In this episode, my guest is Minette Norman, an author, speaker, and leadership consultant who previously spent decades leading global technical teams in the software industry. She has extensive experience leading internationally distributed teams and believes that when groups embrace diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs emerge, and innovation accelerates.
We discuss inclusive leadership practices, empathy, and the value of diverse viewpoints. We also chat about the significance of trust and constructive dissent in shaping organizational culture. The episode wraps up with practical advice for fostering team unity and encouraging inclusive idea sharing, and reflections on personal and professional growth.
Minette is the author The Boldly Inclusive Leader and the co-author of The Psychological Safety Playbook.
Key Takeaways:
Minette Norman links:
Hi, I'm your podcast host Keita Demming: Author, Advisor, Thought Partner & Coach.
I'm an award-winning educator and coach with a PhD in Adult Education and Workplace Learning who works to transform companies into places that are idea-driven and people-centered.
At The Covenant Group, I design training programs and coach entrepreneurs and business leaders to meet their strategic goals and build their businesses.
In my book, Strategy to Action: Run Your Business Without It Running You, I introduce an effective and straightforward tool to elevate your skills as a business professional and navigate the corporate world. The book offers practical insights on transforming strategies into tangible results.
Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and subscribe to my Newsletter.
In this episode, my guest is Minette Norman, an author, speaker, and leadership consultant who previously spent decades leading global technical teams in the software industry. She has extensive experience leading internationally distributed teams and believes that when groups embrace diversity in all its forms, breakthroughs emerge, and innovation accelerates.
We discuss inclusive leadership practices, empathy, and the value of diverse viewpoints. We also chat about the significance of trust and constructive dissent in shaping organizational culture. The episode wraps up with practical advice for fostering team unity and encouraging inclusive idea sharing, and reflections on personal and professional growth.
Minette is the author The Boldly Inclusive Leader and the co-author of The Psychological Safety Playbook.
Key Takeaways:
Minette Norman links:
Hi, I'm your podcast host Keita Demming: Author, Advisor, Thought Partner & Coach.
I'm an award-winning educator and coach with a PhD in Adult Education and Workplace Learning who works to transform companies into places that are idea-driven and people-centered.
At The Covenant Group, I design training programs and coach entrepreneurs and business leaders to meet their strategic goals and build their businesses.
In my book, Strategy to Action: Run Your Business Without It Running You, I introduce an effective and straightforward tool to elevate your skills as a business professional and navigate the corporate world. The book offers practical insights on transforming strategies into tangible results.
Follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and subscribe to my Newsletter.
Yeah. So I think one of the keys to being successful in business is working across, I would say working cross-functionally. So don't just stay in your little narrow swim lane. Get to know those salespeople, get to know those marketing people, get to know the finance people and to understand the business as holistically as you possibly can. I definitely found that I started out very narrow in my little niche and the more I learned from different aspects of the company, the more I felt like I understood what I was building, why I was building it, for whom I was building it, how we were getting it out into the world. I think all of those things make the business more successful when individuals understand their role and their connection to the greater business.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to another episode of Conversations with Keetah Deming. Today I'm going to be in conversation with Minette Norman. She's really interesting. She's the author of two books. Her most recent book is called A Woodly Inclusive Leader, and it's about diversity and how do we be more inclusive in our leadership? Another book is about psychological safety, a topic that is near and dear to my heart. She's co-authored this book and is called the Psychological Safety Paybook. Quite an excellent read. I hope you enjoy our conversation today and the insights that we dive into. If you'd like to learn more about this podcast, hit subscribe wherever you find podcasts. You can join my mailing list at keetahdemingcom, when you can spot my work by checking out my book Strategy to Action. So, Minette, for people who have no idea who you are and what do you do, can you just share a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 1:Sure, I am a leadership consultant, I am a speaker and I'm an author. I only started my own consulting business a couple of years ago, and before that I spent 30 years in the software industry. So I was in several Silicon Valley companies. I spent 20 years at one of those companies and I did a lot of years of leadership really 20 years of leadership and that led me to the work I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:What made you decide to jump the fence to start doing that leadership work outside of a company, or becoming a doing consulting it?
Speaker 1:was a number of things. So the company where I worked, autodesk, is a big multinational company and I had I think I had eight different jobs over 20 years there. In the last five years I was the VP of Engineering Practice. It was a really big role and my role was about transforming how we developed software, really modernizing how we develop software as a modern software company. And what I learned doing that job was that it was less of a technology job and more of a culture change job and I was really trying to drive collaboration. I was trying to drive people to collaborate instead of reinventing the wheel. And as I was doing all that work, I was getting myself an education in human behavior and empathy and listening and psychological safety and all the things that contribute to a healthy work culture. And I did that job for five years and we made really good progress. But the work is never done, of course, and they're still working on many of the things that I was working on when I was there.
