Critical Conversations that Drive Inclusive Leadership
Episode 432 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guests: Stephanie Chin and Sarah Noll Wilson
What courageous conversations are you having as an inclusive leader?
Deepen your business relationships with real talk.
The conversation around inclusive leadership is expanding. More and more leaders want to understand what it means, why it’s lacking, and how to get better at it.
In this episode, I dive into a conversation that gets a bit spicy at times, and ends up completely illuminating, with two women who are transforming the inclusive leadership sphere.
Stephanie Chin is a leadership consultant and the founder of Spicy Conversations, where she helps leaders implement behavior and systems change that makes a real difference. Sarah Noll Wilson, a friend and client of Stephanie’s, empowers leaders to honor the complexity of their employees. She’s an executive coach, researcher, and the author of Don’t Feed the Elephants.
The stigmas preventing essential conversations
Why aren’t we having important conversations at work that make all our employees feel welcome and essential? It’s easy to brush this absence off as a bunch of horrible bosses who just don’t care—and there are certainly plenty of those—but good people often avoid these discussions as well.
Even leaders who are conscious of potential missteps worry about saying the wrong thing publicly or upsetting the employees they want to support. But the problem with this avoidance is that while these people—let’s be honest, mostly white folks—are concerned with getting canceled, people who identify as BIPOC are full-on exhausted. They’re sick of navigating these often pointless back-and-forths and shouldering the burden of educating those who perpetuate harm about the realities of systemic oppression.
The benefits of doing the work
Stephanie has seen more than enough leaders seeking to learn how to authentically have these inclusive conversations. Leaders like Sarah, with whom she’d been having these spicy conversations long before they began an official working relationship.
Sarah’s business revolves around transforming relationships from good to great, and these discussions are a vital component of this shift. But even for someone already cognizant of this, it wasn’t a cakewalk to come to terms with feedback that highlighted how far she still had to go.
Discovering you aren’t as conscious of these interactions as you thought doesn’t feel great at the beginning, but repeat exposure works wonders. What started as feelings of fragility for Sarah, as an urge to insist she didn’t mean that, isn’t like that, eventually morphed into something heavy but productive. The impacts of her missteps, however unintended, came into clearer focus, but so too did the realization that everyone will make mistakes in this work; the trick is to keep learning.
Start by just stopping
Stephanie and Sarah are here to help organizations seeking to instigate positive change, but wherever you’re at in your career, you can begin exploring better ways to have challenging conversations on your own.
First of all: just listen. As an Asian-American woman, Stephanie has to arm herself before she enters pretty much any room, where she’s frequently experienced white women who discount her experience as not real.
For the women who hear that and immediately think “well, I would never do that,” it’s especially important to take a moment and mindfully reflect. Recognize these defenses and ask “When have I done this, and how might I do it differently?” Do what Sarah calls a courageous audit.
Be willing to consider the pain you might be causing. That’s not easy, but at the end of the day, inclusive leaders need to be brave, and they need to do the work.
Related Links from today’s episode:
Find Stephanie Chin on LinkedIn
Find Sarah Noll Wilson on LinkedIn
DM Sarah to find out how you can start implementing change
Stephanie’s Spicy Conversations printable cheatsheet
Don’t Feed the Elephants by Sarah Noll Wilson
Conversations on Conversations Podcast
On Jim Irsay’s recent comments
Harvard Business Review on self-awareness
How To Be An Inclusive Leader with Jennifer Brown Bossed Up episode
Armchair Expert’s Jonathan Van Ness podcast episode
My book, Bossed Up: A Grown Woman’s Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together
Level Up: a Leadership Accelerator for Women on the Rise
Bossed Up job search resources
LEVEL UP YOUR LEADERSHIP TO BECOME A MORE INCLUSIVE LEADER:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: And welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 432. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today's conversation is for any leader today who wants to be an inclusive leader but doesn't really know where to start.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
And in service of that objective, I have two guests with me today. My first guest is Stephanie Chin, who's a truly incredible leader with a variety of business and nonprofit sector experiences, who's joined today by one of her own clients, Sarah Noll Wilson. Sarah enlisted Stephanie's help in becoming a more inclusive leader as she's been growing her business, focused on leadership development. And one thing we get into right away on this podcast episode is how much this conversation circles back to the kinds of courageous conversations that all leaders need to be willing to have in today's business world and really just in today's socially conscious culture that we are either embracing or fighting against. And we're going to talk through a lot of examples of both today. But first, a little bit about today's guests.
Stephanie Chin's mission in life is to help everyone operate near their potential while expanding it by their own definition. She believes we all do better if we had someone in our lives saying, I believe in you, I want you to be successful, and I'm here to help. One of her greatest strengths is to be the change agent who helps others level up in their work and sets up the systems and ecosystems so more people feel set up for success. She founded Spicy Conversations to help more leaders improve inclusive leadership practices and focus on behavioral and systems change that makes a real difference. Stephanie has a Bachelor's of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, a JD/MBA from Emory University, and has a green belt in Lean Six Sigma and coaching training from Coactive Training Institute. Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.
STEPHANIE: Thank you.
