0:00:02 - Briar
Hello, welcome. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Neurodiversity Media Network. Today, on Juneteenth, we are fixing work, and we are fixing work for groups who are marginalized in some way. So we're talking about people of color, we're talking about the LGBT peoples whose identities have caused structural problems in the workplace, and we're lumping them all together because, while the problems are different, the solutions are often the same. It's a lot, So let's get to it. Joa hello.
0:01:01 - Joa
Hello, i'm so excited to be talking about this topic. I think we've alluded to, and even talked explicitly about intersectionality pieces throughout this entire series, and I think that today we're going to be bringing a lot of threads together in terms of what it looks like to navigate a workplace when you have all of these pieces of your identity, where you're marginalized in these structural ways. And it's not our identities that cause the structural issues, but because of our identities we encounter the structural issues much more so than, for example, a white guy.
0:01:41 - Briar
We don't make the rules, we're just pointing them out here.
0:01:44 - Joa
Right. We're just observing. We're just observing the world. That's right. That's right. So all of these aspects are things that come up in my work day to day as a career strategist, working with people who are navigating their workplaces. And it is just. We can talk all day long about the injustice of the fact that people with these marginalized identities have more of a burden in terms of having to then navigate Right. It shouldn't be that way, and yet it often is that way. And also, as we've talked about, if we choose to just divest, which is always our choice, then who is going to do the work to fix it?
So women navigating salary negotiations are doing it in terms of on behalf of themselves, but also on behalf of other women who are also navigating these salary negotiations within the workplace as well.
0:02:56 - Briar
So let's start with identifying, I think, the structural issues. What is it about having a marginalized identity that makes work hard?
0:03:16 - Joa
Yeah, so there are a few things that come to mind.
One of the big ones, though, is not having your experience even thought about in the context of decision making, around policies, around needs in the workplace, really, really anything. When you have a table of decision makers and they're all white guys, for example, of a certain age, they may go into decision making with the best of intentions, to make decisions that are going to holistically serve all of the people within that organization, and, despite their best intentions, they will miss the mark almost 100% of the time because they don't have the experience of being anything other than a white guy of a certain age, and so they're simply not able to take into account how a certain policy is going to land for a woman who has small children at home, for a black man who is working to support multiple generations, like these are just off the top of my head examples, but they're not going to be able to understand those pieces of it in the same way, and so, even when they're trying their best, they're going to miss it because there's no automatic reflection built into the process.
0:04:45 - Briar
No reflection built in and no real way to listen to the experience of these folks. Either right, we don't build in mechanisms to go, hey, what do you actually need?
0:05:02 - Joa
Right, right, that's exactly right And some of it is also. it's not just they don't have a way of sort of accessing these communities. right It again. it just it doesn't occur to them. It doesn't occur to them So they could seek out access, but because it's not sort of in their internal rolodex outdated term, but you know, you get the gist right Because it's like not part of the automatic schema of like how their decisions go, the things they automatically think of they're like they've got nothing.
I heard a great example of this from a woman. She's a black woman, doctor in Boston, and she was talking about decisions made around COVID vaccine sites and being on, you know, a decision making board about sites for vaccines, and the largely white group had a whole list of ideas of places that had the right sort of capacity and, you know, were good venues for it, that were all in super white suburbs, because that was what they knew, and they didn't put anything on the list that included any sort of inner city spots in Boston, because nobody knew of them off the top of their head, you know. And but at the same time, it doesn't take long to think about it once you know, to think about it right. It's not hard, it's just. if it's not automatic, it often falls by the wayside.
0:06:39 - Briar
That's correct. And then it becomes the responsibility of the marginalized group to say, hey, what about us? Which creates friction in this, in this conversation, because if you aren't thinking about it and I say, hey, what about me, you're going to feel a type of way about that. That often creates friction in getting me and my needs and my stuff seen and heard in this group. So how do we get around that?
0:07:16 - Joa
Well, we, we have to build. We have to build a different system. Briar.
0:07:21 - Briar
Dammit, joa, i nailed it. I nailed it, you did. That's all we have to do. We have to do And we're working on it, but we have to do things inside these systems.