Speaker 1:But what led me to leave was actually, after five years in the job, we had a leadership change and I got a new leader and I realized that I didn't really sync with this person well and we were not meant to work together. And sometimes that happens and it wasn't necessarily the best ending of a really I had a fabulous career. It wasn't necessarily the best ending, but what it did was. It made me get crystal clear on what was important to me and what did I want to do next, because I wasn't ready to retire, but I also wasn't interested in joining another organization because I felt like everything that I've learned over 30 years is applicable to any organization and I think at this stage of my career, I can help many organizations, not just one. I can help many organizations and many leaders do better and be more evolved and be more human and be more inclusive, and so that's why I decided to focus my work on. That is like how can I help leaders create better cultures where everyone can do their best work?
Speaker 2:So let's double click on something you said very early on that, which is you realize that it wasn't about the technical, it was more about the human Talk about how you came to that insight and what happened. How did you come to that conclusion?
Speaker 1:What happened was and it was a very insightful executive who got me in this direction we had a CTO at the time who said we need to break down the silos. The company had grown over decades through acquisition, so acquiring, acquiring all these different companies, and we didn't necessarily integrate those acquisitions. So every group did their own thing, they picked their own tools, they had their own cultures, they did things their way. And what I realized is well, how do you get to break down silos? You can't force it. You can't necessarily say you must work together, you can't mandate it. It has to come from a place of being willing to be open to other ideas, being willing to listen to a way of doing things that may be different from your own. And so that's why I started to focus on the culture aspect of what makes people able to collaborate, what helps collaboration, what hinders collaboration.
Speaker 1:And I was putting on these big summits. I would actually put on a big engineering summit every year where we'd get 1,000 people together from the engineering community, and I realized I could shape things because I was in charge of the summit. I could shape things. So we would have lots of people talk about the technology advancements and what we were doing from a tech perspective, and I would get up every year and I would talk about something related to human interaction. So the very first time I got up and spoke, I talked about collaboration and just planting the seeds of this is what we want to do, this is what our intention is and how can we do it better. So each year it was a little bit of a different theme on interaction, basically.
Speaker 2:So let's say you were talking to yourself 10 years ago. What advice would you give yourself around breaking down silos?
Speaker 1:That's such an interesting question, I would say the advice I would give myself is remember that you see things only through your own lens and you have this view of the world that is limited, and the way you're going to do better, the way you're going to innovate, the way you're going to break down silos, is to get curious, to learn from others and to really get curious to see what are other people doing. That might be different, that might really challenge my own thinking, but that we can, together, be better than we are as individuals. And I think that's the essential question of really. It's silo breaking, but it's also inclusion. How can we be better through all aspects of diversity, whether it's that we think differently, that we have different life experiences, different backgrounds All of this is going to make us stronger, but the only way we can actually benefit from all of these great differences is to start to invite the conversations and get curious about what we can learn from others.
Speaker 1:So that's why I think even what we did, by having a summit where we would bring people together and get them to know each other and present to one another and listen to one another, that was the beginning of breaking down silos, because I think once you meet other human beings and you start to interact with them, you realize, oh, this is just another human and they have something to offer. But when you think of them as the way we thought of it, it was like another product group. Well, this is my group. Your group does it badly or your group doesn't know what they're talking about. We do it better. Then you start to meet really smart people and you realize, oh, maybe there's something I can learn here.
Speaker 2:There's something you said that I want to double click on, which is you want to invite the conversation. What does that look like? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things that I think we often do badly is that we get up and present to one another you know, we sort of are advocating for our own ideas Instead of saying like, okay, yes, I do have a point of view, this is my point of view, and now I really want to hear your perspective. I'm not going to push back, I'm not going to give you a rebuttal. I really want to hear you and fully understand you. That's what it looks like to me is inviting it in a way that I'm going to sit back, I'm going to listen. I might ask you some clarifying questions to ensure that I understand you, and even if we disagree, that's okay. It's important that we understand each other and then maybe we can find a way forward. That is either a compromise, or maybe we will go with your idea or my idea, but the important thing is that we hear each other out fully.
Speaker 2:Let's do the same question again. So go back 10 years. What advice would you give yourself around collaboration?
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things that I learned that I kind of learned the hard way is that people do not think alike, and people do not have the same personality, the same preferences that you do, and so not to think one size fits all, for example, when I was leading teams, of course initially I would lead things in my own way. That was comfortable to me and I realized well, for example, brainstorming without preparation may be very comfortable to me because that's just the way my mind works, but I may have some introverts on my team. I may have some people who think and process information differently, and I'm going to have to really find different ways to collaborate with them so that they can perhaps prepare for the conversation before we get in a room, whereas I would be fine just doing it impromptu. So collaboration means, I think, meeting people where they are and providing different input methods, different ways of engaging people who have different preferences, different learning styles, different communication styles. And honestly, I learned that through making a lot of mistakes.