EMILIE: Also joining us today is Sarah Noll Wilson, who's on a mission to help leaders build and rebuild teams. Her goal is to empower leaders to understand and honor the beautiful complexity of the humans they serve. She creates a safe, honest environment, preparing people to deal with real world conflict, have more meaningful conversations, and create purposeful relationships. Through working with CEOs, HR leaders, and organizations that care deeply about their employees and understand the connection between employee development, employee satisfaction, and organizational success. Sarah Noel Wilson specializes in transforming relationships from good to great. Through her work as an executive coach, an in demand keynote speaker, researcher, contributor to Harvard Business Review, and best selling author of Don't Feed the Elephants, Sarah Noel Wilson helps leaders close the gap between what they intended to do and the actual impact they make. And Sarah also hosts a phenomenal podcast called Conversations on Conversations. Sarah, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
SARAH: Yeah, thanks for having me.
EMILIE: Stephanie, let's start with you. Tell me more about your history, your work, and how you got into inclusive leadership coaching.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, so I'm going to be true to my company's name, which is spicy conversations. And I'm going to start us out hot and spicy and, say, racial trauma. Sarah and I met when I moved to Des Moines. And I have lived in a lot of places, including all across big cities in the US and Singapore and Costa Rica and Des Moines was the first place I had been where there weren't a lot of people like me. And I was finally an only. And the experience of that and listening to other people and the way that that opened up my ability to hear people who had suffered more and moving on and into other roles and doing other work. I just really heard this need. I've spent almost 20 years in nonprofits with people who are trying to do really good jobs, and still there's a lot of pain, particularly from black women in the workplace. And I thought, what role can I play? How can I help? And that's what brought me to inclusive coaching, founding my own business, starting it out in its first year of operation called Spicy Conversations, which is an analogy to how do we have hard conversations without calling them hard? How do we use the analogy of food and say, like, let's spice it up together and let's talk about the things we want to talk about.
EMILIE: I like it. Spicy Conversations should truly be the name of your podcast when you launch it, so please make that happen. You, know, I just want to ask a follow up here. Can you tell me more about how your identity came into play when you were living in Des Moines?
STEPHANIE: So many things, and only in so many different ways as well. So I am an Asian American woman. I'm Chinese American. We've been in the US for five generations. My great grandmother immigrated with my great grandfather in Ohio. So we're very Americanized, but we also have been very strongly culturally Chinese. And my mother is very proud of the amount of Chinese culture that she has retained, to the point that folks who are in China now are like, you act like my grandmother because I have retained the cultural roots that the change of political status in China have kind of erased there. And so when I showed up in Des Moines, I came in with a lot of privilege. I was coming from United Way worldwide and going to a local United way. And so that came with a lot of power. And I jokingly say I ended up on the cover of the business record for showing up Asian. I know that's not true, but that's kind of the way it felt, because within the first three months, I was on the business record, and I got a lot of positive responses, but also felt very much like people did not see me, understood me, and that, um, I was carrying the weight of all of the people who felt unseen by the community and had to advocate for them and very much felt that responsibility.
EMILIE: Thank you so much for sharing that, Stephanie. I really appreciate that added context. You know, this is a really unique episode in that we're bringing you on Stephanie, with your background and expertise, and we're bringing a client of yours on Sarah, tell me a little bit about you and your business and what inspired you to seek out Stephanie's support.
SARAH: Yeah, so, uh, I started a leadership coaching and consulting practice almost six years ago. We are on a mission to help the workplace work better for humans and have the conversations that matter. Stephanie and I met, I was trying to think of, like, when did you, I don't remember not knowing you.
STEPHANIE: We were introduced from a friend, Gina Skinner Thibeault. I'll give a shout out for Gina, who I met at a conference that I was presenting at. And she was like, you need to meet Sarah, because we basically talk very similar languages, we have similar interests, and we're all trying to honestly, as Sarah says, rid the world of sh** managers.
EMILIE: I kind of love how there's an overlapping circle here, two overlapping pieces to the spend diagram around leadership, but also conversations. So we got spicy conversations. We've got healing the world of work and leadership through conversations. So this is going to be the world's most meta conversation with the three of us on I'm so delighted.
SARAH: You know, conversations is how we build relationships. It's also how we can sometimes harm the relationships as well. Right. And it's really important for us to be intentional about it. When I first met Stephanie, so the question is, why did I choose to work with her, you know, hearing her language that she used of feeling like she carried the weight of those unseen is so accurate because particularly growing up in Iowa, it's an incredibly homogeneous culture, and I didn't know what I didn't know, and she was the first one to help me see things I just wasn't seeing. And it wasn't always easy. I think one of the first times it was, it might have been at a conference. You're like, what do you notice about everyone or you sent me a website. What do you notice about all the speakers? I was like, oh, they're all white. Okay. Yeah. And she pushed in a way that I had never been pushed before. And I'll speak real honestly, you know, I grew up being like, I'm nice. I'm understanding of other people. I was really fortunate to be raised by parents who were like, don't judge somebody till you walked in their shoes. I grew up in, for Iowa, a pretty racially diverse community. So compared to my counterparts, I was like, I understand this. And I didn't realize how little I understood. I didn't realize how little I didn't see or know or even see the role I was playing in contributing to it. And part of what made the shift, I think, for me, was a couple of reasons. Stephanie was already doing a lot of emotional labor with me, and there just needed to be some compensation for like, everything she was doing. I also knew that as we were growing and as I was getting clearer about who I was as a person, how I want to show up in the world, just becoming more acutely aware that I couldn't do this on my own. It wasn't enough to read books. It wasn't enough. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I've learned a lot from books, but really being able to wrestle with these kind of conversations and just the reality, honestly, has been, like, one of the most important learnings that I've had in my recent career.
