Here Comes Everyone by The Conference Bard
Originally called "Uncanceled & Unplugged" this podcast was conceived at the outset of the Covid crisis in North America. Being a conference designer I knew a lot of people who had expected to be speaking at events in the subsequent months having them canceled or postponed. So I launched the podcast to provide them with an alternative platform.In August, several months into the pandemic, it was clear that most event organizers had shifted to virtual events and no one was getting canceled anymore.So the podcast has now become "Here Comes Everyone". The name reflects the huge variety of guests we've had in the last few months and the intention to focus a bit more on issues of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging.
Here Comes Everyone by The Conference Bard
What's next for DEI?
Discover the intricate tapestry of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that's shaping North America with "Here Comes Everyone."
Experts Peter Trevor Wilson and Rodney Patterson join us for an enlightening journey through DEI's past, present, and future. We tackle the tough issues—legislative hurdles, societal resistance, and the complex realities of fostering equity within the workforce. Our guests bring clarity to the multifaceted business case for diversity and pull back the curtain on the nuanced challenges of group-based DEI initiatives.
Learn more about Human Equity®, as we explore how educational backgrounds can inadvertently foster groupthink and limit organizational growth. Rodney lends his profound insight on creating workplaces where every individual's knowledge, skills, and unique contributions are valued. We confront the misinterpretation and misapplication of meritocracy and how it affects women and people of color, drawing inspiration from Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a just society.
Leadership takes center stage with strategies from "The No Asshole Rule," reinforcing the importance of a respectful and inclusive company culture.
Join us for a thought-provoking episode that promises to spark conversation and inspire change.
For more info on my work as a conference emcee, spoken word artist, panel moderator and event designer check out my site at https://conferencebard.ca/
Hello, my name is John Brewer and I'd like to welcome you to the relaunch of the podcast.
Speaker 1:Here Comes Everyone. We've been running this podcast for a number of years, off and on, but delighted to be restarting a series that's going to be focused on diversity, equity and inclusion in its various guises, both in the US and Canada. So two reasons really for being here relaunching the podcast. Firstly, because diversity is facing a bit of a crisis in North America, with a lot of pressures on diversity leaders following a dramatic growth in the field after the merger of George Floyd, feeling among many DEI professionals that it's a discipline in retreat and or certainly may be described as being under siege in many of the media, when the Supreme Court in the US has dramatically curtailed affirmative action. Many US states have passed anti-DEI legislation in recent months. As the presidential election approaches, pressures and conflicts are only going to increase.
Speaker 1:So we're also my guests here today Peter Shove-Wilson, canadian diversity pioneer and author of the Human Equity Advantage Beyond Diversity, talent to Talent Optimization, and Rodney Patterson, who's the CEO of the Learners Group from the US. And so welcome, gentlemen, glad to see you here today. Thank you, good to be welcome, gentlemen, glad to see you here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Good to be here, jack, thanks, and I know you're both engaged currently in planning for some kind of diversity summit in Canada later in the year. We'll keep that under the wraps for now and surprise people with something really delightful in maybe a few weeks or a month. I don't want to spend too long on the history of DEI and how we got to where we are now, rather make this conversation future-focused. But I would like to begin by reflecting on some of the recent history in terms of diversity and maybe give a little bit of an assessment, rodney, on my characterization of the situation currently in diversity, whether I'm on the mark there or not.
Speaker 3:Quite capturing the mood, john and thanks for the opportunity to share context. I've been saying to folks that I think it's important for us to consider the journey through which diversity has come and the road taken that leads us to where we are now. And so, as I think about it, I think about it personally. When I came into the fray, which was in the mid-80s, right around 1986, when I was a grad student at Michigan State University and then I went on to become the Multicultural Affairs Director at the University of Vermont in 1988. And right after that, after being brought on campus to help students to integrate a lofty set of agreements that they got the president to consent to, the I call it the landmark piece of research and work that served as the foundation for what we now consider to be the business case for diversity was drafted by a think tank group called the Hudson Institute and they put together a document that was called Workforce 2000. And when I read through that, I read through it with a fine-tooth comb and remember highlighting data points and all of that and the two key components that they listed within that publication was that the workforce was dramatically changing. The workforce in the 80s was going to look very different than the workforce in 2000. There were going to be more women and people of color as new entrant into the workforce and the population of white men was decreasing and would decrease significantly, and that trend would continue through perpetuity. The second was that companies needed to think about and not just companies, all entities, for that matter, needed to begin to think about who had the spin and where was the GMP, what was happening with the GMP? People of color and amongst women and amongst other demographic populations that represent the span of the dimensions of diversity. And so diversity was really the focus, past affirmative action and past women's suffrage and past racial sensitivity. So it was that new concept that helped people to begin to think from a business perspective. It makes sense to do this, but not only that. The idea was, as we focus on diversity, that it would help us to see, through the dimensions of diversity, that we were really talking about everybody.
