DEI and Unhiding with Ruth Rathblott
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The Importance of Expanding the Definition of Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion can be visible or invisible
Invisible diversity includes mental health and neurodiversity
Disability is the largest minority group and intersects with all lenses of diversity
Disability can affect anyone regardless of race, gender, or age
Disability can also affect caregivers of people with disabilities
The conversation around disability is relevant to everyone
How Do We Treat Others with Disability & Questions to Ask Before Talking to a Disabled Person
Acknowledging and being seen as having a disability is important
Approach to asking about disability should be out of curiosity, kindness, and support
Asking about disability should not involve making assumptions about the person's abilities
Asking about disability should be focused on how one can help or provide support
Disability should be thought of in terms of how one can support, rather than just out of curiosity
The Blurred Boundaries
It's important to reflect on why it's necessary to know about someone's disability
Boundaries around disability are often blurred, including assumptions about people's abilities
People may feel entitled to ask about disabilities, even if they wouldn't answer personal questions themselves
It's important to be mindful of why you're asking and why you need to know
It's important to reduce assumptions about disability and recognize the accommodations people with disabilities have made in their lives.
Everyone is Hiding Something & Where Are You Hiding?
Many people hide something about themselves
Hiding is not only related to disability, but also age, education, financial status, family background, religion, and politics
Hiding keeps us from being connected and can cause exhaustion and loneliness.
Understanding where you are hiding is the first step towards change
Therapy, journaling and introspection can help with creating awareness
Hiding can prevent healthy relationships and lead to loneliness
Meeting someone and inviting them in can help to learn how to love oneself
The person can help to show how to connect with the hidden part of oneself
Trying new things like going to college or starting a new job may not necessarily help with hiding
The Importance of Leaders Being Vulnerable
Everyone is responsible for culture, not just the CEO or leadership team
The accuracy is that the leadership team and CEO are responsible for culture and modeling vulnerability
They need to model the behaviors they expect from their teams
Leaders have to model bringing their authentic self to work
Modeling is important for creating a positive work culture
The Freedom in Sharing
Connecting with someone and sharing what you're hiding is beautiful
Connecting with others who are also hiding can lead to sharing stories
This creates a loop of sharing and connecting
People often hold back from sharing due to fear of being found out
Holding back prevents innovative ideas and thinking from being shared with the company
The Cure to Inclusion
The Cure to Inclusion is an acronym for CURE, which stands for Connection, Understanding, Representation, and Empathy.
The first step is understanding, starting with the leadership team.
Leaders should engage in introspection and understand where they've felt different and needed to fit in.
It's important to understand difference and actively learn about different experiences and perspectives.
Understanding yourself and differences is crucial to good DEI work.
Connection with others comes after understanding.
Representation is a critical tool in leadership.
Empathy is important, and it involves listening with curiosity and asking questions.
The Loop of Increased Trust and Vulnerability
The trust loop is introduced in the book "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle.
The trust loop starts with trusting and being vulnerable.
By sharing something with someone, we unhide and make them trust us more.
As they feel comfortable sharing with us, we feel more comfortable with them.
This creates a loop of increased trust and vulnerability.
In a Business Case
Creating a culture of diversity and inclusion can benefit a business in three ways: higher engagement scores, increased innovation scores, and improved numbers.
When people feel like they belong, they bring their best selves to work, which leads to more innovation, increased belief in the brand, and trusted leaders.
Building empathy is important, even in a culture that values strength and toughness. It's possible to maintain a business case while also building empathy with leaders and oneself.
What Should A Leader Be Focusing and Taking Action On?
Action strategy for DEI in organizations
Start with self-reflection and introspection
Understand what DEI leaders and HR leaders are saying
Identify knowledge gaps and areas of learning
Be proactive in learning outside of work
Have informed conversations and connections with colleagues
Introspection is a starting place for DEI work in organizations
Speaking To Raise Awareness
Bringing in people with differences to start conversations in companies where employees may not feel safe to speak out themselves
Bringing in speakers to expand the conversation on diversity
Working with leadership teams on starting conversations internally and thinking about employee resource groups
Coaching individuals on leadership teams to be more inclusive as a leader.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman: Ruth Rathblott is an expert on inclusion and diversity. She's a TEDx, an inspirational speaker, a bestselling author, and an award-winning nonprofit leader. She was born with a limb difference and speaks to companies on issues of equity and belonging, the gifts of being unique and the freedom of accepting your differences.
