The High Cost of Exclusion: What Leaders Get Wrong About DEI feat. Joanne Lockwood

In this episode of Taking Back Monday, Alyssa Nolte sits down with Joanne Lockwood to tackle a hard truth...exclusion isn’t just an ethical issue; it’s a business risk. Joanne shares her journey from IT entrepreneur to inclusion advocate, breaking down what leaders think they’re getting right about DEI, and what they’re actually getting wrong. We discuss why performative diversity efforts fail, how exclusion quietly erodes company culture, and why belonging is more than a buzzword (it’s a competitive advantage).

We also explore the concept of conscious inclusion—the practice of actively considering who’s missing from the conversation. Joanne offers a fresh perspective on why DEI initiatives shouldn't just be about compliance or PR but about creating positive people experiences that fuel engagement, innovation, and long-term success. If you think diversity is just a box to check, this episode will change your mind.

Key Takeaways:

• Exclusion is expensive. A lack of belonging leads to disengagement, high turnover, and lost innovation.
• DEI isn’t a policy—it’s culture. Leaders must connect emotionally, not just logically, to create real impact.
• Who’s missing from the table? Conscious inclusion means proactively seeking out voices and perspectives you haven’t considered.

Key Moments:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:41 Joanne's Origin Story
02:29 The Journey of Gender Transition
04:01 Becoming an Advocate and Educator
08:20 Building Positive People Experiences
11:53 Creating Inclusive Cultures
16:58 Challenges and Conscious Inclusion
22:45 Leaders Standing Strong
24:36 Connecting with Joanne
25:38 Conclusion and Farewell

It's time to say "goodbye" to the Sunday Scaries.

Connect with Alyssa
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Transcript

Alyssa Nolte: 0:00

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Taking Back Monday. I am so excited that you decided to say goodbye to the Sunday scaries and hello to a new future of work. And I'm even more excited to introduce you to my new friend, Joanne. Joanne, welcome to the show.

Joanne Lockwood: 0:14

Yes, oh, new friend. I like that. That's absolutely wonderful. Yeah. Great to be here. Thank you.

Alyssa Nolte: 0:18

Yeah. When you come on my podcast, you become my friend. You'll basically never get out of my orbit again.

Joanne Lockwood: 0:25

Well, I can, uh, I can handle that. Yeah, I can handle it.

Alyssa Nolte: 0:28

So one of the things we like to talk about on this show is, you know, I talk to a lot of thought leaders who are trying to change our relationship with work and how we approach the workplace. And that's the whole ethos of this show. I want to know though, what is your origin story? How did you get into this type of work?

Joanne Lockwood: 0:48

Origin story. Wow. It sounds like a Marvel movie, doesn't it? Yeah. What's my origin story? So yeah, I mean, my origin, uh, I was born to, uh, pretty middle class ordinary parents in the 60s. My father's in the Navy. I was born in Singapore and I grew up in a, in a world where everything was kind of typical, normal, white, ordinary, you know, uh, in a days where being queer, being LGBTQ Being trans was kind of, it just wasn't there, just didn't talk about it. AIDS pandemic and we talked about AIDS in the late 70s early 80s demonizing gay queer people. So I grew up in a world where there was no internet, no mobile phones, no People just didn't talk about stuff like this. But I always had this thing in the back of my head, you know, who am I? Feeling I was I'm not one of these people that talks about the wrong body, I just felt I was in the wrong queue. Being the wrong being treated differently to how I felt like I should be treated. And I was brought up a little boy. I was a little cub scout, a scout, and I always felt I should have been a brownie or a guide. And it was just one of those things that stuck with me and throughout my teenage years, uh, it stuck with me. And this is all pre puberty. You know, you hear about kids knowing that themselves in their, in their seven, eight, nine years old, Yeah, but I didn't have any language. I didn't have the internet. I couldn't Google it and figure out what's going on in my head. And so I just got on with life and, uh, got married. Uh, at the age of, uh, 22. Married to my wonderful wife and we've still been married for 37 38 years this year. Two kids. And I've had a career. I've had a life. But I got to my mid 40s and I kind of describe it a bit like, you know, you go into the, uh, the corner shop to buy a sandwich and right at the back of the freezer or the fridge compartment is this sandwich that nobody wanted. It's got a bit moldy and a bit manky and the bread started to curl and the cheese kind of got a bit green. That's how I kind of felt. I was kind of moldy and past my sell by date on my career, which was IT, I spent years running IT companies. And I got to this point with my gender, it was kind of late forties, something I had to give and I, I kind of whacked that stop button of, of life and on the escalator and so I kind of got off, took my luggage off and sat there and gone, I'm heading to somewhere because I have to, because my family, my commitments, my obligations, my life, everyone tells me I've got to go this way. I just got to the point where I went, no. And so that's kind of where. The brakes shot on, I solved my business to my business partners, got out of IT. It had been something that was frustrating me for years. My gender identity came to my forefront after the kids left home, got to that age of my life. So I talked about it with my wife, we explored it, and eventually The date I pick is the 1st of March, 2017. I sold my shares in my business and gender transitioned. And, uh, that's where part two came from. Um, so the origin story was getting to that point and then. I was inspired by the support I had from people. I was also aware of the negativity around LGBTQ queer folk, trans folk, and wanted to change the world one person at a time, wanted to create a better experience for somebody else. And that's kind of how it started really, to become an advocate rather than an activist, an educator, um, someone who would show, exemplify What you can achieve if you put your mind to it as an individual also to promote acceptance and understanding around trans non binary identities. So that's kind of how it started and that was eight, nine years ago, really.