EMILIE: There's something really powerful here about the dialectic. As my therapist would say.
STEPHANIE: We're going to go super meta.
SARAH: Are we getting meta about the meta.
[LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Now I got to have a conversation with the conversation folks about the conversational approach, because I think that's a really key point that a lot of us, particularly those who have only since come into this conversation around racial justice as of 2020, that was three whole years ago, we've read the books. We had Robin D'Angelo on this very podcast talking white fragility. We've maybe marched, maybe signed petitions, maybe set up some recurring contributions and tried to do our part, especially as white folks. And then there's something really different about that one way action versus dialectic back and forth. Right? And so the consulting work is such an interesting approach, Stephanie, that you're taking, because I believe it was you who told me this, and it resonates as so true. A lot of business leaders today are saying I was not properly equipped to lead in this environment where it feels like one misstep verbally, is going to make me seem like a dinosaur, is going to make me offend someone. So I'm afraid to even have those conversations. And you're saying, Sarah, in that conversation comes so much more learning and growth than what was possible on your own, right?
SARAH: 100%. I have to give a credible amount of credit to Steph because, one, she doesn't have to hold this labor with me. But when I think that it really shifted for me, I want to be much more intentional about this. I want to think about this, was, I don't even remember all of the exact, but we had some really emotionally tender conversations at the end of last year. And one of the things that was so striking to me was when Steph had given me some tough feedback and then also shared the risk she had to take in sharing that with me, because my experience with Stephanie has always been, oh you know, she's just going to call it out. She's going to share it and never considering the risk that she was going to take. So even in the act of having the conversation
EMILIE: For free.
SARAH: For free. To be clear, I mean, there are times even now when we'll be in a text and she's like, I was like, you got to send me an invoice for this. I know it was intended to just be a text to start, but part of that also is, let's just call it when what becomes near to you becomes dear to you, when you understand that you can talk about racial trauma, seeing it on the face of somebody that you love, on somebody you appreciate, it does elevate the sense of urgency in a different way.
EMILIE: Yeah. So tell me more about what that looks like in your day to day, Steph, because it feels like you're a freelancing provocateur. And then also, you're bringing that into the professional realm of saying, okay, not only are you innately great at spicy conversations and calling things out and calling folks in, you're now providing this really valuable service to leaders who need to be called in, who are, like, who can I pay to call me in, before it goes public? So that I can preferably have these necessary clarifying conversations in an environment that feels, if not safe, like at least one of learning and growth. So what does that look like for leaders these days? Especially the leaders who are, I don't know, maybe a little tired about talking about DEI.
STEPHANIE: So I try to make it, even though I have a very race conscious approach, I try to make it not about DEI, but like, wanting to be a good leader, because I will tell you. The vast majority of people I talk to about this are, oh, no, that's not the way I want people to experience me. They are not, screw you. I don't care. They are like, I'm too afraid to do things. And I've talked about this with people who specialize in coaching BIPOC folks, and I work with everyone who's willing to do the work. But there are some folks I know who are like, I just can't work with white people anymore. The emotional labor, as Sarah said, it's heavy. I sent Sarah an email on Christmas Eve one night being like, I can't sleep because I'm thinking about your work and how people misuse it. Not how she's using it, but how people are weaponizing it against people of color. So, as an example, Sarah does courageous conversations. She does curiosity first. And I was talking to someone who is a great leader, where I was like, oh, this would push me out. And they were like, well, you're not being curious with me. And I was like, that's not the way that works. But I get the response. But you don't prescribe curiosity to someone else when they are telling you something that was hard. And so it's extremely weighty because really, the only people who want to do this, and I will tell you, it's not the majority of the market by any means, because it's hard and because people are busy and not because they are bad people, but it is intense work. If you are not doing well, it's hard to do it without just feeling like, oh, I'm a bad person, or, oh, there's nothing I can say but say, hey, I missed something. Oops, I missed things. I don't work well with everyone, right? Like, I screw things up. And I think that's what I want to normalize. And one of the reasons why I asked you, can we make it three? Is because I think people think that the people who do this work are the jerks of the world. And no one will leave this podcast thinking, Sarah's the Jerk in this conversation. Usually it's me, honestly, right?
EMILIE: I mean, the jerks make more headlines, right? The jerks get in more public hot water. And there's one actually headline I do want to bring up. I don't know if y'all have come across, but here's a little bit of a surprise. But before I go there, I think there's this innate defensiveness that you're describing, Steph, that coaching relationships, especially in the service of leadership development, is supposed to provoke some defensiveness. Whether you're talking about inclusive leadership or just any element of leadership development, it's like the skills and the strengths that got you to where you are today are not the same that are going to get you to where you want to be tomorrow. And that requires reflecting critically on yourself, and that can feel provocative. But what do you say to the leaders out there, like a certain Colts owner? I don't know if you saw this headline?