Speaker 3:The challenge was, right after that late 80s into the 90s, john, we noticed that people were invited into places and spaces. Retaining them was problematic. We're leaving as quickly as they came in. So we started talking about the revolving door syndrome. As quickly as we attracted the talent or we were able to acquire these customers. We would lose them because there was something missing, and now we refer to that as inclusion. So that's when inclusion got wedded to diversity. Then, further down the line and this was after the turn of the century, in the early 2000s, we started talking about equity, but it was more related to social justice as a concept. Higher education was ready for it, but commerce wasn't as receptive to it. Thus you have the D-E-N Right.
Speaker 1:And that sounds like a much more sort of political roots than in Canada. You mentioned civil rights, women's suffrage. How does that drive with your experience, Peter, in terms of Canada?
Speaker 2:I think there's an old joke that when the Americans catch the flu, we eventually sneeze. And that is true. We've had the longest undefended border for many years and we think they're our friends and they usually are. And the reality comes down to everything that the US does eventually hits us Eventually, is the big question Is that one year, two years, five years, ten years? But eventually it does.
Speaker 2:Now the Canadian I am a proud Canadian, I'm notwithstanding. I was born in England, I was brought up as a Jamaican, but here in Canada it's been 60 years and I figure, if you tell me to go home, I'm going to the Danforth right now. But the point I'm making is my heroes and my pioneers are Canadian pioneers. I think if I had to trace back far enough in the Canadian, I eventually I would probably start with Rosie Abella, who was on our Supreme Court I think she just retired, I'm not sure. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. She was the one that borrowed off of the affirmative action in the US and created, as Canadians always do, a kinder, gentler version called Employment Equity. And it was really four groups women, persons with disabilities, indigenous people and visible minorities. At the time they call our people of color. I think, john, if I look at it, the next pioneer that changed my life was a woman that you hardly hear a lot of people really talking about, but she was historic in that she's one of the first, if not the first, female deputy minister. And, rodney, I think you know this, but the deputy minister is a secretary of cabinet sort of thing. It's a big deal. A secretary of cabinet sort of thing, it's a big deal. It's not really a political position, although politics has a lot to do with who would be For Janet Smith to be a female deputy minister back in the 70s, maybe even the 60s, 60s, 70s? That's a big deal. She's got to be brighter than bright, she's got to walk on water and she you meet janet smith, she pretty well can do it all. Um, I um met her and um, they asked her on her retirement and this was in the late 90s.
Speaker 2:Would you do an assessment of the canadian government progress as it relates to diversity, including things like employment equity? And she goes no, it won't. They go, why not? She says, because you have no problem with diversity. Go walk through the halls of your government, you'll see lots of diversity. You don't lack for diversity, you lack inclusion. And they're like so what the heck is that? And she goes first of all, not about groups. She says in an inclusive environment, each person, each individual, is valued because of their difference. So so right up until then, john, my whole conversation was about groups. Like I wrote a book I can't remember a hundred years ago and it was about diversity. There were like 10 groups and what I wanted to do was expand on the employment equity for four groups. So I said I'll give another six, right? She said no, it's not 10. Trevor, it's 7.5 billion. I said I'm sorry, it's 7.5 billion groups, right? So who is the group, john? John looks like a white guy for me. You look like a white guy. Okay, he's got a British accent.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm he's got a white beard, which means he's got to be over 20. I can look at John and I can say that's John, that's not John. Luckily, I've known John 35 years more. I've known John longer than most of my wives. The reality is, john, if I said to you, do you know? John's a dub poet, this is one of the best dub poets. Now, you don't assume. Now, here's the key. This is what we did borrow from some of my best friends who are Americans, including this guy right here. And notwithstanding the Canadian prejudice against Americans, we learn a lot from our big cousins to the south.