Alyssa Nolte: 4:46

You, you talk about that with a lot of grace and, and bravery, I guess is the right word, but I can't imagine it was as easy as you described it, like hitting a stop button. There had to have been a couple of moments where that hand pulled back and was like, absolutely not. I can't do this. I can't, I can't take this step. I can't take this risk.

Joanne Lockwood: 5:07

Yeah, I, if I look back on it now, what were the risks? Financial? Yeah, my career, my job, whatever. Um, my self worth, my family network, my friend network, my reputation, my, my cap, social capital that I built up over 48 years. All those things. Yeah, you have to kind of, to use a Texas Hold'em poker analogy, you kind of got to go all in on this. You can't sort of put half your chips down. There's no kind of halfway coming out, halfway transitioning. So yeah, it took, it took many, many years. I kind of was test driving it, um, from about 2012. So five years came out to my wife. Um, I started exploring it, going away for weekends, going to Transition support groups, meeting other people, hearing the woes, um, a lot of, a lot of self doubt, a lot of, um, imposter syndrome was in there for me and the people I was around. So yeah, you're right. It wasn't like an overnight thing. It was a five years on top of a life of, of knowing and understanding. And I often say to people that the, the, transition, if you like, actually was less about me, but more about the world. So I kind of pivoted on the point, spun around my wife, my children, my brother, my parents, my parents in law, my family, all my friends. They were the ones that had to do the heavy lift, the hard work. I'd already kind of made that step. Once I, once I made, once I came out on Facebook, as I did, just told the world. Once I've done, once I did that and then owned it. The rest kind of clicked into place. Um, selling my business was relieved me of my financial, I got some money, gave me an opportunity to restart. Um, telling my, once I told my friends and worked through it and that kind of social capital maintained because I was leaving behind my IT career and a lot of my old life in that it made it easier to find something new. I think Yeah, and what holds us back normally is that fear, that anxiety, the unknown. And it got to the, I use the phrase necessary. It got, it got to the point in my head where it was necessary to step forward and until I got to that point I was holding back. And then one day I realized that I had to go forward and then the momentum kicked in self belief the support for my wife My friends didn't abandon me So then it was kind of like the ball was rolling and I was kind of chasing it down the hill and it was Became a lot easier. But yeah, you say brave You're only ever in the moment. You're not brave. You're just brave Doing what you need to do, looking back over your shoulder, you think? Wow. Yeah. That is a bit, uh, kind of radical

Alyssa Nolte: 8:07

Right. Looking in that rear view mirror. So now you, you know, you moved on from it and you now have a business where you're all about helping people build resilience and purposeful leadership. Tell us a little bit more about positive people experiences. What does that mean to you? And, and how you create cultures where everyone can thrive.