Speaker 2:I love it, Love it, Love it. So I call this podcast well. The focus of this podcast is on two things how do we make people better people in business and how do we become better business people? How would you answer the first question around helping people become better people in business?
Speaker 1:Well, I think becoming better people in business really does mean showing a little humility, that you have your expertise for sure. That's why you were hired for what you do. And there are other people who have different skills and complementary skills. And the more we can learn to work with the people who are different from us, the stronger we will be as business people, because there's so much evidence that when you have people who are, who really demonstrate different aspects of diversity whether it's cognitive diversity, diversity of thinking, background, experience, life experience then you will perform better. But as a person in business and this is just our human tendency is that we're drawn to the people who are most like us, and so we actually have to sometimes struggle or work harder to work with the people who are different from us and who challenge us.
Speaker 1:So, to be a better person in business, I think we need to really overcome that natural discomfort and, for example, if you are hiring people, don't hire people who are exactly like you, which is very tempting, and you see it a lot.
Speaker 1:You see managers who've hired a staff that are just like them. What you want to do is hire people who bring different skills. And one piece of advice I got at some point in my career which I think is very valuable, is hire people who are smarter than you. Don't be afraid of that. And I think what that really means is it's not about intelligence, it means hire people who have different skills from you, because together you're going to be stronger and your business will be stronger. And I think that doesn't come naturally to us as human beings, because we have that affinity bias where we really we are more comfortable with the people just like us. So that's where I think, to be a better person in business, you do have to challenge your innate reactions and start to really overcome that natural bias and work hard to get curious about those people who are different from you and what can they add?
Speaker 2:So let's say, I'm a successful business person, I've had some model of success, et cetera, and you're telling me hey, I want you to go and get used to working with people who are not like you, are different from you. What's that first step I got to take as that person? How do you think somebody goes about doing that?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that they have to seek out those kinds of people who are different. You know, for example, I remember at one point that one of the leadership teams that I was working with was very homogeneous, and it's not necessarily like the first thing you do is go hire someone different. Maybe the first thing you do is go have a conversation with someone you don't normally have coffee with or have lunch with, and just go out and get to know them. I honestly think it sounds kind of simple, but I think it's really true when we just get to connect with people on a human to human level and we realize that, yeah, Kita and I, we may be very different, but fundamentally there are a lot of the same things we care about.
Speaker 1:And to find where's the common ground, which may be we both care about our families, we both care about our health, we care about our professional success, whatever it is, and then you start to understand, well, how do you think about this thing?
Speaker 1:That I see very differently and so that I think, little by little, as you spend time with those people that are different from you and that maybe challenge your thinking, you start to realize, oh yeah, I don't have to just be in my little bubble. I don't have to surround myself with people just like me and I can. Maybe we're not the people that do challenge you and that you maybe have a harder time with. Maybe they're not the people you socialize with. That's okay. We're talking about business. Who can you work with? Who's going to compliment your skills, who's going to challenge your thinking? And that they are human beings too, and so I think honestly, I always encourage people to have conversations, just get to know some people and realize that maybe they seem really really different, but fundamentally you're all human and there's more in common than not in common.
Speaker 2:I feel like we go down, that we can talk about that a lot more. It's such an interesting thing around. How do you work with people who are different?
Speaker 1:from you?
Speaker 2:Yes, because it's not a natural thing. Our natural tendency is to other people. So the conversation around hey, lean into somebody who might see the world. So, for example, politically, if I disagree with somebody, it's not my natural tendency to go and learn from that person. So it's a big ask for us to say to people hey, think about working and hiring people who are human. You may not know like or trust. That's a really hard thing, but I agree. I agree. Trust, though, that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1:Maybe you don't have to like them, you may not have to agree with them. I do think we have to trust the other person, at least in a professional setting, because and of course trust doesn't come immediately, it comes over time, right through consistency. I think that's such an interesting point you made. Like the political thing, yeah, I may not agree with you at all, and yet can I trust you in a work setting? Do I know that you're going to do the right thing professionally? I mean, I think these are pretty philosophical questions we could dive into, but I do think trust is important, even if we disagree and see the world really differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's also the philosophy. Well, the philosophical is what dictates our actions. So the way I see the world matters completely because it frames the way I see things. So I don't know. Yeah, it's an interesting one. So, all right, let's jump to the second piece around it Do you have any advice for people or any suggestions people about how they become better in business? So the first one is better people in business. How do you become a better business person? What's your advice there, if it's different, or anything around that?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there's certainly some of it is similar, but if you're really talking about meeting the business goals, is that what you mean when you say better in business, like actually maybe yeah? I want to make sure I understand the question. Maybe I should clarify.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so better in business, better. How do you better in business goals? How do you actually run a business that's profitable? How do you hire the right people? How do you make a sale, like those kind of things? How do people become better business people? How do you become business savvy?
Speaker 1:Well, okay, that clarifies it for me. I think part of it is becoming as well-rounded as possible. So let's say you are I mean, I certainly know product development the most. That's where I spent my time. So let's say you're working on developing a software product. If you only focus on your technical skills, you're going to miss out on a lot of important things.
