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  • Writer's pictureThrive Inc.
    • May 20, 2021
    • 24 min read

Inclusion

As people begin to go back to work, we need to renew our focus on integrating inclusion into our businesses and teams to make the workplace more comfortable for each person in it. Even if you have what looks like a diverse team, you may still have exclusive behaviors.


When people are excluded, they become less productive, efficient and are much more likely to quit. From a business perspective, you want to encourage inclusivity among your team to build loyalty and engage people’s hearts.


We want inclusion to become an integrative part of business models and not an additive attempt. That way, from one business and team to the next, we can effect sustainable changes. From heart to bottom line, inclusion improves it all.


In this episode, learn how biases and exclusivity manifest in the workplace and the very real impact these microaggressions can have. Discover how you can foster an inclusive environment that makes everyone feel valued and how to encourage your team members to contribute to this mindset shift as well.


If you’d like us to speak at your organization about conflict, stress, team-building, or leadership, work with your team virtually, or coach you or leaders on your team, reach out to us!


If you enjoyed the show, please share the podcast with your family and friends, or post a five-star review on iTunes. Rating and reviewing the show helps spread the word, which means less friction and suffering for everyone, and who doesn’t want that?



Learn More:

  • How microaggressions affect the workplace.

  • Why going back to work feels difficult for people from a variety of backgrounds.

  • How the feelings of exclusion and inclusion feel in the brain.

  • The business case for inclusivity.

  • How bias and assumptions among team members manifest.

  • How to train your brain for inclusion.

  • How to work across boundaries and learn to work with people that are different than you.


Resources:




Full Transcript:



Susan: Welcome to The Beauty of Conflict, a podcast about how to deal with conflict at work, at home and everywhere else in your life. I am Susan.


CrisMarie: And I'm CrisMarie.


Susan: We run a company called Thrive Inc, and we specialize in conflict resolution, stress management coaching and building strong, thriving teams and relationships both in person and virtually.


CrisMarie: On this podcast we’ll be sharing tips, tools about how to make your team, your relationship and even you work more effectively. You can find us at thriveinc.com, that’s www.t.h.r.i.v.e.i.n.c.com or follow us on LinkedIn at Thrive Inc. We hope you enjoy this episode.


Susan: Hi. I’m Susan Clarke.


CrisMarie: And I’m CrisMarie Campbell.


Susan: And we are here today, we’re going to be talking to you about inclusion, specifically inclusion at work. And part of why we’re doing that is because CrisMarie has been involved in a training program. Can you tell me?


CrisMarie: Yes. It’s the IBI which is the Inclusive Behavioral Inventory. It’s an assessment to look at inclusive behaviors at work and help build them in individual leaders, in teams and in organizations. And it was offered by UC Berkeley.


Susan: So she took this program and I was feeling a touch excluded. So I thought how can I be included? So I said, “What a better way for me to learn than to actually be with you, interviewing you, talking to you a bit about some of the key things you took away.” And so we thought we’d do that today as part of our podcast.


CrisMarie: I just have to say, when you said, “I wanted to be included.” It sounds like a little kid. And I think that’s something that exclusion, feeling excluded does hit us at a very core deep and can be younger level of what we’ve experienced as exclusive.


Susan: I totally agree. And I also think a lot of times people are – we’ve become so sophisticated and yet inside we may actually maybe just that little kid who felt like I’m not a part of it and it’s a big factor in this.


CrisMarie: Yeah, it is true. So your context of what you grew up with, whether you’re otherly abled, of a different race, of a different gender, impacts how this topics lands for you.


Susan: Even today, as I was reading the newspaper, then there’s a lot of talk about coming back to work and things like that. And there was an article. I don’t remember whether it was in The New York Times or The Washington, yeah, it could have been. Anyway, I was reading the paper.


CrisMarie: She reads a lot of papers.