Joanne Lockwood: 8:28

Yeah. Yeah. Positive people experiences. That's, that's kind of my hashtag that I, I, I use and I was trying to find my, my, my message. You know, I'm a professional speaker, I'm an educator, and I, I, and I consult and advise people in the E-D-I-D-E-I space and trans awareness and stuff. And you hear these acronyms, DEI, Diversity, Equity, Equality, Inclusion, Justice, Belonging, all these kind of buzzwords that if you're in the, if you're in the HR DEI echo chamber, you kind of, everyone knows what they mean, but I was trying to get, I was getting hung up on the fact that what do we actually really mean by this? What are we trying to create? And that's where I came up with positive people experiences. What we're trying to create are experiences for people that are positive. And all I did there was a rearrange those three words I appreciate, but if I'm a candidate in the hiring process, I want to have trust and belief that I'm going to have to be treated fairly with dignity, with respect, and come out of it smiling with a positive experience. I don't have to get the job, but I have to believe in the process and that I was given a fair chance and the same as an employee. as a stakeholder, as a customer, as a shareholder, wherever my interface with you as individual or you as a company, I just want it to be positive and feel like it's fair. So that's, that's really what I'm talking about here is creating fairness and equity in the system so that people feel positive and trust. So we can talk about psychological safety, where people can feel they can buy in and they're not, they can show up, be their whole self. Um, not be discriminated against, bullied, or feel that people are going to be pulling down their glasses, looking over and going, seriously. Um, so that's what, that's where it kind of comes from. And my other mantra is, uh, smile, engage, and educate. Because I, I really, I found out in the early days when I was transitioning that how you show up dictates how people react to you. So that first impression, that, that showing up, so I've, I found that if you walk in with a warm smile, you're open armed, you're engaging, you're friendly, you're all these kind of things, then people are going to reflect and echo that back to you. They'll be interested, they'll want to listen to you, they value who you are. And then hopefully through that comes the education. People are not going to be educated or listen if you're pointing or wagging your finger and getting angry and shouting at people. So that's kind of how I, how I came up with that mantra and I realized it with my marriage. that in order to be loved, you have to be lovable. In order to be liked, you have to be likable. In order to be respected, you have to be worthy of respect. And I can change who I am. I can, I can, I can, I have the power to dictate how I show up. If I show up and I'm a dick, I'll get treated as a dick, basically. If I take this personal responsibility to be approachable, to be likable, to be lovable, and to be worthy of respect, That gets echoed and reflected back to me. So that's kind of my mantras that I, that I really figured out while I was transitioning, when I was vulnerable, and I needed people to, to help and support me. I realized it began with me. I, I could control how I showed up and how people would reflect that back.

Alyssa Nolte: 11:49

And that is a great realization for an individual. If I'm a leader and I have people on my team who maybe don't fit the, as you mentioned in the beginning of our conversation, the stereotypical traditional white mold, how can I create an environment where people Feel the psychological safety to show up as their true authentic selves to smile, engage, and educate and reflect that back. How can I create that environment and make it, possible is not the right word, but easier for those people?

Joanne Lockwood: 12:22

Yeah, I mean, when I'm working with, uh, C suite, I do some, a lot of CEO groups, um, leadership groups, I, I challenge them to find their why, you know, I know it's an old, old adage in Cynosynic and all the other people, but why does it matter to you? You know, what's, what does DEI all about? So I, yeah, I use why, finding your why of D and I, cause it rhymes. And I'm saying, you know, just because you read it in the papers, you read it online, people tell you that DEI is important for this, that and the other. Unless you get it, and if you really understand it, it's just going to be performative, it's going to be tokenistic, it's going to be without passion. So I really challenge people to try and understand, And connect, because for me, inclusion and belonging are feelings, I feel included, I feel belonging, I can't give you inclusion, you feel it, so I create environments and cultures where I feel part of it, and I talk about these three elements, um, from ancient Greece, um, ethos, logos and pathos, I think it's the ancient pillars of Cicero or Aristotle, So ethos is the ethical, the compliance, the rules, the laws, the policies. Logos is the, uh, the logical, uh, spreadsheets, business case, prove me, make it, make it, give me the logic behind it. But pathos is the emotional connection, which is the people side. So I encourage leaders to think about people first because it's authentic. If I thought you were doing this for the business case for profit, or if I thought you were doing this for policy, that's, that's, how am I going to trust you? I want to know you're doing it for the people reason, because you believe in it. And then of course, if you get the people right, you'll get the, you'll get the logic, you'll get the logos, you'll get the business case, and it becomes self fulfilling. So if you create the right culture, Belongingness happens. If you create belongingness, inclusion happens. If you create inclusion, then diversity will thrive and people will trust you. So that's kind of the way I approach things from that culture outwards approach.

Alyssa Nolte: 14:28

And I think that's 100 percent right, because I was immediately going to go there like, hey, I'm a business, I'm here to make money. What does doing the right thing mean for my bottom line? And we've done a series of research that happy employees leads to happy customers. Happy customers leads to a great brand perception. A great brand perception drives market advantage. So it's not just the right thing to do centering on your people. It is the profitable, strategic, and smart thing to do because it's going to give that market advantage.