0:07:34 - Joa
That's right. That's right. We have to do things inside these systems, And so what this looks like is, you know, the people who are most affected have to continue to speak up, you know, to the extent that they have the capacity and and sort of the willingness to do it, And people who care about these things, who are maybe less impacted by it because they have fewer marginalized components of their identity or because they are allies and they, they know and love people who you know, who experience these things and they understand them differently through through those friendships and relationships. right, We have to lean into being able to also sort of take on more than our fair share, was what I was automatically going to say, but it isn't really more than our fair share, right? Like, we have to take on our share of doing the work too. right, If we care about this, we all have to be working on it.
0:08:34 - Briar
I think there's something to be said here about capacity and how much load bearing we can take, and it's that we can't expect people who suffer from multiple marginalizations to constantly be leading the way. Right, i like, i like ring theory for this right.
So there's the person at the center of the ring and and and we're focusing our efforts on them If we go out a ring, that's the direct support for the person in the ring And their support then comes from outside rather than the inside and out and out it goes. When we're looking at doing the work internally and changing culture, we need to be looking for the people in the second and third and fourth ring to be doing the work, not the people in the middle.
0:09:42 - Joa
That's right, that's right, and I love ring theory too. It has so many applications that make sense. But especially in this regard, in terms of create, i think of it as like creating containers of support around, like the nexus in the center, right, and so I thought about this a lot in my career as a therapist. Because there's the, there's the you know, the client at the center, there's the direct care team around them, there's the supervisors around them, there's the agency around them, right, and all of the layers have to be short up in order to support the center. And if any one of the layers starts to falter, the whole, the whole system gets a little bit askew, right, and and absolutely like outside of that center. Those are the layers that really need to be short up in order to support the work, so that the person who's most affected by it at the center isn't bearing the brunt of it.
0:10:45 - Briar
So structurally that looks like the person in the center asking for help not from the fifth or sixth ring but from the second ring, so that that message can spread. I just did a podcast with Faith Clark a couple of weeks ago about how you structurally ask for help, and this was very much the theme We're talking about asking for help from the people that we feel safe from and then allowing that to work its way out. The question is how do we make those ripples spread?
0:11:38 - Joa
Yeah, that's such a good question.
There are really interesting conversation about this with a colleague who I actually I met on LinkedIn.
She and I are only connected through LinkedIn and we started an informal book group together and it was great and we've had a lot of really interesting conversations And we were talking, in the context of especially race at work, about affinity groups and whether having these spaces for people of color separate from sort of the white gaze and white leadership and white colleagues, right, you know, whether having these affinity groups is a way to build that sort of safety, to create some of those ripples, and I think that on paper it seems like a good idea And in actuality what she was sharing with me is that you know there's elements of it where it's it never really feels truly like it's separate.
If it's still in the organizational umbrella, right, like you might have a separate Slack channel, but like that Slack channel is still like reviewed and monitored, right, it's like there's still like an awful lot of like yeah, it's safe, but you still are very much like holding yourself in a certain way in that within that safety. And so I mean I would argue that that isn't actually a safe affinity group, right, but I think that a lot of what we're talking about here in terms of the safety, the relationships, the being in relation to other people, right Like this is all just human connection. This is how we build relationships and communities, and it's like putting the humanity back into it right, sort of adjacent to the structural organization.
0:13:47 - Briar
So if we can't institutionally create places where the ripples happen and we have to once again build these fucking spaces for ourselves, what do we do to get allies and actually make that work for us?
0:14:26 - Joa
Well, i think that there are a lot of resources that exist that kind of transcend organizations And I think that that is a really good place to start before you jump into reinventing the wheel And I'm thinking in particular about professional organizations for people in your sector or even as roles like project managers and program managers, right, sort of become like a transcendent title that spans so many different industries. Right, there's even organizations that are popping up specifically for people who are project managers or people who are program managers. Finding organizations like this that exist, that are deliberately set up outside of singular organizations, i think can be one way to do it, because then you're building community not just within your organization but also with peers that are all all over the place, right, and I think that finding the support, finding the shared experience, building those relationships, is a really good way to shore up some of those rings that we were talking about.
0:15:48 - Briar
So I'm 100% with you on not reinventing the wheel. I think a lot of people attempt to lead by creating something new, right? Rather than finding ways that they can plug into an existing organization and lead from within. Why is this so hard for us, right? Why do we always reinvent these particular wheels rather than trying to find the places where we can plug in?
That's such a good question And it's kind of existential and philosophical right, I appreciate this is a little outside of our scope And also I think it's very important to where we're at in this part of the equation.