Speaker 1:For example, what you just said is like how do you make a sale? How do you know your customer? So I think it's very important for people to get as complete a view of the business as possible, even if you specialize in sales or engineering or design, because you are then going to be a better employee and more valuable to the business. So if I'm developing a product, it's still important for me to understand how do our customers use it, who are our customers, what are the constraints they're living under? And then the sales people also like. This is where I've seen silos get in the way of successful businesses is that sales is saying one thing, product is developing something totally different. They're selling a product that we're not actually building. So I think to be successful in business and I'm not even joking right they're promising.
Speaker 2:You know that right, I know that, I know, I've seen it, I've been in the room when. I was like I know you haven't built that yet Exactly and we may never be able to build that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think, one of the keys to being successful in business is working across, I would say working cross-functionally. So don't just stay in your little narrow swim lane. Get to know those sales people, get to know those marketing people, get to know the finance people and to understand the business as holistically as you possibly can. I definitely found that I started out very narrow in my little niche, and the more I learned from different aspects of the company, the more I felt like I understood what I was building, why I was building it or whom I was building it, how we were getting it out into the world.
Speaker 1:I think all of those things make the business more successful when individuals understand their role and their connection to the greater business, and so that's what I would say is become as well-rounded as possible, and that may mean getting to know people in other departments sitting in on a customer visit or a customer phone call. Those things are eye-opening if that's not what you do day to day, and vice versa for a salesperson that comes sitting on a product meeting and understand what's really going on in those discussions. That's how I think people get better at businesses. They don't just stay very narrowly focused on the only thing they know their experts in, but they broaden their horizons.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So talk to us about one of your books that you published. So one of the reasons I got you on this podcast is I believe Psychological Safety is probably one of the most important skills we need to learn to foster if we're going to be part of teams that are working well or teams that are high-performance teams. Talk to us a little bit about the book Psychological Safety Playbook, and what was your motivation behind writing that book with your co-author and what readers can get out of that.
Speaker 1:I'm delighted to talk about that book because it was a book that I never planned to write. Honestly, what happened was I was very, very interested in psychological safety. I had read about it back when I was still at Autodesk. I had found the work of Amy Edmondson, who is the Harvard Business School professor who has researched psychological safety for decades. I had read her book, the Fearless Organization. I had read that book as soon as it came out. I was a believer, so I've had it in my mind for many years.
Speaker 1:And then when I started oh, before I even get to the book, let me just say that in my many years in business, I found that there were actually fewer instances of teams with a high level of psychological safety than there were teams where I felt like it was actually pretty low. In my experience in business, it was more common for teams to have a low level of psychological safety than a high level. It was rare it was actually quite rare to be part of a team where I felt like, yeah, this is a safe place for speaking up and asking questions, and a lot of the time people were very careful and guarded and didn't really speak the truth. And I'll tell you. One way I knew that was you would have the meeting where the team would all be together and everyone would agree in the meeting and then they'd leave the meeting and you'd have the side conversations afterwards of like that doesn't make any sense and that's never going to work, and the meeting after the meeting is a sign that it wasn't safe to say that in the meeting. So there was a lot of that in my professional experience. And then when I was out on my own and I was started working with clients on really on inclusive leadership, I realized that you do not get to a sense of inclusion and belonging unless you have a foundation of psychological safety. And so and that you know I'm not the only one to say that that's not an original idea. It's definitely there's a relationship between feeling like I belong, that I'm valued, and having that psychologically safe experience.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to find more practical information on okay, I know it's important, but how do we increase psychological safety, what are the things we can do day to day? And I couldn't really find that information. If you look at Amy Edmondson's book, she has a chapter called the Leader's Toolkit and that's towards the back of the book and it's fairly high level and I wanted to use your terminal. I wanted to double click on that. I really wanted to go like now what, what do we do? So I signed up for a class, and this was in early 2021. And it was a class based on Amy Edmondson's work and it was on running psychological safety assessments and I thought, oh good, this class it was called the Fearless Organization Scan, and the scan is the assessment.
Speaker 1:This class will tell me exactly what I'm looking for. So I signed up for the class and there was Caroline Helbig who ended up being my co-author. She was in Germany, I was in California, we were both in the class together and we were both in a small cohort within the class. And one day I was on another podcast. I was actually on one of the other students' podcasts and Caroline tuned in to hear me talk about leadership and one of the things I said was exactly what I just said Like I can't find the practical information on how do we increase psychological safety. So she sent me an email and the subject line of the email was crazy idea. And her crazy idea was I heard what you said. I agree. What if you and I put our heads and our minds and our decades of experience together and we wrote I think she used the word brochure or pamphlet. She said booklet. What if you and I wrote a little booklet?