Ruth was profiled as a CEO in the New York Times corner office and received a Goucher College's Excellence in Public Service Award among other awards for her outstanding leadership in the nonprofit sector. She spent her entire career focused on providing opportunities for those who have been underrepresented.
She serves as a board member of the Lucky Fin Project. Ruth resides in New York City. I am proud to have gotten to know her over the last couple years at the National Speakers Association. So Ruth, welcome.
Ruth: Thanks, Mike. I'm excited to talk to you and to be here.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, we normally don't do this with headphones in Zoom. We kind of do it in person, so this'll be nice. So, starting us out. Ruth, your journey is so important that I wanna start there, tell us a little bit about your journey and why the topic of inclusion and diversity is so important to you.
[00:01:23] Ruths Limb Difference
Ruth: Yes, definitely. I think you, you briefly talked, touched on it with my intro. I think the first piece to know is I was born with a limb difference. I was born missing my left hand and thinking about that as a disability and, but it wasn't talked about in my family growing up. It wasn't something that we mentioned.
So I was encouraged to try everything. I was really kind of expected to try everything and do everything. And what's interesting, Mike, is that during my teenage years, I started to notice the difference. I started to notice that I wanted to fit in, which, you know, during adolescent years is amplified because you just wanna fit in.
And so I started actually hiding my hand. I started putting it in my front pocket or wearing longer sleeves so no one would see it. And what I didn't realize by doing that is that, A, it was something that I thought about all the time because I didn't want anyone to find out about my limb difference.
And it also kept me from doing the things that I wanted to really be doing, like sports and theater, and student government, because I didn't want anyone to see my hand.
So it stopped me, not only from connecting with other people and them knowing me, but it actually stopped me from doing the things I loved and I fast forward that journey of hiding because I actually did it starting at the age of 13, and I did it for 25 years. I hid and I hid it in my personal life.
I hid it in my professional life and Mike, it wasn't until a conversation a few years ago where we were talking about diversity and leadership and at one point during that conversation, I said, well, I'm just curious, do you see me as diverse? And the answer back was, well, you're a woman.
And I said, okay, that's a lens of diversity. That's that gender lens. Because we often talk about diversity around race, we talk about diversity around gender and maybe sexual orientation. And yet disability doesn't always come into the conversation.
So when I pressed it a little bit further and said what about my disability? What about my limb difference? The answer back was, oh, we don't see you like that. And I said, hmm, I'm not asking to be seen like that. I'm asking for it to be acknowledged as part of the true definition of diversity. Different perspectives, different ideas, valuing that difference.
And Mike, I started reaching out to some of my corporate partners and thinking about how are they talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, that DEI piece that has become so relevant in so many corporations. And the reality is that they weren't necessarily talking about disability. It wasn't part of the agenda for diversity.
And so my passion project has become how do we expand the conversation on diversity?
Mike Goldman: That's so interesting and you know, for a lot of people when that person you were talking to came back and said, oh, we don't see you that way. Like my first reaction is, oh, is that a compliment? Like, you don't see me that way, but you took it differently and learned something.
Why, why? Help us understand why is it important to see whether it's a limb difference or something else that's not typically looked at as about diversity and inclusion? Why is it important to expand that definition?
[00:05:01] The Importance of Expanding the Definition of Diversity and Inclusion
Ruth: I think there are three reasons. I think that it's important to expand the definition because the largest group of minority is disability. Disability cuts across all lines. It can be first visible or invisible, right? So we can be visible like mine or invisible, like mental health or neurodiversity. So we have that space.
It's the largest minority group. It intersects across all lenses of diversity. You can be any race, any gender, any age. You can be born with a disability or you can acquire one at some point. And you can also be taking care of somebody with a disability. So the conversation around disability is actually a conversation for all of us, Mike.
That's the big piece of why it's so important to make sure that it's included in diversity conversations. I think the second piece to this is, with disability and the diversity conversations, the way we're defining diversity can leave people out of the conversation or feeling like they're left out of the conversation.
So we're excluding people in an inclusion world, and that's not the goal of diversity. The goal of diversity is to value different perspectives. And so it's critical if we want people, if we wanna include people, we need to expand that definition. So that people feel included. We can't leave people out because they aren't part of race and gender and sexual orientation, which don't get me wrong, are really important pillars of the diversity conversation.