STEPHANIE: I did not see this. I am not really looking at sports news either.
EMILIE: Me neither. So, uh, I'm probably about to butcher this man's name, but Jim Ursay, I want to say, is the owner of the Colts, and he said in an interview on Real Sports with Brian Gumbel that I have clearly never watched, quote, I'm prejudiced against because I'm a rich, white billionaire. Asked by Kramer how he thinks it sounds for a white billionaire to claim that he's a victim of prejudice, he stood by his comment and said, quote, I don't care what it sounds like. It's the truth. There is a lot of the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction on diversity, Equity, and inclusion conversations this year. We've talked about this before, Steph. I feel like white defensiveness and leaders' defensiveness is higher than ever, causing so many of us to throw up our hands and say, if it can't be done right, let's not do it at all. So what's the benefit, Sarah? What do you see as the benefit of actually being willing and able to do the work as a business leader yourself?
SARAH: Well, I feel like there needs to be like. Can we examine the fact that when you are in the position of power, you're not being oppressed against. Like that’s a couple of thoughts were coming up. So first, again, I want to talk about what it has looked like navigating these conversations real quick from the standpoint of, and you already heard how Steph was saying it, I mess up, we're all going to mess up. And that has been one of the things that has made this journey easier to be on. In the beginning, I was using therapy sessions to be like, I got to process this. Like, I'm really struggling with how heavy this feels. I'm struggling with the reactions I'm having. I was really fortunate that my therapist is like, yeah, let's do this work. Thank you. But normalizing that, and so I will say that, here's a really good example of our work together and how things have shifted is, in 2020 I was like, what do I do? And Steph was like, are you wanting to do stuff to make a change, or are you wanting to do stuff to be seen as a good white person? And it was a push. And I think that for a long time, and there likely are still moments where that is the default. I want to be seen as a good person, right? Which is why that defensiveness can come up, because it's pushing against this belief that you've had about yourself your whole life, and also this shedding of reality, of, holy schnikes, there's a lot of harm in this world, and I've just chosen, been raised, right, and I'm not seeing it. And not only am I not seeing it, but I'm contributing to it.
EMILIE: But we've been taught that we're not perpetuating it.
SARAH: Yeah, exactly. Yeah absolutely.
EMILIE: I think particularly, that's an important message for women, white women in particular, because women are oppressed based on our gender. Right? We can look at the gender leadership gap and acknowledge the lack of fairness there. And just because we are in some ways oppressed, or up against our own forms of prejudice, does not remove us from being complicit in the oppression of others. And that can be a really hard duality to hold. Right?
SARAH: Yeah and sometimes worse, because we're aware of what it feels like we're aware of. Right. And sometimes I think it can be even more harmful.
EMILIE: Well, it's harmful, too, because movements of oppression have always used women not to go, like, way off the rails here with a history lesson, but we know the movements around white supremacy have used women to sort of perpetuate fear based know. In the Jim Crow south, that was a huge part of the culture. And we look back at the suffrage movement. Right? You think we're just marching for women's rights to vote. We're not talking about all women. Right? And so it just doesn't take much to see the nuance there. And I think when we crave that binary of good evil, which a lot of particular sex you know, in our world like to lean back on, if we're hinging on being seen as a good person, we're already in the wrong conversation.
SARAH: Well, so that goes to the question you asked, which was like, why does this matter, and how does this impact you? There are so many layers to how this work has impacted me. Obviously, from a professional level, I am able to see things, deliver things, either challenge some leaders, help some leaders, be seen, by having a deeper understanding in a more nuanced approach. That's something that I was sharing with Steph, is that I've noticed in my work with her that I have more team members or leaders of color coming up to me and talking to me because they're like, oh, I was surprised when you mentioned white supremacy. Like, wasn't expecting that to come out. So I'm creating safety for more people in the audience than just people who look like me. Also, the reality is, is that I can get my foot in the door and I can be heard differently by people who look like sometimes, you know, my friend Dr. Tina Opie's like, I'm, okay if you're the Trojan horse. Let's just get you the right army, uh, inside you to come out. But even more than that, it's just a deepening of compassion, of understanding that we don't all live in the same world. Understanding the power you have. And to be clear, like, I'm still not where I want to be. I'm still not as courageous as I need to be. I'm still learning, and I will always be learning and part of it again, even on a continuing, deeper level. One of the things that I've been really working on is just showing up for people. And how do I show up for people? Yeah, I mean, there's just been layers, and then there's been ripple effects for me. Right? Like, it's opened up conversations where I've pushed people in a way that I wouldn't have pushed them before because I had a deeper understanding and I had language and I had my own stories to share. I mean, I sat at that Christmas Eve conversation, literally at 02:00 in the morning. My parents and I were chatting, and they were like, what's hard about your work? And I was like, in this moment is knowing that it's hurting people in a way that I wasn't intending it and just having this conversation. So there's lots of impacts to this, and that's just to me and not necessarily even to the people who hopefully, I can create safety for and do more work and just less harm.