Susan: And there was an article about how, especially for people of color, people that have disabilities, various, women. They are the people who are saying they don’t necessarily want to come back and the reason is because of the micro aggressions that they have to deal with at work all the time. And those don’t do their best. So I’m actually kind of sad and my heart goes out. I guess I’ve read a few times how for people who are Black; people want to touch their hair. I can’t even imagine, but I get it. I’ve read it enough now that I know, it’s something that happens.


Also then for people with handicaps and they may have issues around how the building is set up. It’s a lot more work for them to come back into that space. And a lot of times that’s never even considered with how the layout is or a design is. And then for women there’s all sorts of things around micro aggressions that show up.


But what I thought was really interesting was they also talked about how a lot of times I may assume somebody who is Asian or somebody of color, I don’t really remember their name and you look a lot like somebody else. And it’s so insulting for someone to be just, to have that thrown at them.


CrisMarie: To be called the wrong name because they look similar in that person’s eyes.


Susan: Yes. But on screens, whether it’s Teams, or Zoom, or Google Meets, you have their names and so that hasn’t been happening. That was one I had just really of course not thought of.


CrisMarie: Even with the disabled, if somebody’s in a wheelchair, you’re always lower than and on Zoom everybody’s the same height. Or even a woman who may be of smaller stature, she doesn’t have the huge presence when she comes into the room because of her size possibly. That’s all equalized on Zoom as well.


Susan: Yeah. It was fascinating to me some of the things that came up and again all of those things to some degree have to do with inclusion.


CrisMarie: Absolutely they have to do with inclusion. And what was interesting, this was done by the Robertson International House and it’s really in the United States, inclusion, diversity is such a hot topic. And it can be black and white, and now Asian, it’s very polarized with these different races. But what I really got in a part of this training is diversity is important all over the world, even if you have what looks like a diverse team, and we have experienced this, you can still have exclusionary behaviors. And this comes up a lot Susan in our work in even helping teams deal with conflict.


A lot of times what’s happening in a team is only a few people are talking. They’re automatically excluding others. And our job is to actually bring those voices in, help people get curious and interested in these other opinions, whether they’re coming from a Black woman, or an Asian man or anybody, it could be a power differential that they’re not letting these voices be heard and utilizing them.


Susan: Yeah. And so many different ways, I know when I first started this past year with the video camera on.


CrisMarie: Are you meaning Zoom meetings?


Susan: In Zoom meetings, Teams meetings, whatever, the camera’s on and I would have so much judgment about somebody who wouldn’t show up on the camera. I admit, I was like, “Well, why aren’t they showing up?” I had been in one board meeting for almost a year because it was distant. And I just figured she’s not showing up, I know her, my assumptions. And I was amazed when I actually started to get some information.

And some people were like, “No, the reason I don’t put on my camera is because I’m in a situation, I’m in my closet. And I actually don’t want people to know I’m doing this from my closet”, or very different reasons.


CrisMarie: Yeah. This is before virtual backgrounds became popular.


Susan: Yeah. And I even started to understand, I make an assumption that seeing somebody’s face or seeing somebody’s eyes is really important because then I know they’re paying attention, which one thing I’ve learned that’s not necessarily true either. But I also know that for some people that is too much information coming in. And they don’t actually want to see themselves on the screen. And I just was amazed at even that, what is behind it and how easy I can jump to my own conclusions which I think is a big part of this inclusion thing, but we’ll talk about that.


CrisMarie: Yeah. And one of the things, they were saying that exclusive behaviors, feeling excluded actually registers in the brain the same way that pain does, physical pain, so feeling excluded. And that’s why shunning people in older cultures, the person would be shunned. And that was the worst because people would ignore them as if they didn’t exist.


Susan: I mean I just think back to the days. So when I was in my high school I was the one white person in an all Black high school. And I would often get beaten up. I had a lot of people really angry at me. We don’t even need to go into that. But I always was, people would say to me, “Was that difficult?” And I’m like, that was nothing, nothing compared to what I saw happen to my same friends when I went to college. A good friend of mine who played basketball with me, she was a Black woman, she was an incredible athlete, she just got ignored, like she didn’t exist.


CrisMarie: This is at UBA?