Speaker 2:I state my bias, as I have before. John, I believe that this guy, barack Obama that used to be your president Rodney, is one of the best presidents the United States of America has ever seen. Now, they can't say that until he's dead, but I believe that, and once before he became president and any of you that want to look at this is written down, it's called the speech on race and when he was being challenged about his where were you born? Do you have a birth certificate? How come you have? Didn't you go to school in hawaii? To a harvard? Sorry, it's what you're born in, hawaii, all of these questions.
Speaker 2:There's a pause when the man says and this will go down in history right beside, four score and seven years ago and I have a dream, this will go down, mark my words he said all of these things you're talking about, they can inform who I am, and none of them, john, none of them define, none of them define me. It really is beyond brilliance. So the area that we've chosen I think I'm coming out of retirement Thought. I had retired five years, six years ago, but I'm coming back and it's because of the changing environment, also because right now we need to return in the midst of this Cold War, and it's a Cold War getting warmer and as you get closer to November it will get very warm and the Cold War, basically, is saying that, look, we got to go back to that. And human equity and unbiased is what we're choosing to do it with Go ahead. Choosing to do it with go ahead.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking about how you characterize that the current situation as being a cold war around around diversity, and it's very much based on on groups. It's it's a white, it's a white backlash, uh, driven in large part by people who and, rodney, you mentioned that from the get-go the idea was that this would be for everybody. So is that the challenge at the moment? That that we are many people are still stuck in a kind of very group mentality in an intervention that should be based more on the individual?
Speaker 3:I think that's part of the challenge that people are focused on groups rather than individuals, and they're getting caught up on groups rather than individuals, and they're getting caught up in what kind of resources are being granted, what kind of access is being granted to groups, and there's a fear that, at the base of it, that individuals will be left out, but it's also a group of individuals. So, while it's masked as an attack against the focus on groups, it's also about the preservation of groups. It's a very tricky kind of thing and I think, rather than trying to call attention to that, I think what's important for folks to understand is when, how and why diversity is important, because here's what I started helping people to understand and you can imagine over the course of 30 years.
Speaker 3:You have to think of different ways to deliver the same message. Different concepts, same concept, different approaches to helping people to comprehend and understand why and how the concept is germane specifically to them. So now, when I talk about diversity, what I share is that at the base of it, the definition is differences. So think about differences on a myriad of levels and in a myriad of ways. And oftentimes people use the diversity wheel that was first developed by Loden and then enhanced by Gardens, wurts and Rowe and it's got all of the different dimensions and the various layers and what have you?
Speaker 3:So that's reflective of what we call the dimensions of diversity, and that's all about two things representation and group affiliation, group affiliation. So the definition is differences, the focus is on representation and group affiliation, and then I tell folks this John, representation doesn't matter to you until you're not represented Right and all of a sudden means everything. Yeah, I think to some degree your point is on point that there is concern about focus on group and what's happening in terms of the distribution of resources and access that's given, but all of us are part of some group.
Speaker 2:I would agree. In fact, I would go further. And this, I think, is what about the Obama quote is I'm a part of many groups and I don't really strive that my group yes, I'm part of the black group, I'm part of the biracial group, I'm part of the Canada group. I'm part of the fathers of daughters group. I'm part of the Canada group, I'm part of the fathers of daughters group. I'm part of lots of different groups now and the reality is we could yeah, we could have what they call ERGs employee resource groups for all of them. Right, I got big toes. I could put a group Like. The reality is that.
Speaker 2:What changed my mind and I did hang up my diversity hat along about 17 years ago when I was asked, along with 39 other so-called pioneers and I always wonder about that I think they called us pioneers because we had white hair, but I don't know why but there were 40 of us that were around and they said okay, three questions. Where did this diversity stuff come from? That's why Rodney just gave you the overview. Where is it now? Where is it now? 40 people? John said we're stuck, we're stuck. We keep saying the same thing, expecting a different result it's not we had. And then 40 different answers. That was the first time human equity appeared in print, 2007. They came back 10 years later. A few of us had died and they asked the same question and the same answers.
Speaker 2:Right now, the reality is that why canada, I think, has an advantage and I'm biased because I'm a proud Canadian is that we are not what's the best way to do it, what's the most polite way of doing it to avoid you getting lots of letters. John, we're not a superpower. Canada is not a superpower. We're peacekeepers. We don't start wars, we keep the peace after the war. America's is the powerhouse. They got the biggest guns, they got the most money there. You're the powerhouse. So it's easier for us, in my opinion, to say listen, when we do this work, we need to do it for everybody, we can't just do it for this group.