STEPHANIE: So I want to also add, it's not just DEI fuzziness, either, right? So I have a JD/MBA. I built the project management office for, like, a $450,000,000 nonprofit organization. When we talk about how we operate as businesses, we have not done a great job. And so the models that we are building off of are also not that effective. Not even just. It could be better for people of color, like, they're just not working that well for anyone. And so one of the examples that Sarah shares, that's one of my less spicy ones, is when you're adding a new team member. How does that change the entire team dynamics? As your team grows operationally, when you move from a small startup to a team of five to ten, you need to operate differently. And the way that people will act is they will defer to the owner and those who are seen as having the most prestige. And if you really want the true contributions and the best work of everyone, you need to not center yourself, but think about the people who are furthest from you and create a space where you can all live and play.
EMILIE: I love how equity always comes back to good management practices. Like the SOP baby. Let's bust out the handbook.
SARAH: It's not separate, you know?
EMILIE: No. It's sexy as a business owner who's grown and shrunk and everything in between. It's just, we got to get you into my level up program because, Steph, they need to hear from you there, because good, clear, equitable expectation setting, to me, is like 95% of what's wrong in our business world today. What do you think about that?
STEPHANIE: So that reminds me of something interesting. I just shared this with Sarah in our coaching work. If you haven't read The Culture Map, and I can give you the link to it. One of the axes on which they describe culture, and there's like 20 something different axis of how cultures are different, and they're talking internationally, so across countries. But I think this is true of anything. One of the big axis that I focus on a lot is high context versus low context culture. Japan as a country is a great example of a high context culture. There is more unsaid than what is said. And because there's enough homogeneity, people run off of assumptions and knowledge. And in law school, we talked about, like, laws are built, and what you need to figure out is if it is a rule, that is, you can't do it when you say you can't do it or you can't do it because they said nothing. Right? You don't know which one it is when you're living in a place. So if you grew up in New York, you can't turn right on red. How do you know? You grew up in New York. And so high context, and then one of the lowest is the US, because we're so different. You can't work off of assumptions. Des Moines was my first experience living in a high context environment, where people mostly had shared understanding, except for me, who was new. And so one of the challenges is people are like, this has worked for us for so long, because everybody's been here, and they would be super annoyed if we gave you all the instructions all the time.
EMILIE: Can I jump in with a quick example? Pronouns, right? Emily, Aries, she/her. Right? That is context. That seems totally annoying and unnecessary. If everybody's gender identity is, like, explicitly understood by everyone historically. But now if folks want to feel included and the they thems want to feel included, all of a sudden that level of context becomes relevant. Is that an example of what you're describing?
STEPHANIE: Yeah. That's something you want to have a low context and be explicit about. And I just was talking to someone who was like, uh, one of the big mistakes I made was calling mispronouncing someone they couldn't remember if they thought they were he and they were she. It wasn't even someone who is non-binary. But we were making those mistakes before, too. It wasn't that, that couldn't have been useful before.
EMILIE: I was just going to jump in and say, Sarah, but to your point earlier, we don't know what we don't know.
SARAH: Yeah, you don't know what you don't know. And I'm really glad that stuff you brought up about the complexity of the work, right? Of thinking about it through the lens of structure and thinking about it through the lens of, how do we communicate? What do we communicate? And even when you just think of inclusion, it's just understanding that everyone is coming to the table with a different operating system. And if your system, right, is like, we know the rules, and you just have to adapt and assimilate, right. Like, that's problematic. And I will say that's been another area that this work has really significantly challenged me, is to be passionately descriptive about the fact that there is no one way. There's no one way to do any of it. We're just figuring out what's right for the situation, what's right for the people, what's right for the relationship. And even when she talks about coming into high context, because I grew up here, I didn't see that. And she was like, y'all have a real culture of sameness. And I was like, no, we don’t, oh sh**, like, yep, we sure do. And then it's like, oh, I got it.
EMILIE: Yeah. So, Steph, how does somebody begin to. Who's a leader listening to this begin to illuminate their own ignorance? I had Jennifer Brown, author of Inclusive Leadership, the book on the pod, and she talked about the inclusive leader continuum, and, like, getting on that first step, like Sarah just described, of, like, oh, I didn't realize that this isn't something I was even aware of. How do we get folks into awareness and then once they're there, what the hell do they do with that feeling? Because it can be really uncomfortable. Can it?
STEPHANIE: Yeah. So one of my favorite ideas that challenge accepted or challenge denied is totally fine, is, for those listening, think of a person who drives you crazy, and it is very difficult to work with, personally or professionally. And then think of a person who likes you both, who you trust, and then talk to that person you like and trust and say, hey, I am trying to increase my awareness of how other people are experiencing me, what I might be missing in my life that I do not see. And Sarah has a great analogy of, like, who's your navigator, like, what's another way that I can look at this? I am having X challenge with this person. I like to be specific, so that it's easier to give feedback on for a person. But I'm having this conversation with Sarah next week, and every time I feel like I talk to her, I feel like she hates me or she doesn't value what I'm saying or whatever sort of thing. What do you think I could do differently? Because I know you work really well.
EMILIE: I love that idea because so many of the leaders I work with say, oh, my God, I've got this one employee on my team, and you're saying, approach that with, I don't want to weaponize curiosity here, but you are saying curiosity, right? And maybe, is there a maybe it's me question in there? Is it? I'm not the best person to understand why I'm having conflict with this other.