Susan: At UBA. And I was like, oh my God, I cannot imagine that experience of just not existing, I get it. That’s a painful place to be.


CrisMarie: Yeah, it is. Now, even listeners, think about a time where you felt excluded, specifically let’s think even on a team, like you didn’t belong. And what feelings came up? What did you experience feeling wise when you were in that excluded spot? And how did you behave as a result of that? And this is a question our instructors asked us. And the feelings were like I don’t matter, invisible. And then the behaviors were I didn’t speak up, I dropped out, I wasn’t engaged. It really is demoralizing to feel that sense of exclusion.


And even contrast that to think of a time that you felt included on a team like you belonged, and what feelings came up and how did you behave? Because if you’re anything like me, when I felt, it’s like I feel energized. I matter.


Susan: The difference between, if you could see her, this is Susan talking. When she was talking about the exclusion she was kind of leaned over. And now as she’s talking, as soon as she started to talk about inclusion you lit up. CrisMarie, she’s like, there she is on stage.


CrisMarie: Well, and I think what’s powerful is to ask this because every human, even if you’re a white male on top of the pyramid of supremacy, whatever it is, you have experienced, I’m going to guess, a time where you felt excluded and included. And the reason to connect to that is for empathy because when you recognize, wow, it really sucks to feel excluded, you may be less inclined to exclude others. So I think that’s a really important point to bring home your own experience of exclusion.


Susan: Yeah. Well, I think it is, like you said, it’s a way to build empathy. It’s a way break it out of a political thing, or a positional thing, or I’m going to lose something, any of that. It’s like well think about exclusion and inclusion. And when you haven’t been, because so many people are afraid of what they’re going to lose if they have to give in. And it’s like, well, just think about the pain that somebody else is suffering because you’re not even willing to equalize the playing field. To me that does make a difference.


CrisMarie: And the whole politicizing of it is really sad for me because in this group that I was in, I had 20 peers, we were from all over the world, South Africa, Turkey, certainly the US, a lot on the East Coast, but we had breakout groups. And one woman, she had blond hair, blue yes, and she was paired with an African-American woman and they had a breakout as we all did. And the African-American woman came back and said, “Wow, I had no idea.” This woman was the white blue eyed one had been excluded for religious reasons, because she was a woman.


And the other woman had no idea from the outside what had gone on. So it was a very like, okay, we can connect at a human level. Not that it helped her, certainly if you are automatically othered by the way you look, that is detrimental and painful, but to create the connection on a one-on-one.


Susan: Well, I think what you’re bringing up is it’s like if we’re going to make real changes from a systemic level we have to actually be able to have people connect in a more personal way. And so the way to connect in the personal way is to recognize that everyone has a different storyline, has experienced probably likely some version of an inclusion and exclusion. And to share those stories is actually a way to build a bridge.

But then you can actually say, “Now that you see who each person is over here, let’s have a broader conversation about systemic racism.” Because that’s actually how systems are set in place over time, it’s not as personal. But without the personal it gets really vicious.


CrisMarie: It does.


Susan: And tied up.


CrisMarie: Yeah. So it was just very – I had, probably the biggest takeaway was my connection that I had to these other 20 people or 19 people. It was so very rich to hear everybody’s different experiences. And when somebody feels excluded there is a business case for why you want inclusion to happen because when people are excluded they perform poorly, they’re unproductive, inefficient, withdraw. I certainly withdraw, turn negative, lash out, disengage, even quit.


But when somebody feels included, they’re part of the team, they matter. Again, I know my energy just shifted. But they’re willing to take accountability and be productive, work hard, they’re more innovative. And that’s what we say with conflict, perform well, they’re loyal to the organization because they know that somebody’s got their back, collaborative. And they’re appreciative. And I mean they give support to other people. It just keeps on giving.


Susan: So I think of this like you said, there is a good business case. There’s such a good hard case and business case. And both of them win, again, I go back to this whole thing, if you really want to have a discussion and dialog about how to do something different, you have to include these variables that are important to each person and different types of people, like the business piece. Or I’ve heard people say, “I’m tired of hearing about the business case for equality because that’s not the point. The point is people should be equal.”