And there's enough room at the table to continue to build out that table and invite people in. And I think the third piece to it is to raise awareness and understanding within workplaces, within leadership of how to really connect with people. We're going through a time right now where people are quitting, they're resigning, they're getting laid off, and the people who are staying need to have a culture that helps them feel like they belong.
They feel seen, they feel heard. They feel that different perspectives are valued. So I think it's important as we think about diversity, how are we talking about it?
Mike Goldman: So digging into that, how are we talking about it part because I'm, you know, I'm the opposite at what people, you know, I'm an old white guy, right? I mean, that's what leadership teams were always made up of. And so I'm curious, when you think of, and I'm gonna make it personal to you.
So when that person said, well, we don't look at you that way, and you're like, no, we've gotta expand the definition of diversity. How do you want, if you are, let's say you're a member of a leadership team. How do you want folks to approach you about that, to treat you about, I mean, do you want them to treat you differently because you have a limb difference? Do you want them to know about it but treat you the same way they treat anyone? Like, I wanna, get down to the pragmatics. So what do we do about it?
[00:08:04] How Do We Treat Others with Disability
Ruth: Yup, no, and I wanna address your first point too, because I think the piece about white men, it's interesting. White men are actually hiding parts of their differences at work too, right? They hide their mental health, they hide their age. They hide pieces of their identity, which contributes to, to not getting to know people and leaving them out of the conversation.
But to answer your question around, how do I want people, when that person said to me, I don't see you that way or we don't see you that way. What it made me realize is I hadn't been sharing my story. I had stopped physically hiding my hand at that point. So people knew I had a limb difference and a disability, but I hadn't actually shared out my experience.
So I was still hiding in some ways. I wasn't sharing me. And so how could I expect people to see me that way if I wasn't acknowledging it or being seen that way? And I think to your question around how do I want people to approach me? I think with disability, again, whether it's visible or invisible, and frankly, Mike, any difference?
I think it's a case by case basis, and I think it's a really kind of difficult rule to follow in the sense that I am definitely out there. I want people to ask me about my limb difference and my experience, and I also recognize, that's my perspective. That's one experience. There may be others with differences in disabilities who don't want to ask, so I caution people A to be able to respect people's boundaries around how we ask questions and to understand and think through.
[00:09:44] Questions to Ask Before Talking to a Disabled Person
Ruth: Why are you asking? Why do you need to know? Is it out of curiosity? Is it out of curiosity and kindness? And I would add on the best example, the best kind of solution for asking is, is it out of curiosity? Is it out of kindness? And is it out of support? Because that's why you get to know is, is it helpful to you because you can support me in some way.
You're not making assumptions about my ability. You're just asking, how can I help? Do you need support? And then I can open up. I know I was born with a disability, so I am, I got it. Like I'm not hiding it anymore. But I do think it's not something, Mike like that. If we think about it, you know, when we pass traffic accidents and we think, oh, what happened there?
We don't need to know always unless we can support. That's what I think about with disability. How are you thinking about it out of curiosity and kindness and support?
Mike Goldman: I love that because before you, you said that my thought was, wow, I think you're right. There are some people that are comfortable talking about it, want to talk about it, others that aren't, and I thought, wow what a landmine to kind of walk through a field of landmines.
Like, how do you know you gotta tiptoe through? But I love what you just said. I think it feels a lot for me, it feels a lot less like a dangerous place that I've gotta tiptoe through if you're doing it because you're curious, because you wanna support.
Then I think even if someone is not real comfortable talking about it, it's not asking about it, it's in the way you ask about it. With the attitude and the mindset you have, it becomes a much safer place to have that discussion.
[00:11:28] The Blurred Boundaries
Ruth: Absolutely. I think that's a great word for it. It's shifting mindset about why do you need to know? It's allowing yourself some self-reflection about why is it important to know, and also recognizing that I think sometimes with disability, The boundaries get blurred. Like we make assumptions about people's ability, right?
That's one boundary that we, we make assumptions. The second is we also feel like we have the right to ask people about their disabilities. And the things that we necessarily wouldn't answer ourselves, right? If somebody asked us a personal question. So it's being mindful of why am I asking? Why do I need to know?
And again, I'm someone again who was born with a limb difference. I'm okay talking about it and I'm also okay letting you know that I kind of navigated this world in ways that you can't imagine, and I've made accommodations and made myself my world accessible in ways that you can't imagine. So lessening the assumptions that we make about disability.