0:16:49 - Joa
Well, i'm mildly fascinated by this concept, to be honest, and I think it's my fascination with it as part of how I generated this sort of idea with Tom McCormick about the career coaching collective right. It's like this idea of decentralizing and creating collectives or cooperatives, rather than something that has a leadership hierarchy, and I think that ultimately, like that's a really worthwhile idea to explore. The thing that I don't, that I'm not convinced of, is how well it scales. To be honest, i do feel like there are important parts of leadership at scale that need to kind of be retained in order for things to function.
But I think that culturally, we're really addicted to leadership and addicted to the idea of being a leader, and like it starts really early right, like it probably starts, as you, as like entrance into mainstream schooling right. Like tapping kids for, like leadership potential and young leader programs and like gifted leaders, whatever, whatever right. Like all of these things that are just sort of baked into how we really, how we socialize children from the beginning And then what that does to them over time. And if we looked at, if we look at LinkedIn you know you and I were talking about this before we went live, you know LinkedIn. Is this really interesting snapshot of the professional world at large? And like if I had half a penny for every time I read something about leadership on LinkedIn, i'd be like a million bazillionaire right, absolutely And that's just from like one morning scroll.
That's not even like LinkedIn over the course of a week, right, but like we were just so fixated on leading And there's no, there's no conversation that I've really been privy to you about, like how to work cooperatively, which, at the heart of it, is a much more valuable skill because you have to use it way more than you ever have to use leadership skill.
0:19:14 - Briar
You know, and I think it's interesting, because leadership is individualized. Being the leader puts you at the top of the pyramid, so that there are all of these people below you who you are leading and guiding, which is why we reinvent the wheel, because if I am supposed to lead, then I should be doing it on my own, individually, with minions Right.
0:19:53 - Joa
With minions, all the little people who are pulling your chariot while you direct them.
0:20:02 - Briar
And if that's the problem, then identifying the ways in which the collective can work together is, i agree, both harder to scale and also more important for what we're building right now. How do we do that on an individual level?
0:20:30 - Joa
You talk to people.
0:20:32 - Briar
Damn it, Joe. No one wants to do that.
0:20:38 - Joa
You have to talk to people, you have to find the commonalities, you have to be able to see across differences. I'm going to get tangential for a second. But my five-year-old attends basically like a teacher's training school And all of these young fellows who are working on their teacher certification come and hang out with the kids all day And there's lots of outside time and anti-bias curriculum and all kinds of good stuff that makes parents be like, oh, that sounds great And it is great And the kids basically just get to play all day And they love it. And I went to the significant day. They have a day where the kids get to invite someone who's not a parent but is someone significant in their life to come to school and spend the morning with them.
And I went to the intro talk for all of these friends of the children And there was this guy there who was taught.
He had been a teacher there 40 years ago And now he's an educational consultant And he was just talking about the philosophy of it And he was like, basically what we want is we want these kids to get to know each other really well. We want them to get to know each other really well. We want them all to be different and unique and interested in a million different things, and we want them to bring all of that to school and get to know each other really well, especially the more different they start out. Because when we get to know each other really well it gets harder and harder to other each other, and I was like tearing up and feeling really profound about it. But that's the heart of what we're talking about. We want to get to know each other really well And we want to see other people's humanity And we want to feel our own humanity And then we want that to dictate how we build structures and organizations and interlocking webs to get problem solved and to make things better for all of us.
0:23:06 - Briar
So in the web of the neurodiversity media network there is, in fact, a show called How to Have Hard Conversations And we really break down some of the skills that you need to be able to bring to the table to be able to have these conversations. And the one that people are struggling with the most, i think, is being able to sit in discomfort that these conversations are hard because they're supposed to be hard. The reward is in the heart. The not othering other people happens when we do hard things together.
0:23:50 - Joa
That's right.
0:23:52 - Briar
So the question is what are we doing at work to be able to facilitate these conversations? And again I emphasize it's not necessarily the job of the marginalized to be facilitating these hard conversations, it's other people. So how are we doing that?
0:24:20 - Joa
Right. So there's a few different parts of it And it depends on where in the cycle we're entering the picture. So when we are job seeking and looking for jobs, we can use the power that we have in that position to ask important questions about the culture that we're entering into in the workplace. We can ask questions about how differences are represented in the organization. Can you give me an example of how you support diversity within your organization? Can you tell me about the things that you value most within this organization? How do your hiring efforts contribute to diversity initiatives? You could ask pointed questions about it to assess what you're entering into, but also to flag it for people who are conducting these interviews Like oh, this is what the workforce is interested in knowing.