Yeah, but if you don’t actually meet somebody at where they have placed their own values, or what’s important to them, you’re not going to have the conversation.


CrisMarie: It’s true. And when we go into organizations and we’re talking to CEOs and leaders, senior leaders, we do give them the business case to kind of get their attention, because I think it was BetterUp who did the research in 2019. That high belonging workplaces have a 56% increase in job performance and a 50% drop in turnover rates. And sick days go down by 75%. And all of this, you can pro rate this for a 10,000 person company. It would result in an annual savings of 52 million dollars.


And so why you want to kind of smack some business leaders over the head is like wait a minute, you’re not just being nice, which I do think actually the human reason is enough. But look, this is actually going to change your business. It’s going to make it better.


Susan: I can guarantee you there’s probably even more heartbeats gained than there is even money and dollars. But it is worth; both of them are well worth it.


CrisMarie: I agree.


Susan: So I think it is important to be able to address both, yes.


CrisMarie: Yeah. So diversity or inclusion is important. There is also okay, so what do we do? How do we change that? And there’s five different dimensions that we studied from inclusive behaviors. And the first one is learning about bias. And that is really just learning about how I put the world together. It’s like in our Check it Out, we have our filter and that is key to learning about how I delete, and distort and generalize information.


Susan: And that right there is just huge because so many times people haven’t paid attention, we talk about. It’s like you’re wearing this filter over your head. You haven’t really taken that off to look at how do I jump to conclusions so quickly?


CrisMarie: Yeah. And I mean some things you can do to learn about bias is question some assumptions you have. Are my assumptions about people accurate? You can check out your story. That’s why we even ask the exclusion, inclusion, do you empathize with even other departments and how their world is happening.


Susan: So many times we’re working in company situations where there is a division. People don’t really often – they don’t usually fight over purpose and fight over strategy, over what their specialty areas are. And so if you can get someone to understand, wait a minute, we’re kind of going after the wrong thing here. We’ve lost sight of our mutual purpose. And that is often because of people’s biases or subject matter expertise, same kind of idea, that they make assumptions that aren’t necessarily helping.


CrisMarie: And I mean this goes back to we believe our thoughts and it’s no, the filter we put together helped us manage our world. But it’s not a correct data table. You have to keep updating that. So you have to actually reach out and learn about other people, what motivates them, are you aware of how you said something and the impact it had? And we can’t know until we actually get curious and interested in how it landed over there.


Susan: And sometimes I’m like, “Really, that’s how you took that?”


CrisMarie: When you say something, Susan?


Susan: When I say something and I’m so floored because it wasn’t at all where I was coming from. But I have come to learn that that is so critical because there is that saying, ‘the road to hell is paved with good intention’. It’s got nothing to do with intention, it really is about paying, you know, hopefully maybe the other person will be curious about my intention. But that’s actually not really important. Way more important is what was the impact?


CrisMarie: Yeah. I mean when Susan and I work with organizations and teams a simple way to do this is just doing personality styles as a way to open the door to our biases because if you’re an ENTJ in the Myers-Briggs it’s very different than an ESFP. And how we tend to view the world is so different. Then add gender in there, then add race, and family backgrounds and you get a whole complex cube. And it’s really slowing down enough to be curious and interested in this other human that’s sitting across from me.


So the key is to start to, one, learn about bias, understanding bias, making the invisible visible. And training your brain for inclusion, and we did this with our communication model, Check it Out. A lot of times we have interpretations and feelings, like not a good worker, or lazy, or doesn’t care about the project. That’s all an interpretation. And I’m in my kind of primitive brain when I’m in that versus well, what led me to that conclusion? She didn’t come to the meeting. She didn’t return my email. She doesn’t care about the project clearly.