[00:12:31] Ruths Book and TEDx
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it. Tell us a little bit about your, I'll still call it a new book. it's very new, right? Singlehandedly. Tell us about the book and why you thought it was important to get that message out there now.
Ruth: Interesting. I wrote the book after I did my TEDx and the TEDx was really this kind of microcosm, like, you know, of an idea because you only have a limited amount of time to tell a story and to get a point across, an idea worth spreading. And as I came out of that, TEDx experience, which clarifies a lot of thinking.
It forces you to really hone in on a message. I realized there was a much more extended message and people had asked me after watching my TEDx, well what are some more of the stories here? Like what? Tell me why you hid, how you hid. People ask me all the time, did you really hide for 25 years?
Like, tell me about that. What was that like? When did it start? Why did you continue to do it? And so I felt like there was an audience for understanding the hiding process. And there was also people asking for solutions around how did you learn to unhide, how did you, what were the steps that you took?
[00:13:44] Everyone is Hiding Something
Ruth: And what I found Mike, in doing, not only the writing and the research, but really the feedback is hiding is actually a universal thing. Most of us are hiding something about ourselves. And so what was interesting is I was kind of writing the book. People were starting to share and they share much more now the places where they hide and it's not only about disability. People hide things like their age. They hide their education, they hide their financial status, their family backgrounds.
People are hiding even their religion and their politics more so now than ever. Right? So that it keeps us not connected because we're always worried that someone's gonna find out and hiding is exhausting and it's lonely.
And so people want solutions to how do we actually unhide. And so I wanted to be able to provide that. And I also, when single-handedly wanted to be able to talk about this idea of how do we expand diversity? Because disability needs to be included in that conversation. And so I use the book as a tool to share the journey of hiding and unhiding and also weave in how do we expand diversity.
Mike Goldman: How hard was it for you when you made that decision to stop hiding? How hard was it for you to start having those conversations? And again, I'm asking you, it's, it's specific to your limb difference, but to your point, the bigger reason I'm asking is if we are, most of us are hiding things. I think your answer will help everybody listening, get more comfortable sharing what they haven't been comfortable sharing.
So, so what was it like for you when you started doing it? What were some things that helped you along the way.
[00:15:37] Where Are You Hiding?
Ruth: Sure. I think that for your listeners, I think there's a piece around understanding where you're hiding, right? That's the first step is almost admitting it, creating an awareness, doing the introspective work. So I had been in therapy about it. I had journaled about it. I had started to think about how exhausting and how lonely it was, and it was one pivotal kind of moment of when I realized.
Wow. I am not gonna be able to be in a healthy relationship because I'm so putting up the walls around myself because of the hiding. I was so afraid that if someone found out about it that they wouldn't like me and that they wouldn't date me. They wouldn't fall in love with me. So that became my space of do I want this for the rest of my life?
Have I made an acceptance that this is how I have to live? And it wasn't until I met someone that I invited in just one person, Mike sometimes is, all it takes is for me, it was inviting that person in to show me how to love that part of myself that I deemed unlovable and that I truly didn't believe that was lovable.
I didn't know way out. And so I invited this person in to show me how to start to touch my hand, how to look at it, how to actually connect with it. And I couldn't do that work myself. And I had, again, I had tried some methods, I had even talked myself into this time you're starting something new, like going to college or starting a new job.
Nobody knows you, start just fresh. But the messages in my head were so downplayed that this could be something good. They made it sound like it was gonna be horrible that I literally had to go every time and talk myself through, and I ended up hiding, I kept hiding and that's not a way to live.
Mike, I was just on a plane going, heading out of town, and I was telling people what I did and literally the minute that I shared about this idea of hiding one of the passengers sitting next to me bowed his head down and I asked him, I said, what's going on? And he said, you're talking about hiding. And I said, yeah. He said, I dropped out of high school and I don't talk about it ever. He said, I have so much shame around it that when those conversations about, oh, where did you go to college? Or where's your child going to college?
Or you know, how are you involved in your alumni network? How great was college? It was the best four years of our life. He said, I wanna leave the room because no one knows that part. And yet I've built a successful business. I've done all these things, but I hold shame. My fear is if people find out, they won't think that I'm smart.
