, your flavor is that you like the best. Find me in that space and I'm there.
Justin:Perfect, and I will make sure to add some links in the show notes so people can link to that more easily if they have access to that. But again, tony, thank you so much for joining me today.
Tony:I was going to say great conversation and I appreciate you providing a space to have the back and forth that we had, because I'm actually sharing thoughts that I've been thinking for a while but have never shared publicly. So I appreciate that.
Justin:I love that, thank you. I love hearing different perspectives and I'm not afraid of seeing where the conversation will go, so I appreciate you sharing. Thank you, tony, and join us again for another episode of the Creating Bolling Podcast. Thanks,