Versus wait a minute, okay, that data, that’s something I can check out, you didn’t return my email, you didn’t come to the meeting. I am thinking you’re not interested in this project but I want to check it out, does that fit or not? That gets me back into my neocortex and I can have a discussion versus just assuming that I’m right.


Susan: Yeah. And being curious and interested in what comes back from that person. If you’re too invested in your own opinion you’re not going to be that curious so that’s the other thing. That’s why it’s so important to check it out early because once you’ve gone down that road of never checking it out, you just ratchet into more and more proof of your position.


CrisMarie: Yeah. When we work with teams, this is one of the main tools we teach to have them start to check out their stories and just learning that even talking about personal experiences is a way to connect in that empathy. That all helps you learn about bias. The other area we talked about is building key skills. And this is really about learning how to give constructive feedback and recognizing people have different styles from diverse backgrounds.


Being able to draw out the views of other people around the table, listening and reflecting back what you’re hearing people say. These are all skills that really help build inclusion. And recognizing if you are talking about a sensitive topic, you want to talk about that tentatively and understand, try to suspend judgment while you’re talking about that sensitive topic. And forming relationships from people, we tend to hang out with our own pack. Find people that look different from you from different backgrounds and be interested.


And this is where we talked about micro aggressions versus micro, I think it’s affirmations. Rather than just asking your best friend at work how their weekend was, ask the person, a way to do a micro affirmation piece is to ask the person you normally don’t ask, “How was your weekend?” Be interested in their world. So those are some of, like building key skills is really about slowing down.


Susan: These all have to do with what we talk about in our communication model of being willing to check things out, slow it down, listen better, be willing to provide feedback. And realize when you are providing someone feedback you’re actually introducing them to your world, not a truth about them. And that is a big, you know, that’s an important thing.


CrisMarie: I think, Susan, I think you need to slow down because that was like, what, mind blowing when you said that. When you’re giving feedback you’re actually sharing more about how you put the world together.


Susan: Not a truth. It’s very, you know, I don’t know how many leaders I’ve said that to and they look at me like, just like you said, what. And it’s like yeah, you are revealing yourself. But you don’t know yet how it impacts them.


CrisMarie: I’ll just give you, I was trying to think of an example but I can think of an example, for me one of my biases can be against younger people because they don’t, most, the ones that I’ve been around, because I can’t generalize them, but this is where my bias comes in, they’re not hardworking. And that’s not true. But if I were to give a younger person feedback and I said, “Well, I don’t think you’re hardworking. You’ve taken vacation. You’ve gone traveling. You don’t stay after work. You don’t seem to move very fast. I think you’re not hardworking.”


But all again I talked about their behavior but I’m putting in the context of hardworking means you don’t travel, you work late, you move fast, you’re very stressed.


Susan: I’m sitting here thinking she must think, I’m not young, but she must think that I’m incredibly not hardworking because I do all those things. But I think you know what it is? For me and this is probably going to be different for somebody else. If I take a vacation I am still, I’m going on vacation. And I am learning things. I am applying things. I’m going to use them in my work. So for me it’s not like I’m at work, I’m on vacation, I’m somewhere else altogether. There is this way in which my world is much more that I will apply it. And that’s how I experience a lot of young people.


I’m sort of amazed at some of the things they’re doing and it’s like, yeah, you really bring that, that you’re passionate about at home right into how this will apply in business going forward.


CrisMarie: So you can see how my narrow view of hardworking misses. And I wasn’t even curious and interested. I’m just telling them, so that’s a bias. That’s a bias in action. And I completely agree, a lot of that, look how much inclusion they’re doing if they are traveling the world and learning about different cultures and recycling or whatever.


Susan: Yeah. They’re learning something else altogether. And I totally get, I loved when you said, “I never did this.” It’s about opt-in or feedback is a reflection of something we could look at too.


CrisMarie: Right, exactly. So that’s building key skills. There are three other pieces, one is working across boundaries and that’s really about getting input from different colleagues, from different departments, from different levels, from a younger, and an older, and a person of color. Not avoiding those people that have different views which totally fits in our conflict idea, gathering the differences, and learning to work with people who are different than you. That’s really about working across boundaries.