Speaker 2:Now, the truth of the matter the implementation of DEI in our country is pretty well the same as in Rodney's country and US and Canada is not vast. It's still very much group based, and I think we've been trying to get across for a long time is you can't get there from here. You can't get there from you. You can't keep going down the group road of diversity and inclusion and belongingness and all that other good stuff and then get to the promise of human equity, which is, by the way, maximizing on the total human capital of your entire workforce. If you have 300 people in your workforce, half of them are women and 10% of them are black, and whatever, you have to maximize on all 300. Of 300 individuals in your workforce, including straight, white, able-bodied males. Now you see how much white hair I have. Every single one of those came out of fighting for that group.
Speaker 2:And the irony is I wasn't fighting with the straight, white, able-bodied males, I was fighting with their mothers. And the mothers would say hey, so let me try to understand this. This was in government. You're going to give an advantage to these four groups, and my son is a straight, white, able-bodied. He's not included.
Speaker 2:So how long will you discriminate against my son? And I would start about. I'd say listen, do you realize slavery existed for 600 years? Do you realize my tribe, my people, put up this stuff for over 500 years? Yeah, I got that. This stuff for over 500 years. She goes yeah, I got that. How long would you discriminate against my son? I said okay, so how? About 100 years? She goes a little more. Okay, 50 years, 50 years, no, okay, just the length of his career. There was no right number and this notion of I? You discriminate. Your forefathers, john, discriminated against my people, my great-grandfather, so now I get to discriminate against that idea of it's my turn. That was kosovo didn't work there. That was Kosovo didn't work there. That was Rwanda didn't work there and it ain't going to work here. The idea of striving for equity for all is what we're looking for.
Speaker 1:Sorry which in some way relates to I know we'd had an earlier conversation. Rodney, you touched on the issue of fatigue, which I know is something. Diversity fatigue is something obviously you're familiar with, peter. There's that two sides of fatigue, isn't there? There's the. There's one group that's fatigued by one thing and another group that's fatigued by another.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, we talked about this, uh a little bit earlier this week. John, I think what caused me to be so connected, to really move towards uh, trevor we call him trevor at the time, now we call it peter trevor was his message resonated with my thinking and my experience. Time and I witnessed the fatigue, especially from the white population in the US and, to some degree, globally as well, because I remember when I first came to Toronto, they taught me how to say it correctly, because I said Toronto and they said, no, you're not from here, man. So now I say Toronto and I remember when I first came and they told me we don't have a diversity problem, and that to me, signaled that there was a bit of fatigue around discussing it In the same way that I had experienced it in the States.
Speaker 3:Diversity has been a bad word for a long time, probably by the 90s.
Speaker 3:So I mentioned, john, that it was born in the 80s. By the 90s, people had already gotten tired of talking and having to go to workshops and what have you, and I would start every workshop the same way. So I know that there are two types of folks that are showing up today volunteers and prisoners. And you don't have to self-disclose, because I knew that we were dealing with that fatigue, specifically from that population, at the same time as we were talking about it earlier this week. There was fatigue from people of color, too, because we didn't want to have to talk about this either. The only reason why we knew it was essential to talk about it was because if it wasn't talked about then we would continue to experience the limitations, the degradation, the deprivation, the disenfranchisement that we experienced historically up to that point, and we saw diversity as the good news, the gospel to the world that would deliver us from oppression, and so there was a bit of fatigue there too. So there's really fatigue on both sides of the conversation.
Speaker 1:So I think that and again, if I may characterize the current situation, we've got this. I think that fatigue has persisted. It's still. It's still something we hear quite a lot of discussion about, and I know people who certainly feel, who are tired of the conversation, um, and and I, and in many ways quite rightly then we've got this external attack because we've got this legislation's issue, the supreme court, etc. In the us environment certainly. So I know the way trevor was describing his work and this tying in with realizing the sort of productive capacity of the whole workforce, of the, of the talent issue. But it seems to me that this idea of merit is very much a tool that's being used by those who don't like DEI to attack DEI. So can we find a way of harnessing this for the ends of inclusion? The issue of merit Is that, within the frame of human equity, is that where some of this battle is going to be fought?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's going to be a sorry to jump in there, Ron.