Speaker 1:And so we ended up just getting on a Zoom call, brainstorming and we really thought we would write something that we would just use with our client, and it ended up turning into a full book and we found the wonderful Canadian publisher, page Two was interested in it and we ended up working with them and so we wrote this book and Carleen illustrated it, even though she's not a professional illustrator, and it came out in February and it's been so interesting because people from all over the world that we don't know have been finding it and saying, oh, we're so happy to find something practical. Because it really is. It is meant to be a playbook, it's meant to be just actions you can take day to day, and that it's not based I mean, it's not academic at all, it's just like a manual. So that's what we wrote, and we wrote it to fill this gap between academia and the real world and we hope it's really meeting that need.
Speaker 2:So I have two questions. One what's an example of something practical in a book that somebody can take away? Somebody listening to this podcast can say hey, here's a practical thing I can take away from. That's in your book.
Speaker 1:Okay, there are 25 ideas in the book, so I'm going to pick one of them. Right, pick one.
Speaker 2:Pick one of them yeah, and having read the book, that's why I knew I could ask you a question. You'd have.
Speaker 1:Yes, Okay, I'm going to pick one that I think is really powerful. It's midway through the book. We have a play in the book that is called. It's about managing your reaction. So why is this so important? Is that we as human beings get defensive? Of course, that's natural that we get defensive. And we get defensive when someone challenges our idea, for example, or gives us feedback that we weren't prepared for, or just says you know what? You have a mistake on your slide, and immediately we go into that fight-flight-freeze mode. That is our brain. It's just our brain doing its work to keep us safe.
Speaker 1:But when you're trying to increase psychological safety, you do not want to react in the moment of feeling defensive, because what can happen is that you may lash out at someone and honestly, I've done this inadvertently and I've had it done to me. And what happens if I you know, kiti you say something to me that strikes me the wrong way and I say, oh my God, that is so ridiculous. What happens to you in that moment is you may feel really defensive also and you may feel like I am never going to open my mouth again because if I say something to Minette, she's going to jump at me and I just got embarrassed in public and I feel terrible. And what happens is that not only do you feel bad the person I lashed out at, but everyone who witnessed that goes uh-oh, danger, we're not going to speak up in front of Minette because she's just going to bite our head off, so we're all going to stay silent. And what happens then is that even if people have really important things to say, they're probably going to hold back because they're afraid that you're going to have a bad reaction.
Speaker 1:So that's why we say becoming very much aware of when we get defensive and just pausing and it sounds very simple but very powerful is that, if you said to me something about my ideas, ridiculous, and I just go okay, and I take that one breath and in that one breath I calm my brain and then I can come back and say you know, that's really interesting, I want to understand why you just said that. Can you just help me understand? And then we're calm, then we're having an open dialogue. Everyone in the room feels we can still have dialogue, I can still ask a question, I can still challenge, and so that's why managing our reactions by being aware of them, breathing, pausing and choosing a positive response. Those are just action steps. They'll take practice. I have to say it takes ongoing practice, but they're entirely doable. If you become aware of okay, I'm getting red in the face, I'm defensive, my heart is racing, I'm defensive. Pause. That's a practical action from the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's respond appropriately is how Amy and Missin Desai have described it in her book, but I love both of these books. I use them a lot in my own work and I'm a big fan of Amy and Missin's work of what was meant Me too. Which is, what are these I want to do? To come on this podcast because I don't think you can possibly talk about becoming a better person in business without talking about psychological safety, because it's such a fundamental piece. I actually did a workshop with a team yesterday on psychological safety within their teams, and we've been doing this work for like at least 10 years.
Speaker 2:I've been talking about psychological safety and then when the Google study came out which is for listeners who don't know Google came up with this research that they studied about five different characteristics of what makes high performing teams, and psychological safety was number one. It didn't matter if you were friends inside or outside, et cetera, but can people speak up? Can people have a really good argument or debate about an idea and not a person? So anything else you want to add on how psychological safety helps people be better people in business or better business?
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean of course, I could go on and on about it.
Speaker 1:I guess I'll just add maybe one thing, which is that if you deliberately work on increasing psychological safety, what you're going to see over time is that your team performance will go up in a number of ways, because those quiet people that you thought were just quiet people they're not actually quiet people, or maybe they're quiet but it doesn't mean they don't have ideas. They just didn't find a way in. They couldn't figure out. Is my idea welcome, dare, I speak up. How can I speak up when there are three people who are so loud and I can't find a way in edge-wise? So I think the most amazing thing that you'll discover if you work on psychological safety is how much better you will be in terms of performance of the team, which is what Google discovered Innovation, because really those wild ideas that no one was comfortable sharing are suddenly being shared.