0:25:21 - Briar
And this is important because I don't think job seeking in particular feels like a place where you don't have power because you are going and asking someone to pay you money. However, we have talked at length about the marketplace and how many jobs there are available per employee, so shifting this language here, i think, is essential. A job seeker has an incredible amount of power in this marketplace right now to dictate what it is they want to see from a job.
0:26:03 - Joa
That's right, they certainly do And I understand, like viscerally from the work that I do with my clients, that it doesn't feel that way And when you desperately need that job offer to come through, you don't want to do anything to rock the boat. And also like there are a lot of people out there who are getting the opportunity to say no to offers because they have multiple offers. And in the moment when you say no to an offer is also another moment where you can say here's why You would have had me if you had had a better answer to this. You would have had. I chose another place because they were doing this. You can give feedback in the context of turning down a job offer And, yes, that's an incredible privileged place to be And that happens for way more people than we think of. The narrative that gets pushed down our throats is that everybody needs to be desperate for a job And there are just people That's not true all of the time.
It's not true all of the time And it's not true for all of the people, and so it's sort of you gauge what your capacity is and where you do have power and you use it in those moments. So that's like the entering the system piece of it. If you're already within the system, then it's doing the same thing, but from the position inside of saying, all right, who does make decisions about this? How can I be part of those groups If I have something to contribute in that way? how do I plot out and strategize the best way to have an impact there? Do I befriend this person at lunch? Do I join this committee formally? What is it that I do? Who do I ask? Make yourself out a map of who makes the decisions, who has the power right, and figure out how to infiltrate it. It sounds kind of subversive because it is kind of subversive, because it is And we're leaning into that.
0:28:15 - Briar
That's the whole point here. We're not going to fix work by accepting these systems And unfortunately and we've also talked about this I just don't think Americans in particular are going to revolt against these practices or behaviors anytime soon. We are far too inculcated in this system to believe that we have the ability to change it en masse. So if that's the case, then the ways in which we change it are quiet and subversive from in the inside. That's right. Who is doing that work? Who needs to be doing that work?
0:29:03 - Joa
Yeah, well, everybody needs to be doing that work, But I did want to highlight a resource that I think is really valuable for people. So we've seen over the course of the pandemic companies get super excited about DEI stuff on the face of it and hire people specifically into roles that have DEI in the title and then quietly fire all of them, right.
0:29:27 - Briar
That's correct. They've gotten rid of all of them.
0:29:31 - Joa
That's right, But there are still organizations, especially small and mid-sized organizations, that care deeply about this kind of stuff and don't necessarily have the wherewithal to create a title and salaried position in-house, but who do hire consultants, And there are a lot of consultants out there. There's one in particular who I think very highly of, who is excellent, and that's Desiree Lynn Adaway with the Adaway Group, And she offers a multitude of things in terms of what you can get for services from her, but they have coaching and consulting, They have equity audits, They have training and facilitations. She does speaking engagements and they have a fairly newly launched I think within the last one or two years an entire online module called Whiteness at Work, which is an incredible liberation framework course for a ridiculously low price for the value you get out of it, because they care about making sure that this is something that anybody who wants to can access. It's like $150 for the entire set of modules and it's excellent and it gives you a million ideas And if you're in a decision-making position within your organization, you can get it for your whole company. You can have everybody do it, And if you're just somebody who wants to be subversive and wants to infiltrate and wants to get amazing, grounded ideas about it.
You can just buy it yourself And finding resources like this finding vetted, trusted resources for people who are already doing this You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to create a whole research project for yourself. You just have to find some trusted, vetted resources and start. That's what you have to do. You have to start.
0:31:28 - Briar
And starting is the hardest right. It's the place where we keep getting stuck. What does that look like concretely? Maybe think about it, And I know it's going to vary, but give us some actual structural examples of things that you can do.
0:31:56 - Joa
Let's brainstorm some together. Should we nail down a specific example and then ID it on that? Would that be what you're looking for here?
0:32:11 - Briar
Yeah, I feel like it's the steps that we can take that allow us to feel like we're actually gaining momentum in this way.