And really the piece here that you want to focus on is not making inclusion okay, now managers, you have to focus on inclusion on top of managing risk, and setting strategy, and projects, or resolving conflict. You want actually inclusion to be integrative, not additive. It’s a way to get your work done easier and you’re going to get better results so you want to include these different things. And this is what we teach when we are working with teams, how to include people.


Susan: And I mean that is so critical because I think there’s a lot of data out there now about how people are hiring that Chief Diversity Officer. But they’re either leaving or totally frustrated because yeah, they’re at the table now. But it’s still not weaved in, in a very inclusive way into the culture and this is something that’s now sat on top to get marks and measures.


CrisMarie: It’s like a bolt-on. Now we have to do DNI. And it’s kind of like how HR, “Now, right, we have to think of the people.” No, actually thinking about the people, thinking about diversity, equity, inclusion is going to actually be additive. And I mean it’s going to be, if you integrate it, it’s really going to support the whole business moving forward. And there is also this idea about a model for inclusive communication and collaboration, cultural awareness.


Learning about yourself which when we coach people we help them learn about their biases and how they put the world together, which a lot of people don’t slow down to recognize. But then there is also let me learn about you, how do you make sense to me? And there is this bridging the gap between me and you. And a lot of times it’s the, well, we’re all in the majority here, you should be like us, you come to America, be like us. And it’s almost like, no, the person in power who has the norm group is the responsible to bend towards.


Susan: It’s kind of like we I think sometimes think of bringing somebody in and helping them become a part of the culture. And I think that’s a big problem because there is a way in which we’re trying to get rid of their culture so they can join this culture. And what would be way more productive is to make that like here – there are some things that we have as part of our course. See if you like them. Let’s try them on. But really what cultures are you bringing is another way, because that’s the opportunity.


CrisMarie: It’s true. I mean the other two elements are becoming a champion and getting results. And becoming a champion is really do you bring things up when you see somebody who is being excluded and take the action to bring them in. Do you kind of identify processes and procedures that appear to exclude people? And let’s change that because a lot of times you just don’t – well, it’s working, why fix it? Well, it’s not working for a few of these other people.


Susan: And you may be so busy yourself that you haven’t noticed that it’s not working for some other people. It’s sometimes easy to assume well, I know they reorganized that whole department, but not actually test, well, I wonder why. So a champion would actually be curious about that without just going in under attack but what is happening and supporting them.


CrisMarie: And take some time to speak up when it’s uncomfortable. I mean this is a big one but if you’re in an organization that hasn’t talked about diversity, equity, or inclusion, that might be a time for you to say, “Yeah, I think this is important. Why don’t we educate ourselves or figure out if there is an issue with this and talk about it and learn about it.” That would be becoming a champion.


Susan: Yes. Now, you may have noticed and you may actually hear our dogs in the background so I guess they’re trying to include themselves in our podcast today.


CrisMarie: Unless our podcast people can take that out but probably not. The last one is getting results. And really this is linking inclusion to business results. And this is about recognizing that using a diverse network is actually helpful. And inspiring people from diverse backgrounds to get engaged and it’s going to help the bottom line. Even looking at different customer needs internal and external, we get so set on, “No, this is how I do things.” And it’s like, well, have you asked, and how that’s impacting other people?”


Susan: I think that is so true. I mean I just think of situations where I’ve been in there and it’s been the person who’s brand new or has come from some completely different job, or even not worked but somewhere totally different. And they offer a perspective that is so vital and changes the way a company that may have been a little stuck, does everything. And I’ve seen that happen a number of times.


CrisMarie: And I think that’s another thing Susan, that you’re bringing up is when somebody says something that you think that’s out of left field. Rather than shutting it down get curious because they may actually have a whole innovative idea that – this happens a lot of times, Susan. You’ll bring up something and I’ll be like, “What? No way, that’s just not going to work.” And then when I take the time to listen, because you don’t have the business background and you do this with teams, you do this with us.