Speaker 3:But no, I was going to ask you because I felt human equity so well, answers that question.
Speaker 2:Trevor, I agree. I agree that. So the merit principle, which has lived as a bit of a myth, for I'm going to say since the industrial revolution started, that you hire based on merit. The question was, what is merit? So one of the things that we did when we wrote the Human Equity Advantage, we went to what were called talent masters, people that really understood what merit really was and, believe it or not, they would look at a resume and the resume usually included the education. Or this guy went to Harvard and got a good degree and he knows how to do accounting. That's great. Okay, a computer reads that. In fact, that's what the computers do now. They whiz that through, so you can get through 100,000 down to maybe 10.
Speaker 2:However, if you talk to the talent leaders, they don't spend too much time on the paper. They actually get on the phone and say I'd like to do a reference check please on Rodney, one of the ones I always talk about, jack Welch, because he was known for this. He'd pick up the phone and he said I'm doing a check on Rodney Patterson. They go he's the senior manager, that's right. Yeah, and are you Jack Welch? Yeah, the CEO of General Electric? Yeah, that's right. Do you not have an HR department that does this? And he goes I'm looking for something. I'm actually looking for something I don't see on the resume. They go what are you looking for? He goes. I can't tell you. I know it when I see it. I know it when I hear it. I don't know what it is. Tell me about Rodney in the cafeteria. How does he treat the staff? What is he like at the end of the day? Does he talk to the guy? That and all of the stuff that is totally irrelevant. And then, if it said the right thing, he would invite Rodney and interview Rodney. If Rodney had the quote unquote right stuff. He gets hired. In fact, he gets put on a stream to Jack Welch's executive.
Speaker 2:Here's the problem. Talent managers do it intuitively, but normal human beings don't. So they don't know what Jack was looking for. What are you looking for, jack? I don't know. He couldn't give it to Imlet or anybody else.
Speaker 2:Now what we did is we dissected it. What does the talent manager, the talent master, look for? It's the acronym SHAPEV strengths. These are strengths that they were either born with but they didn't learn it. Usually in school, h stands for heart. These are things they have passion for, they love it. We usually call it unique ability, attitude, their attitude. Some people come to work because they need to get a paycheck. That's nothing wrong with that. Some people come to work because they have a calling for their service. P personality You're a little bit more introverted than me, but I got three kids. Two are very introverted, one not so much. But the reality is the personality does matter. E is experience, but not technical experience, but life experience. I often get and I know Rodney gets it people say it doesn't make any difference to me that you're black. I say it makes a difference to me, like I've been black for 67 years. Like why would you Sorry? You were going to say you looked like you were going to say John.
Speaker 1:No, I wasn't going to say anything, I was ruminating on it. You often hear people say I don't see color.
Speaker 2:What I say is I'm coming home tonight and I'm going to propose to your daughter. You will instantly see my color. And then V is virtue.
Speaker 1:And probably your age as well, if you're turning up at someone's door.
Speaker 3:I don't even know.
Speaker 2:And V, which is actually the most important, is the virtues, the character virtues, and I think our work, human Equity, comes from this positive psychology world. Martin Seligman, the king of positive psychology or the whatever father person, and he and another guy went around the world to identify what are the virtues, what are the character virtues that great leadership has in this community? How does that relate globally and how does that relate over 2,500 years? So when you look at other things that don't show up on the piece of paper, john, that too is merit, that too is merit, and in fact some would argue, ie the talent masters. If you're not looking at that, we call it the intangibles. If you're not looking at the intangibles, the stuff you're looking at on the paper, which AI now has computers read, may not be enough to find the brightest and the best talent. So merit matters, but make sure that you're looking at all the factors of merit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean education is one of the sort of classic examples where people do get. There's a high level of discrimination, If your degree is from some institution in Nairobi that's not going to count the same as from Harvard which is why I always put Harvard on my resume, but it still doesn't work.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's that. Sorry to interrupt. So one of my exes was the most brilliant person I ever met, but she didn't have a university degree, and so you entered an organization where you didn't have a university degree. You could not get into any kind of a leadership or management position.