Joanne Lockwood: 14:57

Because culture aligns with brand values, yeah? How you treat your people will also dictate how you treat your customers, how your customers feel about, you know, again, I talked about belonging inclusion. Customers want to feel belonging to you, belonging to your brand as it resonates. A number of times I go to this coffee shop and that, not that coffee shop, it's because the brand value, I just feel that this coffee shop represents who I am, the seats, the coffee, the beans, whatever it may be.

Alyssa Nolte: 15:25

with the barista, like it's, it's all. About you as the customer and the way that they make you feel right and sending it back to that

Joanne Lockwood: 15:34

Yeah. So focusing on brand values, aligning, you know, we've got to align our employer value proposition, our EVPs, our employer brand with who we are, because otherwise it's inauthentic. You know, you go out, you go to market for job, job placements. And the first thing is all your employees going, well, actually, it's not like that here at all. They're on Glassdoor. Uh, they're on Facebook, bad mouthing you. You want to create that end to end alignment and sell who you are, not who you think you are. And that's where getting your culture is right to get your people, your teams authentically amplifying and promoting your brand because they believe in it as well.

Alyssa Nolte: 16:12

yeah, and and it's hard right because as a leader sometimes you can have the best intentions and just unintentionally Do something that that changes or that perception of the person on the other side of your your best intentions, right? so there's been plenty of times where I've been leading a team and and My own perspective meant I missed something, right? I didn't understand an experience and, and I didn't even know that I was missing out on something, but because I wasn't actively trying to build those relationships and those connections, especially in this remote environment, all of my employees work across the world. So for me, I have to work twice as hard to build those relationships and understand their lives and their perspectives.

Joanne Lockwood: 16:59

Yeah, I, for me, it's, um, I talk about conscious inclusion quite a bit, and for me, the question with conscious inclusion is who am I not thinking about? Whose perspective have I not considered? Um, whose voice isn't heard, whether it's in product design, process, policy, whatever it may be. So that's where the diversity of thought and diversity of lived experience and perspectives comes into this. So conscious inclusion is really important, and I, and I I work on it myself to challenge myself to, to challenge my perspective, because I don't have, I know I don't have to be right. So if I can get people to cross the, the idea that they don't have to be right, and in fact they're probably wrong, because there are other opinions and perspectives. So if we can seek out those other opinions, seek out those other perspectives, and broaden our knowledge base, by having different views, then we're going to be more conscious about the inclusion. We're thinking about someone's neurodiversity, we're thinking about someone's disability, we're thinking about someone's ethnicity, we're thinking about someone's, even people who are hard of hearing, they have different aspects to their hearing. If you're not subtitling your videos, you're not taking the care and attention to make sure the spelling's right, the words are right, you're People with, with a hearing loss only deserve 80 percent accuracy. I mean, well, no, you've got to put the same effort into hearing as you have into, into written and everything else. So yeah, conscious inclusion, who aren't we thinking about? How can we broaden our perspectives to get more views into this?

Alyssa Nolte: 18:32

There was, there was so much. In what you just said, and I really want to come back to it. The idea that someone only deserves 80 percent of the experience simply because they have a different life experience or something that we're dealing with. Like you would never say that, right? No one would ever actively say, Hey, you can't hear. So you only deserve 80 percent of this experience. No one would say that. And yet we are saying it by not consciously making the decision to create a 100 percent experience for the people that are in our lives.

Joanne Lockwood: 19:03

Yeah. I mean, the example I use is, um, I'm left handed as well as being transgender, but I started off being left handed first. And you'd be surprised how many things just aren't designed. to work properly for left handed people. And left handed people are approximately 10 to 12 percent of the population. So you'd be amazed at the number of times I go, ah, that doesn't really work for me. Um, I've, I've got one of these, um, thermos soup flasks, which you, you know, you take the lid off and you put your soup in it, heat it up. And it's got a spoon in the lid. The spoon, if you're left handed, when you're trying to use it, it folds up, it collapses. If you're right handed, it locks. So Thermos, this global brand, designed a product that doesn't work properly for left handed people. And that's clearly their design team were right handed that their quality control people were right handed or someone just went, Oh, it doesn't matter. They'll figure it out. So my experience with a soup flask is suboptimal. So it's that easy to get it wrong by not thinking about all of the experiences. So when I said 80 percent good enough, well, the soup flask is now 88 percent good enough and it's gone to market globally.