STEPHANIE: I like to be like, it's about the space between us and either person. And so I will give you an example. My mother drives me crazy because she's always late, because she's always doing a million things, and she does that because my grandmother was always early. And so it makes me anxious when someone is late. And so I had someone who reported to me, so I had more power, who was running late to meetings more than once. And so the second time I said, hey, I just want to give you some feedback because I want to be clear. I want to set you up for success. I believe in you, and I want you to know what the impact is on me. Because of my family history, I start to get nervous. Were you in an accident? Like, what happened? And it takes me there. I also have other meetings. Can you help me? Can you make sure that you're on time? This person was also great about being very letting me know if they were late, so it wasn't a big deal. And it was in Des Moines. And they're like, you're the most direct person I've ever met. And I was like, not true in like DC or New York, but true in Des Moines. And as we grew together, they ended up calling me the only manager who helped them level up. And they were like, I really appreciate that because I was never actually in trouble. You just wanted to make sure that we had the same expectations.
EMILIE: Is this someone you gave that feedback to who was senior to you?
SARAH: No, Junior
EMILIE: Junior, okay. I just wanted to clarify that. So what do you feel like you risk when giving feedback like that? Because we mentioned that earlier, and that seems, I don't want to use the word scary, that might be overblown, but I know a lot of folks who are reticent to give even that level of direct feedback to their direct reports, much less a senior person, because I thought at first that was the, uh, scenario. So when we're talking about risk, what do we really mean?
STEPHANIE: Sure. So it's kind of funny. I worry more about silencing more junior people than I worry about ticking off more senior people, which gets me in trouble, but it's manageable. And so that, to me, is more risky, because what I don't want that person to do is never to come to me for something. But what is at risk is, um, and I think especially women go, the relationship, can you get through this? And I have told Sarah, I risk our relationship every time I give her hard feedback. And I bet on our relationship every time I give her feedback, right? I am betting that our relationship will take us through this conversation. And that's what I try to focus on with people, is I believe in you. I'm betting on you. And the risk, I have left jobs. And I was telling Sarah, I tell this story kind of regularly because I talked to a chief diversity officer of a company who was like, as a black woman, not enough people know these stories happen. I was talking to a white woman leader who worked in an organization where I was hearing significant patterns of the black women being put on PIPs within the first year, having very negative experiences, having bad onboarding experiences, being paid less, like, on and on and on. And a system, an infrastructure that was so unclear. People were falling through the cracks, and they mostly had the same things in common. And I gave this person feedback of, I'm trying really hard to do my job and do my job well. And I ask explicitly what to do. I do what I'm told to do, and then I get in trouble because it was wrong for someone else. And I cried. I cried a lot. And this person slapped back, and I reached out for a reconciliation conversation. And her first comment to me was, Stephanie, we all have biases. One of the biases is seeing race and everything, and then proceeded to tell me that she was the victim, um, to my criticism, because I told her, she made me cry, and I felt set up for failure, and I left.
EMILIE: Yeah, I mean, good for you, first of all. But also what? Also, that's what we're up against right now, this reverse racism thing. And it's like, that's the theme of 2023 also, goodbye, 2023. I'm so ready for this year to be over, but I think we're coming back around, maybe, but how do we reach people like that? Is she reachable? Do we, that wasn't your job to reach her in that moment. Your job was to get yourself somewhere else, which I'm proud of you for doing. But how do you begin? Like, and maybe it's sending in the, Sarah's Trojan horse style, but how do we reach those people? Because it's so easy to just get to our encampments ideologically and say, okay, f**k that woman, we're never going to work with her again, but we need to have these spicy conversations. What happens when a spicy conversation just gets cut off?
STEPHANIE: So I'm going to say something that's kind of hard, which is, I'm that woman sometimes probably on a different topic. So it's not as much some people are bad and some people are good. It is who to talk to about what topic, in which way. And I just listened to an armchair expert episode where they were talking about being non-binary, and I would say I was not pleased with how things went.
EMILIE: Was that with Jonathan Van Ness?
STEPHANIE: Yeah.
EMILIE: Oh, very controversial in the podcasting space. Everybody go listen. I'll link to it in bio.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, I have very strong opinions, but I'm also, like people who think they are enlightened and know a lot of things about one thing. I don't know a lot about a lot of things. And so I'm not going to say that, uh, this is an interpersonal issue. I'm not as worried about reaching out to those people. I think there are people, and the system set us all up for failure in that scenario, because the systems weren't there. It was both incumbent on both of us, and both of our weaknesses showed up. And so I do think one of the reasons why I share this story is like, what I have found is when Sarah tells her parents they can have a different conversation than they would have directly with me. And when your podcast listeners talk to their friends and family and they heard, what do you think of that? People all are like, oh, I can't believe someone said that. I'm like, oh, this is the time you said something like that to me.
EMILIE: I wish it was so much simpler. It's not simple. You know what I mean. Sarah, how do you respond to getting tough feedback and listening to this, you know, obviously, it depends on the situation and the feedback and the conversation and the timing and of course, but what is an alternative? Can you paint us a picture of what that looks like?