Speaker 2:And the reality is that I'm not against education. I think education is a great thing. It's a passport. I love the fact that we live in a country where we have some of the best education in the world. However, I do know that if I'm sitting with somebody that has 15 years of experience buying and selling houses, she may know as much about the guy that just graduated with an MBA and whatever. I had a guy. This is years ago, but I'll never forget him. He says he won't hire harvard mbas anymore. I said why not? And he said they all think the same that you go through harvard there's a certain way of thinking and whatever, and mba certain ways. But so he said we were just doing group think and I never found anybody that left that way of thinking and and that was. I think that was enlightened talent management, if you will, talent optimization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, and again that speaks to that individualization versus group identification. In fact there's certainly the Harvard graduates is one group and there is a uniformity to them to some extent and some of my best friends are harvard graduates.
Speaker 2:I have nothing against harvard grad so.
Speaker 1:So, rodney, listening to to peter talk that way about the way in which you know human equity links with the talent side of things, I wonder if you could maybe touch on so I know you're doing quite a lot of work with leaders now and diversity and how this. What's the message for leaders who want to keep the momentum going and move things forward in terms of inclusion in their organizations?
Speaker 3:So I've found human equity to be the next conversation beyond diversity, equity and inclusion, and I remember, john, the way that it came into existence was diversity, inclusion and equity. We just can't use that as the acronym, and so people had put the E before the I, even though the I came before the E. Human equity is the next part of the conversation, and that's what, as a practitioner, I began to realize, and for me it did went very succinctly and poignantly to the conversation around merit, the concern around merit, the emphasis upon merit, and what Trevor, I think, ingeniously did was he named the key attributes of what makes a person meritocratous, and that was their knowledge, their skills, and the missing piece were the intangible assets that are part of what he described as shape B. So what it did was it brought the conversation back to merit, because what we were saying to folks was don't hire just for diversity's sake. Don't hire just because people are different. Hire just because people are different. Don't include just based upon differences. Don't think about equity just from a social justice perspective, but think about all of this in reference to merit, specifically as it relates to capacity to enhance whatever it is you're trying to accomplish within the work environment or or whatever your mission is and your ability to tag onto and bring mission and vision to full maturation, actualization. So it was going to become a compilation of a person's knowledge, skills and intangible assets. So that became at the forefront of consideration. That's what human equity does. But then what human equity helps leaders to begin to think about is how do you maximize those KSIs, how do you optimize those? How do you bring those to their highest level of capacity and possibility? And when you do, everybody wins. That's what I loved about human equity.
Speaker 3:That's why I felt it was the next iteration of the conversation, and this was happening before much of the pushback that we see now manifesting in society occurred. It was a previous pushback that caused Trevor to give birth to these concepts and to I call human equity a comprehensive strategy, to this comprehensive strategy. It was the pushback against diversity that registered as fatigue. It was the pushback even on inclusion and people feeling that inclusion wasn't being done right. So you started hearing add-ons like inclusive excellence or inclusive leaders, and now the add-on to inclusion is belonging and belongingness. As if there's a distinction between belonging and inclusion, when, from my vantage point, there really isn't. They're synonyms. This point there really isn't. They're synonyms, but for me it just represented people's desire to continue to scrap at what would get to the essence of what was the next conversation. And then, of course, equity, which we connected to social justice. But from where I sit, all of it is connected, but all of it lands in human equity. So human equity pulls the other through with a focus on merit.
Speaker 3:Now I'll say one more thing. We talked about this earlier this week as well. I think the misnomer that people suffer from is that women and people of color wanted handouts, that women and people of color didn't respect or highly regard marriage. And I would beg to differ. I think we've always had marriage at the forefront. Yeah, I think what happened was people stopped judging us based upon our merit, and that's where the problem originated. See, if you go back to and peter mentioned this earlier if you go back to martin, luther king's dream is he says in his dream that his four kids would no longer be judged by the color of their skin non-married based but by the content of their character married based yeah.
Speaker 3:So, in essence, what he was saying 60 some years ago, saying 60-some years ago, he was a prophet during his era who was talking about the importance of merit being considered, because merit was not being considered and it was creating problems in our society. And he was trying to return us to viewing merit as one of the most essential and critical aspects of who human beings are and how they contribute to society. And saying to society stop judging us based upon something that is not meritocratous.
Speaker 2:Love that, love that.
Speaker 1:I feel as if the words of Martin Luther King would be the ideal place to end this conversation, but I also feel an obligation to let Peter have the last word, and I'm happy to do that. That's not a notch. Do you want to maybe leave us with some final thoughts, peter, before we wrap?