You have such a strategic connecting mind that a lot of times it can sound, when I first hear it like no way, even, that sounds dumb. And then I’m like it’s actually kind of brilliant if I get curious about it.


Susan: Well, and that, I mean I do think that comes from not getting so fixed into how something has to be done and being willing. And maybe I think my own life circumstances have helped me stay more curious. That’s been part of the thriving versus just surviving.


CrisMarie: And some of these exclusion behaviors even at tech companies where there’s a real aggressive culture, even asking a dumb question somebody dismisses it. That’s exclusion, whether it’s said from a white man or somebody very diverse, it’s still exclusionary if that’s shut down. Because you’re not using that creative energy and that person is being dismissed even if it is ‘a dumb question’. And it could actually be transformative if you actually got curious about it.


Susan: And of course we think all of this is vital, inclusionary behaviors. And we know it’s not going to always happen.


CrisMarie: Oh gosh, no.


Susan: And there are going to be times when you’re in a crisis and you’re not going to listen to everybody. And it doesn’t mean you’re a horrible person. But you might pay attention to, well, I was really at my worst right then and how can I do it differently. And even suggest that. Maybe I wasn’t very inclusive because I was under stress and I just wanted us to get this done.


CrisMarie: That would be, and it is when we coach people, a powerful way to unpack, something that went wrong is to unpack it and learn from it. Not make a rule we can never do that again, but the vulnerability and courage it takes to say, “Wow, I really didn’t do that well”, is so powerful and it’s also trust building and being willing to hear the impact is so powerful, opening the space for the other person to say, “Yeah, I was really mad and felt excluded and was disengaged from then on out.”


Susan: It does make a difference. So hopefully you found this interesting and can apply it to your work and will talk to us about the ways, your aha’s from our podcast today. And CrisMarie has something to say, she’s asking raising her hands. You can’t see that.


CrisMarie: I’m feeling excluded, Susan. Well, one, I just want to say it is an important topic. And it can be very painful. There is a lot of trauma that’s gone on so it’s a sensitive topic but it’s not one that things can’t be done with. And even the IBI that I use and we use with organization, it’s a way for each person to look at, wait a minute, how am I about learning about bias, and getting results, and working across boundaries and all those different things, building key skills and becoming a champion, one to get a benchmark.


But two, it also drives to, okay, what’s one thing I can focus on to build? Because I know some people want to fix it all at once and we really can’t do that. But we can build awareness and then action towards change which over time is going to be revolutionary.


Susan: It probably is a much better way to make a sustainable transformative change, a transactional change which is actually kind of looks good on paper but doesn’t last.


CrisMarie: Yeah. So if you need more information or want help working with your team or organization, or just coaching for you about your inclusive behaviors, we’re here to help and happy to chat. If you wanted to look at your own inclusive behaviors, yeah, an individual can do that and I can coach around that.


Susan: And you could probably do it for someone’s team.


CrisMarie: Yeah, we do it for individuals, teams and all through the organization. You can get an aspect of the report that way.


Susan: I’m going to take one, so I can be even more included.


CrisMarie: I hope you have an included day.


Susan: Thank you for listening to The Beauty of Conflict podcast. We know conflict, stress and uncertainty can be hard to navigate.


CrisMarie: We want to support you becoming more resilient, able to speak up and have healthy relationships and business teams that thrive. Connect to us on LinkedIn at Thrive Inc. Learn how we can work with you, your team, or your company at thriveinc.com. That’s www.t.h.r.i.v.e.i.n.c.com.


Susan: We hope you have a peaceful, productive and beautiful day.


CrisMarie: Take care.

_________________________________________________________________________


CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke


Coaches, Business Consultants, Speakers and Authors of The Beauty of Conflict

CrisMarie and Susan work leaders and teams, couples in business, and professional women.

They help turnaround dysfunctional teams into high performing, cohesive teams who trust each other, deal with differences directly, and have clarity and alignment on their business strategy so they create great results.


Download the eBook, How to Talk About Difficult Topics, today!


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