Speaker 1:This is what's so important today is. We've heard so much about mental health issues, burnout, quiet, quitting, all those things that are in the news all the time. Much of that is because people and I can't say there's a direct correlation to psychological safety, but there is a correlation to feeling valued, feeling my manager treats me well, and a lot of that is really about creating those safe conditions where people can contribute. And when people feel that they're not valued, they're not respected, they suffer, and they either suffer while still in your company, retreating from their work, or they leave and go elsewhere. So it's really I mean, it's a business prerogative, but it's also just the right thing to do to treat people as human beings.
Speaker 2:Basically, you're just not getting the best out of the people that are on your team. That's basically what it is so, second, so we're going to switch it up a bit. You were in the process of writing another book when you decided to take this slight detail and write the psychological safety playbook. Tell us a little bit about and your book is coming out. By the time this podcast comes out, it probably would have been out already.
Speaker 1:I'll see you.
Speaker 2:August 8th. So August 8th, your book will be coming out. August 8th. What is that a book about? What's the inspiration for writing about bold, inclusive leaders?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Boldly, boldly. Inclusive leaders yeah, the boldly inclusive leader Right.
Speaker 1:I was working on that book.
Speaker 1:I honestly, I outlined it in 2019. So it's been in my head for a number of years now. It only recently hit the paper, but it was in my head for a long time and I will say it's very closely related to the playbook, because within the boldly inclusive leader, there's a whole chapter on psychological safety, because, as I said, I truly believe that you do not get to inclusion without psychological safety. But it's not the only thing. It is like Google found. It is foundational to everything else that you build upon. So why did I write this book and what's in it? It's a longer book. First of all, it's more of a full-length book. I mean, the psychological safety playbook is quite short in terms of word count by design, and the boldly inclusive leader is about, I would say, everything I learned about leadership over the decades. And, specifically, how can I be a leader who really does bring out the full potential of all of my employees, whether they are from different parts of the world or from different backgrounds and different ways of thinking? So not any one aspect of diversity. I'm not talking about race or gender. I'm talking about all the aspects of human diversity. And how can leaders and managers at any level, actually manage teams so that every single team member can thrive and can really realize their full potential.
Speaker 1:So I talk about psychological safety. I talk about empathy and what it means to like I can't walk in your shoes, kida. I haven't lived your life, but I can do my best to understand. Right, I can really get curious to understand what you've been through and what that means for us working together. It's about listening, it's about getting willing to be uncomfortable because, as we know, the whole field of diversity, equity, inclusion is ever-evolving and you can't get it right every time. And so I really encourage leaders to. The reason I use the word boldly is because I've seen so many leaders shy away from the hard conversations or shy away from even taking any action to be more inclusive, because they're afraid of making mistakes. They're afraid of like I'll say the wrong thing, I'll do the wrong thing, and I'm really encouraging people to take those steps, knowing that we're not going to be perfect and knowing that we're going to learn as we go.
Speaker 1:And so what's in the book is a lot of also. Besides, I have a lot of stories, stories from my own career but it also has a lot of self-reflection, because I think leaders do need to ask themselves questions like how am I showing up and what am I encouraging and what am I tolerating, and what kind of behavior am I encouraging and tolerating and ignoring perhaps? And how might I do better? So every chapter ends with questions to reflect on and things that you want to do differently in the following week. So it's almost like, if you want to think of it as you could journal along with it so that you are actively playing a role and not just. I don't want to believe that just reading a book is going to change everything, but if you take action as a result of any of it, whether you pick one chapter or the whole thing and invest in it, I truly believe that we can make positive change in leadership and business. But it's going to take a mindset shift about what it means to lead.
Speaker 2:Why would you choose the inclusive piece of it? So for somebody who, there's some people who could argue I hire you to do a job, just do the job. I don't really care if you feel included or if you feel like you belong. How would you respond to somebody who makes that kind of point?
Speaker 1:Yes, well, you did hire me for this job and I'm going to do my best to do my job. But if I have, for example, a different way of looking at things, or if I have a unique idea, is that idea going to be welcome or do I have to conform to the group thing and the group norms? And I think what the problem is is that if people don't embrace the idea that we will do better if we have a more inclusive culture, what happens is you do get into these situations where, even if you've hired people who think differently, they don't feel they can speak up and you get to groupthink, and groupthink does not result in good results.
Speaker 2:And we've what is groupthink for the audience who doesn't know?
Speaker 1:Groupthink.
Speaker 2:For somebody who doesn't know what that is.
Speaker 1:Let's define what we mean. Groupthink is when you have a group of people and there is intense pressure to converge and agree on one idea, Even if there is evidence that this idea is not viable but there is. It's almost an irrational convergence on one idea, and I'll tell you an example of it. It's often when there's pressure.
Speaker 1:So the evidence has come in that the Boeing 737 MAX planes that went down it was in 2017 and 2018, I believe maybe the following years that there was a lot of pressure internally to say that this was ready. These planes were ready. There were engineers internally that knew there were problems. They did not feel comfortable challenging the thinking that it was ready, and we saw lives lost as a result of groupthink. And it's very interesting. The reason I bring up that example is that Boeing recently bought a group within Boeing, a software division within Boeing, bought 500 copies of the psychological safety playbook and invited Caroline and me in for a workshop, which we did, and the VP told us that there is a huge emphasis right now in Boeing on changing the culture and focusing on psychological safety, because they realized this was a serious cultural problem where people did not feel comfortable calling out risks.