Speaker 2:I wanted to actually pick up on the leadership theme. Pick up on the leadership theme and I 100% behind what Rodney just said, and very profound. You and I remember a book, again maybe a hundred years ago, called the no asshole rule, and that book, when it first came out, they tried to change the title. They went to I can't remember the guy Sutton, I think his name is and he said I'm not changing the name he said because this is accurate there is a group of people he said there's probably about 10 of the workforce, 10 of leaders in the workforce. So when they leave the room people feel devalued, disrespected and ultimately somebody says what an asshole. Now they don't say what a jerk or what they say. So he kept, he fought to keep them.
Speaker 2:Now we actually do know that all leaders are not created equally. Some and let me use a more politically correct term are bossholes. We call them bossholes and when we look at the cadre of existing leadership, 10% of them will be like Martin Luther King. They got it. Judging people by content or character, treating people with dignity and respect, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, and I'd say somewhere between 60% and 80% are pretty good. Treating people with dignity and respect, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, and I'd say somewhere between 60 and 80% are pretty good. They're good people. They may need to work on scheduling or they may need to work on how they do performance evaluation, but they're okay.
Speaker 2:And then there's 10%, john, and these 10% are the boss holes. Now, the problem with this 10% is they're unconsciously incompetent. If you ask someone a scale of 1 to 10, which we do where are you on things like dignity and respect and ethics and integrity and just really treating people like people, the golden rule or, as they say, the platinum rule treat people the way they want to be treated. Either way, they would say I'm a 10. And rodney will remember we did this in one of his clients once. The gentleman said look, I'm so certain I'm a 10 out of 10. I'm going to ask like 50 people, all 50 people that report to me. I'm going to ask them. And he said they'll say I'm a 10 out of 10. And when we got the report came out, he wasn't. In fact, he was more like a one out of 10. He said oh, they just didn't understand, just do it again. So we did it again, yeah, and it came out one out of ten. And I said so what do you think? And he says if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it could be a duck. I said what do you think? He said I may, I may be a duck. Now here's the problem. He was God, he was king in his own, he was chairman of the board and CEO. There was nowhere else to go, john, and I said to him OK, if you really do want to be a 10 out of 10, we could help you with that. But are you coachable? And I never forget, this is the longest minute he sat for a minute and he goes. I don't know. I don't know. That's great, because we're going to take an hour and at the end I will know if you're coachable or not. Now it turns out he wasn't, but it also turns out there was no payoff. Where is he gonna go? What's next is retirement? Right? He's already got everything. He's got all the marbles.
Speaker 2:My point is that 10 some of them not all of them, a lot of say I don't want to be in the lowest 10%, I want to change, show me. But some of them say look, I've been doing this a really long time. I don't mean to be an asshole, but you know, okay, I am and I don't think I'm going to change in the 10 years I got left, or five years, or whatever it is. So that's good. That's good because it's good that they're only 10% and it's good. Out of that 10%, most of them want to change and then one or two won't, and they won't survive In an organization that's moving towards human equity. They won't survive anyways. They'll be an extreme minority.
Speaker 2:Bottom line you asked about, we do have a big event happening in the fall of this year. If people want to find out about it, they can find it through our website and it's wwwhumanequityadvantagecom, and we'll find out. We also have really a series mini series of where we bring 10 people together and we just go through these conversations and there are no stupid questions here. Your questions have been excellent and these the reasons are excellent because it's as easy as it looks. There is no doubt after George Floyd's murder that people were concerned and they wanted to do something. A lot of them didn't really know what to do other than send a press release saying racism is bad, but it doesn't matter. We had an opening. I still think we have an opening. The reason I'm coming out of retirement is to say let's use this opening and kind of put the train back on on the rails, and my Muslim friends always say inshallah, which is if it is consistent with the plan of God, we'll do it and I believe we will.
Speaker 1:Thank you thank both of you for joining me today. I'm sure we've got a lot of other ground to cover, so we should definitely reconvene soon and create another podcast episode. In the meantime, we'll bring in some other guests and things Obviously look forward to sharing a stage sometime in the not too distant future or being well.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. No poems to wrap up.
Speaker 1:No, I don't wrap up podcasts with poems.
Speaker 3:They're completely separate things, Jeez you're asking too much really.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, talk soon We'll talk soon.
Speaker 1:Take care Bye.
Speaker 2:Ciao.