0:32:28 - Joa
Well, i think we can ask in our own organizations who makes decisions about these kinds of topics. So, are there any diversity initiatives at your organization? Find out if there are. If there are, find out more about them. Figure out who has put them into place. Are they continuing to evaluate them? That's another thing that we've seen is that a lot of places will put in diversity initiatives and then they can check.
They check that box right And there's no follow through, there's no assessment, there's no actual tracking whether it's doing what it's intended to do. So start asking questions within your own organization. That's literally something you can write on a to-do list and check it off once you've gotten some answers.
0:33:22 - Briar
And truly following up on the assessment and the tracking thereof is, i think, potentially one of the most impactful things that you can do. When was the last time we audited this document? When is the next time that it is due to be audited? Who's in charge of that operation? Do we hire that out? Do we do that internally? What do those steps look like? And in this instance, you don't actually have to have those answers, you just have to be asking the people who do have to answer those questions. This is really a case where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and when it comes to equity, you must be a squeaky wheel.
0:34:27 - Joa
Absolutely. I wrote down this pull quote Briar, because this is just the quote. We're not going to fix work by accepting these systems, So be squeaky, indicate that you're not inclined to accept the system, And you don't have to do it in a bombastic like you get fired sort of way, But you can ask questions. You can absolutely ask questions. Do be forewarned, though, that if your organization does not have a lot of people who are contributing to this and you start asking questions more often than not, you will.
0:35:03 - Briar
You may find yourself nominated voluntold to be the spearhead of this work, and that is correct. But asking questions is truly such a non-confrontational way to get things moving in an organization, because a question has to be answered. That's right, and if I can't answer that question, i'm going to have to go take that question to somebody who can answer it. So being able to identify the people to whom those questions have to be answered by is also key here.
0:35:47 - Joa
That's right. That's right. So that's where you get out your strategy map and you start identifying all right, well, this person didn't have the answer, but they told me to talk to this person. Start mapping out where the decisions get made and then figure out who you need to get in front of to get the answers to those questions. Right, and see if the person you have lunch with, you know twice a week at work, also wants to start asking questions in their department. Right, like, see what you can do to build up kind of a certain threshold of people who are all asking similarly grouped questions about a thing. Right, get some momentum behind it. It doesn't just have to be one person, it has to be, you know, a number of people who are all interested in getting some answers.
0:36:42 - Briar
In our next episode when we talk about accessibility. One of the things that I harp on here is a decision tree that it's absolutely essential for people who are neurodivergent to have, because I got to know. If that doesn't exist in your work culture, build it yourself to the best of your ability. Figure out where the buck stops for particular questions. That helps you get that question to the person who actually can answer it for you. That's right.
0:37:17 - Joa
That's right And, honestly, this is. This is good practice. Regardless of what the topic is, this is just good practice for getting to know and be really familiar with your work environment. It's basically how you leverage any, any privilege or any advantage that you have in a work environment to create more advantage for yourself and for other people, and this is the work that I do as a career strategist to is is thinking about this in terms of career growth for people. Right, it's not just about the values and the things that you want to see as part of the work culture around you. Right, it's also about your, your own career growth and what you want for yourself.
Ask questions, you know. If you, if you want career growth, ask who it is who might be able to help you build X, y or Z skill You know. Build it into your your annual reviews. Build it into the things that you're working towards. Get your supervisor on board Right. Figure out who their supervisor is. Understand sort of like the chain of command for getting things approved. When you ask for funding to do X, y or Z training, you know who's going to be the person who says yes to that.
0:38:30 - Briar
I heard something this weekend and I cannot, for the life of me, remember where or how or who said it, but it was that the people at the bottom compete, the people at the top collaborate, and that is absolutely what we're talking about here. How do you find the people who are collaborating rather than competing, so that you're not playing in that pond because fixing work isn't competitive? This is not something that we can outdo the Joneses on. That is literally the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here. So find the people to whom collaboration will go with you on this journey and will help you get there. It's not going to be everybody, but find those people to collaborate with.
0:39:30 - Joa
Find those people? Absolutely Yeah, the collaboration, the cooperation. I mean, if I had to identify the top marketable skill that anybody has going into the workforce, it's cooperation and collaboration. If you can't work with other people, you're going to have a rough time of it. You're going to have a rough time of it.
0:39:57 - Briar
And for a lot of us that's deeply outside of our comfort zone because we come back to this leadership as an individual rather than working as the collective. Let's bring it back around. How do we enable or find the leaders of the collective so that the machine is working?