Speaker 2:So I have a question. So I completely agree with you. I know that story. I often cite this that bank is that American bank. But what they were doing was getting people to buy a bunch of loans and they were getting, oh man, I don't know why I'm talking about that.
Speaker 2:It's got a maroon logo, anyway, one of those banks. You have the space shuttle example of where people didn't speak up, and one of the questions I've always and I don't know if you have an answer to this but one of the things I'm curious about is what's the distinction between the pressure and conformity? So in order for society to work, offer groups to work, there has to be a certain level of conformity and people going along in order for things to work. When you have a contrarian, it just doesn't work. So I'm always curious about and you may not have an answer to this, is this something that I've always been curious about is the distinction between when do you move from being like the conformist in the group to being that contrarian and says, hey, I think something is wrong here. So you can think about the military, you can think about high pressure organizations, you can think about banks, for example. Would you make a distinction between those two, like that pressure piece and then that sort of societal pressure to conform?
Speaker 1:It's a really interesting question and I think you're right, there's no easy answer to this. However, we do. I mean, when you work in groups, it is true that you have to have group norms that you somehow all agree to, right Like. Otherwise we can't work together.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So you can have norms and I would say like even you know meeting agreements and how do we talk and how do we, how do we dissent? Like I think those things are useful to have in place. But one of the things like being the contrarian is like, dare I speak up if I really see something? I think we have what I really love. Here's an example that I really love that I think we could bring into the rest of business is you know, the Toyota example of the lever that people could? It was actually a thing you could pull right. I forget what that's called Pull.
Speaker 2:There's a name for it. Yeah, it was on the showroom floor and anyone could pull it and they were rewarded for pulling it.
Speaker 1:And then everyone would converge and talk about why did you pull it, what went wrong, what can we learn from it, et cetera. And I think that you may call that being a contrarian in a different setting, but I think that we need permission for that. Just the way Toyota put that handle, that lever, in place and, like anyone has permission to pull that, that even within our group norms of, yes, this is how we work together and that we do conform to these norms, and we enable anyone to call us out and say hold on a minute, we are missing something huge and you're not going to be punished for doing that. I think that's the maybe it's a nuance of what you're talking about contrarian versus, you know, group norms, but I think we have to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:But it's norms around disagreement or norms around. What are the norms around pointing out mistakes or errors, etc. I think it's still a norm. We have to put something in place. So the norm in the Toyota example is if we see something that needs to be changed or fixed, we pull the bell and then we have a conversation around it. That's a safety piece. That's a norm around it, right? So I think your answer to the question is to lean into. The very thing that sometimes causes us trouble is to create the norms and have those norms as explicit, so then people know what's the response.
Speaker 2:And I just remember the banquets called Wells Fargo. That's right, that was the Wells Fargo example.
Speaker 1:And I would say maybe one more thing about that which is the contrarian. There is also the contrarian who can be quite destructive, and that is like let's say we have.
Speaker 1:And I'm not encouraging that right, because I'm saying like let's say you have these norms and you're like yes, we disagreed, yes, we solved the problem and we identified the risk, and now we've all made a decision to move together. You still have to commit to that. And after a decision has been made and you're moving forward with it, then you're not going to be the one to criticize it and say I never agreed with it, right? I think you have the obligation to speak up and then, once the decision has been made, to move forward as a group.
Speaker 2:With the decision, even if you disagree with it. I think that's an important piece and you have to support it as if it was the same decision that you disagreed with it's an astringent it is Especially when you're in a leadership position.
Speaker 1:You don't want to get up in front of your team and say, yeah, this is what we're going to do going forward, and I really don't agree with it. I mean that's not going to be helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or you know that a person was in front of a person, was chomping it chomping in it might be threatened by you as an ego or something like that and you then point out hey, I think this is a mistake. That gets really tricky in human behavior and that's the beauty of the work I love doing, which is why humans are so interesting.
Speaker 1:I think that's what I learned. The most interesting thing I ever learned is how interesting human beings are and how you'll never stop learning about them right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, as we think about closing off this podcast and I think we're talking for much longer than I thought we would what's the most significant aha moment that you have come to in the work that you do?
Speaker 1:In the work that I'm doing now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think. But it's really interesting to be a consultant and working with a bunch of different companies and I guess the biggest aha for me is that every business leader because I mostly work with leaders within companies they're all at a different place and just as human beings are really interesting, so are they in involving their own leadership and their own cultures, and so there is no one-size-fits-all. So I love when consultants come out and say this is what I offer, right, and I can offer a menu of things, but I'm going to keep customizing it because every situation is different and every team is different, and I actually think that's what keeps it interesting. Like I would be bored if I went and did exactly the same talks or the exactly the same workshops every time. What keeps it interesting is like oh, I just learned about a new problem. How am I going to help them solve that? So the aha moment is like I'm never going to stop evolving either and I'm just going to keep learning and changing what I'm offering and that'll keep it interesting for me.