Alyssa Nolte: 20:15

That is, I love that example. First of all, that is wild to me. Um, when I was growing up, there was a kid in my class who was left handed, but his parents desperately wanted him to be right handed. So he ended up being ambidextrous. He could do both because they basically forced this left handed kid to fit into a right handed mold. And, uh, he ended up, I mean, he writes left handed now. But the fact that a global company could create something that doesn't work for a very specific set of people. Not their intention, right? Nobody went out and said, let's make sure this thermos doesn't work for left handed people. It was simply just an oversight because they didn't have a person in the room who, who met that experience.

Joanne Lockwood: 20:55

we see it again, Valentine's Day. It's a very white, straight, um, representation, you know, trying to find queer representation at Valentine's Day messaging. You know, we've got in the UK, we have a couple of companies who produce these caterpillar cakes, which they create the Colin and Connie love nest caterpillars for Valentine's to represent it. But then it. At the same time they're doing LGBT messaging. Hang on a minute. Colin and Connie are these straight caterpillar cakes. How about we have a Colin and Colin and a Connie and Connie? Also you can, when you're ordering it online, you can have, I'll have one of those and one of those. But no, it was in the first few years, it was just very straight hetero. And it was also very white middle class. So the names they're using are very white British names. There was no, there's no diversity there. There was no non binary version. There was no even any polyamorous option. So you could have a couple of Collins and a Connie in there or three Collins or something. It was, it was again, very stereotypical from organisations who claim To be LGBT inclusive, but then suddenly they go off and do something like that and then their Christmas cards, their birthday cards, their celebrations, are all aligned around the standard, the typical, the average.

Alyssa Nolte: 22:15

Yeah. Um, there's honestly so much to think about and Things that as, you know, someone who I live in the middle of the US, I live in like rural America, basically, and things that I don't have a lot of exposure to, and like trying to think about how do I create, because my, my company is global. I work with people all over the world. And so the odds that I'm going to have someone who looks, thinks, and acts exactly like me in my orbit are about zero. Because I'm not working with people who are in my geographical space. But as you're thinking about all the people in the world that you've had a chance to meet the thought leaders or the people that you know, personally, who is taking back Monday? Who's doing this, right?

Joanne Lockwood: 22:56

Um, I think it's a one's selling out and, you know, we can just name drop Zuckerberg here as, as someone who's, who's sold out big time in the last, in the last seven days. You know, it's, we need people like that billionaires to, I would describe it as holding the rope. There's obviously a lot of political pressure, a lot of rhetoric going on, probably bullying going on there. And it's a shame that this person decides to capitulate. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but that visible signs of rejecting allyship, rejecting years and years of his personal brand, um, for the sake of, uh, pressure by government or potential new government coming in. I think, I think it sucks. So what I'd like to see is, is leaders who are standing up. I mean, I've seen Apple push back, you know, people they're saying shareholder pressure, get rid of EDI initiatives, Apple are holding the rope, Apple are standing Because these organizations, these global organizations aren't really Abandoning DEI, they're just rebranding it for political correctness. They're still producing well being. They're still making sure their people are right. They're still looking at the best teams. They're calling out the BS of meritocracy and building equity into their systems. But to go on to camera, to go on publicly and say hang on a minute, we're just abandoning all this DEI stuff that we've talked about for years. I think it's doing a disservice to them. and the world. So leaders right now who are standing up and pushing back against political pressure are, they all deserve, if you like, my recognition. I can't name them all, but yeah, those are holding strong.

Alyssa Nolte: 24:36

I love that. Um, so Joanne, if someone is really connecting with you, they want to learn more, they want to, to hear more from you. Where can they find you online?

Joanne Lockwood: 24:47

So my name, Joanne Lockwood, if you chuck me into Google or Bing or even chat GPT search and ask, ask about me, um, I'm pretty well populated on the first three or four pages of Google. You can find me on LinkedIn, uh, Joe Lockwood. So LinkedIn. com forward slash I N forward slash Joanne Lockwood. YouTube, uh, under Sea Change, happeneds, EE Change happened.co uk. I am on TikTok. Most of my YouTube's, uh, sea Change Happen. Most of my other stuff is Joanne Lockwood. So either of those find me, talk me a dm, um, book me to speak at one of your, in your organization or invite me onto your podcast.

Alyssa Nolte: 25:26

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking back Monday with me. This was a great conversation.

Joanne Lockwood: 25:31

Thanks. I've loved it.

Alyssa Nolte: 25:40

Thanks for joining us on Taking Back Monday, where we say goodbye to the Sunday scaries and hello to meaningful and fulfilling work. If you enjoyed today's episode, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you found value here, share the podcast with your network. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review. It helps us inspire more leaders to join the movement. Until next time, let's take back Monday.