SARAH: Well, and I think that's been a journey. I don't think it's been a journey. Let me rephrase that. That's absolutely been a journey. Particularly when I think about the work with Stephanie and then how that has rippled out into other situations where maybe somebody has offered me a perspective or called me in. In the very beginning, I definitely got fragile, or like, oh, I don't know. And then I will say then I feel like I shifted into. It just felt so heavy, and it felt heavy, and I felt lost because I didn't know how to solve for it. I didn't know how to move forward because I could see the impact better now. It would put me in a really tender spot, not in a defensive spot, a really tender spot. And now, just because of the repetition, honestly, it's like, oh, yep, got it, thanks. Like, not to say that there aren't times where I wrestle with it. There absolutely are. There's been times. But I feel like for me, a couple of things, the trust that we've built up, the consistency of it, and Stephanie and I, we were just texting each other the other night, and I had shared with her this, aha, I had. Is that one of the things that contributes not only to my trust with Stephanie, but I realize with other people and having candid conversations is when I see how thoughtful they are being, when they prepare for a conversation with someone else. So when I see how Steph is, or a colleague or a friend is like, oh, I got to have this conversation, I'm trying to think about the best way to enter in. I realize, oh, right. That's part of what also contributes to me being able to show up, because I know you have put thought into this. And the other thing I will say is, this might not resonate for other people. But it's been a really helpful mantra for me, is right size, my discomfort, the discomfort that I have right now in no way. And this isn't about dismissing my experience or feelings, but just to put it in perspective that the discomfort I'm feeling right now by getting pushed in this way, doesn't even compare to the harm that this action could do to someone else. And for me, anyway, that helps me put it in perspective, to be able to hold it differently and to see it differently. Sometimes it's heavy, sometimes it's tender, and sometimes it's like, yup, thank you. Appreciate that call out, I got it. But that’s not where I started.
EMILIE: Well, I'm sensing, like, a healthy detachment in the sort of Buddhist sense of the word, between your sense of self and identity and goodness and innate value in this world and your work and performance in the world and conversations that you're having. And I think it's very heavy when you're like, oh, my God, I'm contributing to harm. But there has to be that dissonance just for a moment to say, and in order to get back up and move on and do better, I have to not let that destroy me, right? And when there is that healthy sort of detachment, my work is not my worth, you know, I care deeply about my work, but my work is not my worth. It can hopefully get us all out of existential doom a little faster so we can get back to doing better.
SARAH: Yeah, I mean, I hear that. And what I would add to that, and again, this is something that I give a lot of credit to Stephanie, is, and you're going to mess up. You just are. And when you've been raised in a white supremacist culture where perfectionism even I don't describe myself as a perfectionist, but there's definitely areas where I don't even realize, like, I don't want to do it if I can't do it right. Also, just building up that acceptance that you're going to mess up, and it's like, how do you prevent those? But also, how do you repair those when those happen, and how do you move forward? And it is hard work, because to be inclusive isn't a technical thing you can do. It's an examination of your humanity, your relationship with other humans, your willingness to consider the pain that people are experiencing, and your willingness to consider the pain you're causing. That's not easy. And it's incredibly expansive when you can step into that space.
EMILIE: This might be because I see gender in everything, but I also have to add that we condition women and girls in particular, and obviously, gender is a spectrum, and this is an over generalization, but a lot of women and girls are taught to be perfect. And as Reshma Saujani would say, we teach our girls to be perfect. We teach our boys to be brave. And in this current business climate, in this current world we're in, we need leaders to be brave, you know, regardless of gender, race, identity. We need leaders to be brave enough to know they're going to make mistakes and to do the self examination to try to be better as they go. So, final thoughts on this. What does that practice look like? What do you want to see more? I don't know, perhaps because we have a lot of them on the line right now. Women leaders in particular do differently, and this is for either of you, and I'll make sure to get back to both of you on this. But what do we want to challenge Bossed Up listeners to do?
STEPHANIE: So I'm going to say something a little spicy.
EMILIE: I hope you will.
STEPHANIE: One of the pieces of feedback that I've given Sarah is every space I enter that is hers. I can expect probably a white woman to discount my experience as not real. And all I'm going to ask you is to not do like, you don't even have to agree with it, but do you have to fight with me that when I'm like, this is my experience and it's not the majority, but almost no one disagrees with them. And so one of the things I've told her is, like, it is not safe for me to go into her spaces. I have to go in armed up and open to have conversations because there are some good people. Like, there's both. Everybody's in there, and all it takes is someone who's in a bad mood, where it triggers them that I had this bad experience. And I'll say it's like, stupid things. Like, I'll be like, I love my mother, and I feel like the mother daughter relationship is so tough, and then a mother will be like, well, I just feel completely judged. And I'm like, that's fair, and I'm just talking about my life. Right? Like, do you need to fight with someone else about their experience, or could you even at the very bare minimum just listen.
EMILIE: Listen and believe women of color is what I'm hearing.
STEPHANIE: I mean, that's even another step, which I would love. And anybody, right. Believe people's experience instead of fight with them on it. But at the very minimum, don't fight.
EMILIE: Me, Sarah, what would you add?