Speaker 1:But it's funny because I got all sorts of advice that I've disregarded about. You just have a menu of things Like this is what you offer, and have your menu and have your price sheet and it's like no, I have to change my pricing based on the client, I have to change what I offer. So it was like everything I learned was I kind of threw out the window.
Speaker 2:I was the best advice you've ever received.
Speaker 1:Well, I kind of go back to when I was a child. My grandmother had a sort of her credo, so my grandparents came from Eastern Europe. They were Eastern European Jews. My grandmother had a thick Yiddish accent and she used to say somebody's got to tell them. But what she meant by that is you have to speak up because someone else may not speak up. And it's really important if you care about something, you have to say something, and I have taken that advice. It's hard sometimes. It's usually easier to stay silent, but the advice that I have followed for since I was a little little girl is speak up, even when it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:And I'll take that just one step further, as in if you care about someone, it's your responsibility to speak up.
Speaker 1:Yes, on their behalf.
Speaker 2:And because of what?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's not just about you, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't even think about it, I wasn't even referring to on their behalf. I just meant if somebody's doing something that can and you are quite, quite right to add on their behalf, right, I'm talking about, let's say, somebody's doing something that might hurt them. Because I'm telling you this very difficult thing, because I care about you and I love you. I'm saying this to you because I respect the other person and I think currently you're not respecting that person. I think that's not easy to do, so that's a really nice one.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because I've had it in my head since I was so little and I feel like I've fully understood it only as a middle-aged or older woman, but it's been with me my whole life.
Speaker 2:And what do you find most challenging about your work today?
Speaker 1:Finding clients Like. I'm not a marketing person, right? So most of my business is just word of mouth, so I'm always wondering where's the next work going to come from, and I think that's hard for someone like me. I'm all on my own and I love doing the work, so it's hard to figure out where will the next job come, so it's not my favorite thing.
Speaker 2:And I love that you clearly admit that and I'm afraid to admit that.
Speaker 1:So anybody listening. You can bring me in. You got a good consultant there Exactly.
Speaker 2:Do you have a favorite example of change or how people have been able to impact the world in the work that they do? What's your favorite example of that?
Speaker 1:Oh, I'd have to think about that. Nothing's coming to mind right now, I'm sorry. I'm sure there's something I'll think of after this.
Speaker 2:And then we can talk about it after. And this is a question I've asked, I've been asking everybody who comes on the podcast is. I'm a coach. I do a lot of coaching work. Where are you seeking comfort when you should be seeking discomfort?
Speaker 1:Oh, me personally. That's a great coaching question, of course, yeah.
Speaker 2:Of course yes.
Speaker 1:I am probably seeking just as, I admit it, I'm not good at going out and finding new business I'm seeking comfort in like, oh, the work will just come to me and people will refer me and I'll just sit back. And where I need to lean in to the discomfort is maybe minute. You need to go figure out how you go out there and get more work if you want it. How do you get those speaking engagements? How do you reach out to people? And that's really uncomfortable to me, so you just completely prompted. What's next for me is that tapping into that.
Speaker 1:And you're not good at it yet? I'm not good at it yet, but I'm still learning. We're all still learning.
Speaker 2:But I'm just changing your language of I'm not good at it. I'm not good at it yet, because if it's permanent language it's harder for us to change it Good edition.
Speaker 1:What good single word edition. Yes.
Speaker 2:Do you have a favorite quote?
Speaker 1:You know that I have several, but the one that always pops to mind for me is one that I've had in my mind for years, and it's from Ginny Rometti, the former CEO of IBM, and she said growth and comfort do not coexist.
Speaker 2:Nice, it's been a pleasure having you on this show. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we tune out for today's episode?
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me, and it was a really, really rich conversation, so thanks for that. I guess I would just say that if anyone does want to get in touch, they can find me on my website, mennetnormandcom, and I'd be happy to engage in dialogue on any of these topics.
Speaker 2:So, for all my listeners today, thank you for joining me on yet another episode of Conversations with Kita Deming. Looking forward to see you on our next episode, where I'll be interviewing yet another person who is working to help people be better people in business and be better business people. Have a wonderful day and see you in our next episode. Thank you for listening to Conversations with Kita Deming. Over the years, I've learned that few things will impact or improve your life more than improving your strategies and having better conversations with the people you wish to serve. If you like today's guest and the idea is shared, please like, follow and provide a review wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also visit my website to sign up for my newsletter. I'll learn about the release of my upcoming book. I'll have found you next episode where we'll be in conversation with someone who will help you become a better business person and a better person in business. See you next time.