0:40:42 - Joa
I don't know if I have a ready answer to that. That's okay. Do you have ideas on that?
0:40:49 - Briar
One of the things that I have very deliberately done is seek out introductions to people who are doing things. If I don't know you personally, I want to grow my network with people who are doing things and changing things. But that's a very, again, active position that I have to take. I have to deliberately seek out those introductions. I have to go to my network regularly and say who do you know that I should know? Right, That is, I think, something that is difficult for people to do because, again, they're proving that they're not the leader in all of the things.
0:41:45 - Joa
Sure, sure, yeah. You know we've talked a lot about leadership today and all of a sudden I was like this is what my brain did. I was like this being a leader that great, it's a lot of responsibility in being a leader. I think that if more people could wrap their minds around the idea that leadership actually isn't all that it's cracked up to be, we'd all be better for it. And I think that the other thought I had about what you just said is that the art of networking is really like networking just in general. I feel like people think of it as a bad word. Do you encounter that in the circles you run in?
0:42:36 - Briar
Less and less, because I spend so much time deliberately cultivating my network, and the people that I want in it are people who collaborate, and so they are themselves collaborators and therefore are building their own networks in the same way. But there's certainly I've noticed that some people will hoard those people, like only I can know this person. I am the gatekeeper for this connection, because that's how they again. Truly you're not wrong. What's wrong with leadership is that it is subject to excluding other people. By its very definition, leadership means that I am in charge, you are a minion.
I wish I didn't have to be that blatant about it, but you look at so much of cults or work culture, hustle culture, and this is a thing that reappears over and over and over. We want subjects. There's a reason we still pay so much. Especially Americans pay so much attention to the British royal family, because, look it.
0:44:27 - Joa
We're fascinated by that idea of just being overlords.
0:44:31 - Briar
Right.
0:44:32 - Joa
Yeah. Yeah, it's problematic, but, like you said, i think it was our first episode, right, the kids are all right. The kids are no one's minions. They're like, oh, you want a minion, best look elsewhere.
0:44:47 - Briar
I'm not participating in that today.
0:44:50 - Joa
Right, anyway, yeah, i'm not your minion, no one's minion. Yeah, i mean, the more of that the better as far as I'm concerned, in most contexts. I mean, i think that it is important to lean into cooperation and collaboration, but not exploitation. Right, that's the difference. Cooperation and collaboration means that you are also benefiting from it. Exploitation means that somebody else is benefiting from what you're doing, and not in a virtuous way, but in a profiting off of it sort of way.
0:45:28 - Briar
You can profit while also collaborating. I say as I'm very deliberately building that into my whole business over here. Part of that is there's disclosure. I'm very upfront about what I gain and what you gain from working with me. So all of our collaborations benefit both of us maybe not equally, but definitely benefit both of us. This is a hard thing for people to wrap their heads around. I read an article and I will link it in the show notes recently about what they called the trust thermocline. I imagine you're familiar with the concept of the thermocline. It's the water barrier between salt and fresh temperatures, cold, hot. When trust is breached, it turns the thermocline into this soup. It's no longer a discrete balance between the different temperatures or types of water. How do we cultivate that trust for our employees, for our customers, for our clients? How do we create that so that people are participating and collaborating?
0:47:16 - Joa
I recently just did a deep dive on trust with my very good friend and colleague, Lindsay Burr with the Yarborough Group. She does a lot of leadership training. Sorry, Lindsay, we've been giving leadership a bad name today, but I understand. You do good work and it's important. But she talks about the trust triangle. I hope I remember the three pieces correctly, but I think they're competence, good faith and integrity. She works with a lot of triangles in her work. Triangles are important because if one of the pieces is missing, it all falls down.
This triangle with these three parts is the answer to your question in a certain sense. We need, in order to have trust. There has to be competence. We have to have people who are competently structuring policies and having a good working system. We have to have the good faith that all of the parties involved are coming to the table and good faith. We have to have the integrity That has to do with the transparency, the alignment with values and actions. All of these pieces have to be there in order for trust to build. I think a lot of people think about trust as a binary It's there or it isn't. But I think that it's much more useful to think about trust as a gradation, because you have to build it. We talk about building trust, but it's not like you built it, and then it's there.
0:49:08 - Briar
Things can change at any moment.