SARAH: I would add just that willingness to interrogate. How might this be true about me? It's really easy when you hold the belief, like, well, that's not me. Even just hearing Steph tell that story, I'm guessing there are going to be people in your audience who are like, oh, my gosh, I would never do that. And then we're just perpetuating, right. This belief that I'm a good person or whatever, but really be willing to go, when have I? How might I? And just that willingness to think of it as a courageous audit. What do I do that gets in the way? And how might that be true? Because to be honest, that's part of. I think part of what I know has contributed to this work and my evolution in our relationship is to be like, well, no, I didn't do that. That's not what I meant. And then just stop there. Instead of, like, that wasn't what I meant, Damn. I see. Okay. Uh, maybe that was what I meant. If I'm being really honest with myself, maybe I did actually just that willingness to see the flaws and to see maybe flaws isn't the right word, but just to really consider and interrogate, how is it? And how might it be true?
EMILIE: And when what you meant doesn't f**ing matter, because that's what happened. That's the harm that was done. Regardless.
SARAH: I didn't mean to hit your car. But I did.
EMILIE: But you did, so fix it. Yeah.
SARAH: And to be honest, when maybe you did mean to hit the car because it made you uncomfortable, because you felt threatened, because of keeping power, because of whatever, like, own that too.
STEPHANIE: I will say that in my work, the person who responds with, oh, that's never me. The most people in their life can say, yes, it's so true.
EMILIE: Honestly, I think self awareness, which is different, but related to what we've been talking about, I think self awareness is one of the most critical and under discussed leadership skill in today's day and age.
SARAH: And so many people think they have, uh, it and they don't actually know what it looks like in practice.
EMILIE: There's some study that, like, 97% of people report being highly self aware, and I think we can all agree that does not check out based on our own little lives.
SARAH: And if that's the same study by Dr. Tasha Yurich, then it's only about 10% really do practice.
EMILIE: I was just going to say.
STEPHANIE: And I think those that are. Are the ones who think they're not.
SARAH: Yeah, no, that's okay, I was going to say that here's a good check to your point, Steph. When you were saying, if I asked all the people, if you come to me and say, I'm really self aware, period, I immediately know you're not. Otherwise, it looks like this. I try to be self aware. I don't know if I am. Or maybe you're like, I'm really familiar with this, but I'm sure there's more stuff for me to learn. Like, it's always that intellectual humility that seeps out.
EMILIE: Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Yeah. This is that if there's ignorance there, you don't know what you don't know. Uh, so hopefully we all know a little bit more and can leave this conversation with some humility and an active listening attitude, some curiosity, some self-examination, and frankly, a willingness to keep doing this work because it ain't over yet. Steph, Sarah, thank you both so much for being here and being along for the spicy ride that this conversation has met.
STEPHANIE: And thanks for letting me bring a client.
SARAH: Yeah, thanks for inviting me, Steph.
EMILIE: If anyone's going to break the mold, Steph, it's you. So I love to see it. Awesome. where can our listeners learn more about you and your work? Steph, let's start with you.
STEPHANIE: Sure. LinkedIn is the best place. I post on there, both individually and on my company's page.
EMILIE: Awesome. And I will link to those in the notes. How about you, Sarah?
SARAH: I always say my DMs are always open, but mostly on LinkedIn website. Uh, is if you're especially, I'll offer this. If you're somebody who's on the journey and you're like, how do I step in to know more? Just send me a direct email, sarah@sarahnolwilson.com.
EMILIE: I love it. Thank you both so much for being here. I can't wait to keep in touch and keep this conversation going.
STEPHANIE: Let's do it.
EMILIE: Hey, before I close out today's episode, a quick programming note in the spirit of acknowledging that we are always learning and growing when it comes to being a more inclusive leader, I got a note from Stephanie right after we hung up on, um, this interview in which she said, oops, I messed up. I'm trying not to say crazy, as I know mental health advocates are asking us to rethink its use because it promotes mental health stigma. But I did it. So what we're attempting to do here is following her reference to crazy when she was talking about colleagues that drive you crazy. Is to acknowledge that, you know, this is not something we want to use in that way, that that terminology can be really offensive and contribute to harm without our intending to do so. So we're walking the walk here. We're acknowledging that everyone, including Steph, who does, you know, inclusive coaching professionally is always a work in progress on this kind of thing. Uh, and it was really important to her to provide this disclaimer after the fact and acknowledge what it looks like to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, when it comes to learning and growing together.
I really just wanted to add this little disclaimer to show that it's not about being perfect all the time. In fact, that's not realistic for any of us. But as Stephanie wrote to me in her email, quote, it's all in the repair. So I hope that this note can inspire you to acknowledge that none of us are going to be perfect about being an inclusive leader 100% of the time. But when we mess up, it's our job to acknowledge it and say something about it to make it right.
For more links to everything we discussed on today's action packed podcast conversation, head to BossedUp.org/Episode 432 that's BossedUp.org/Episode 432. I would love to hear from you. What did you take away from today's conversation? How are you talking the talk or walking the walk when it comes to being a more inclusive leader? And what lessons would you share with your colleagues when it comes to how they can be more inclusive in their practice of leadership, too? Let's keep the conversation going in the Bossed Up Courage Community, on Facebook and or in the Bossed Up LinkedIn group, both of which are in today's show notes.
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And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose. And together let's lift as we climb.
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