0:49:10 - Joa
Things can break it down. It doesn't mean that it goes from one to zero, but it has to be built and maintained in order for it to continue.
0:49:29 - Briar
What we fix here, then, is the process by which we assess whether or not that's happening, just like our DEI plan. are we reviewing our trust? Are we making efforts to improve those things? in our model, just asking the question changes things, because you don't know what you don't know. If I don't know that this is a problem or that people have questions, i'm going to assume that there is not a problem.
0:50:22 - Joa
That's right. All of the white guys at the table of a certain age who just assume that the things they automatically think of is the exhaustive list of things they need to think of. If they have a list of questions that comes in that makes them realize that their list wasn't exhaustive, all of a sudden that changes and impacts what comes next. Better yet, if there's somebody at that table who has a different list in their minds and the list can be combined from the get-go so that that way you do have an exhaustive list, all to the good.
0:51:00 - Briar
I have to say, Joa, I feel much better about this episode than I have at the end of so many of our previous ones. Right, This feels doable to me. Having questions, holding people accountable for the answers, that's a thing that we can all do and participate in. That doesn't feel absolutely unsustainable.
0:51:28 - Joa
That's right. That's right. You can pace yourself right. You can ask one question a month or you can ask one question a day, whatever you have the stamina for It doesn't have to be the same pace day in and day out. There's ebb and flow and I think the more we can remember that there's an ebb and flow to life, that there's a seasonality to life, that it doesn't have to be a machine set pace day in and day out, all year long, year after year, the better. Right. This is a process. There will be different things that come into the process that we can't predict right now, and we need to be present to that process. I think it's because we hit upon process. We remember that process is the important part. We nailed it.
0:52:20 - Briar
I would add or conclude here that the attitude you bring to the table when you are asking these questions and seeking out this process will change everything. If you are open to hearing the answers, if you are open to exploring the question, then the people you're asking that question will be more open to exploring the answers as well.
0:52:48 - Joa
That's right.
0:52:51 - Briar
Damn, we nailed this one.
0:52:54 - Joa
I nailed it, I feel really good about this.
0:52:58 - Briar
This was spectacular today.
0:53:01 - Joa
You know what's happening is we're just hitting our stride.
0:53:07 - Briar
So anything you'd like to wrap us up with.
0:53:13 - Joa
I'm going to give you the link for Whiteness at Work to put into the notes for today, because it is an incredible resource that people should look into. If you're a decision maker in your organization, you should look into having this available to more than just yourself. That's the main thing. call out to trusted, vetted resources in order to not have to reinvent this wheel and to get support for thinking about these questions that you want to be asking thinking about how to strategize, go forth and be subversive.
0:53:49 - Briar
Go forth, be subversive and use your network. If you don't know the answer, keep asking. Ask everyone all of the time What's the answer here? Who can answer this question for me? Who has a resource for me? Truly, i think the way that we change this culture is by being willing to collaborate.
0:54:15 - Joa
It's going to change everything 100%, and I'm here for it.
0:54:21 - Briar
Y'all. We're here for it. That is literally why I built the neurodiversity media network. This is literally what we're trying to accomplish here is being together, holding space, asking hard questions and being available and open to the answers. And if you would like to ask these questions of yourself or your people, please hit me up. We still have some availability for August and September masterclasses. I would love to ask these questions of you and we would love to share this stuff with your people. You can find all of our stuff at neurodiversitymedianetwork.com. You can find Joa where.
0:55:11 - Joa
You can find me on LinkedIn or at carteblanchecareers.com.
0:55:18 - Briar
And if you need someone to help guide you to the right career, the place where you're going to be able to ask these questions and get the answers that you need, then I encourage you to go see Joa and let her help you find the place for you. It doesn't have to be hard, it doesn't have to feel insurmountable, And we're not doing this alone anymore. We're just not All right, y'all. Thank you so much for being here, joa. This was amazing.
We'll be back in two weeks for the last episode in this series and we're going to talk about accessibility. We're going to talk about that for neurodivergence in particular, but also physical disability as well. How you ask for accommodations at work, how you create spaces where your accommodations aren't seen as a problem or as a benefit, how you can help accommodations be beneficial to everyone And this is a hard conversation, But, once again, we're asking questions and being available for better answers. So we will be back in two weeks for that. Thank you so much for being here today, joa. I adore you. Thank you All right, y'all. See you next time.
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