They won't think that I'm educated, that I don't have business savvy, but it's not true. But I'm holding that and that keeps us from connecting with other people. And it also keeps us from being our best self because we're hiding. So I answer your question in a long way that I think sometimes it's just literally about letting one other person know so they can help dispel the myths.
Because truthfully, Mike, my hand was never the disability, the mindset I carried around it was the disability.
Mike Goldman: Ooh, that's a quote. That's a quote right there. That's gotta go on a social media post. I love that. And what I love about what you just said is the impact this can have, the effect this could have. For folks that are leaders and what I mean by that and, and I focus on that because the whole lens of this show is about creating a better leadership team.
When I think about members of the leadership team, how important is it, just like what you did on the plane, which was somebody you didn't know, who wound up sharing something with you that he hadn't shared with some of the closest people that he worked with. How important is it for leaders to share more, open up more, be vulnerable. Unhide.
How important is it for them to do it for the sole reason. Yes, it makes them feel better, but helping other people to feel comfortable doing the same thing.
[00:19:55] The Importance of Leaders Being Vulnerable
Ruth: It is. Mike I fought against this leadership thing for a long time. Having been a CEO and a leader in organizations, people would come in with that question, oh, what's the culture here? And I would deflect it and say everybody's responsible for culture. It's not just the CEO or the leadership team. It's not actually accurate. The accuracy is the leadership team and the CEO are responsible for culture and modeling, culture and modeling vulnerability and modeling the things that we're asking our staffs to do and our teams to do around bringing their quote on quote authentic self to work or their full self to work.
They have to model it too. We have to model it as leaders, right? Because how can we expect others to do that? And what I realized in writing my book is that there were times I wasn't modeling that I was creating a toxic work environment for people because I was expecting people to be perfect, to hold back, to not be vulnerable, to not make mistakes.
And that's not a healthy work environment. And if I couldn't do that as a leader and show. How could I expect my teams to do those things? Cause I can tell you part of the beauty of unhiding and sharing it is that first exhale that people, when they get to tell you something, it's an amazing feeling.
[00:21:17] The Freedom in Sharing
Ruth: Like when you connect with somebody and they can tell you what they're hiding. And then what's even more beautiful is when they can start to then connect with people who are also in that space of their difference, and then they can start to share out their story. So it becomes this loop and it's really this cool loop of wow I shared it with, it's almost like that old commercial. I told two people and they told two people and so on.
Mike Goldman: Yeah.
Ruth: It's amazing because then we start to create these cultures as leaders of people who really want to connect with each other and wanna show up and aren't afraid of their differences. Because I've said and I've shared out loud that I value different perspectives.
I share out loud that I want people who think outside the box and have creative solutions. And I've also shared that this is a safe place to do that because we want innovative ideas when we hold back parts of ourselves. We ruin three things. We are worried about ourselves. So we're constantly thinking and forecasting next steps.
So we don't get discovered when we hide. We hold back from our teams really getting to know us, right? Because then we're always worried that, oh, if I go to the happy hour after work or if I go to the retreat, somebody's gonna find out something, so I'm gonna not share. And then the third thing is we don't actually then give the company the benefit of our innovative ideas and our thinking because we're holding back and I saw it.
Somebody came up to me, Mike, I'll never forget during, after one of my sessions. And you know, this space too, is where they wait for you after and to talk after you've given a speech and someone came up and they told me about how they have a stutter and they don't share that at work.
And because they're afraid of being seen as not smart enough or that people will get annoyed that it's such a time we have to wait in time until they can get out the words so they don't talk. And I said, wow. So they're missing out on you because they don't get to know you. That you don't actually get to feel comfortable at work.
They don't get to know you, and the company misses out because they don't get to hear all of the ideas because you're so worried about being found out about your stutter that you're not participating. That's not what we want with a workforce, and as leaders, we don't want that either with our teams.
Mike Goldman: I love that. Then there's a speech that I do. In fact, it was my TEDx that I did where I get pretty vulnerable about a special need. My, my son, who has special needs and it amazes me and Ruth, I think about this when you say the person was waiting for you after the speech, it amazes me that every time I tell that story and I get vulnerable about it and I frankly talk about what a crappy dad I was when he was very young.
Always at least one person waiting for me that says, oh my God, it sounded like you were telling my story. And what it helps people to do is because other people aren't sharing, they feel alone. And then when you share, they're like, oh my God, I'm not alone. I've done the same thing or I'm the same way, or I have something similar or I have something very different.
Like how different is a limb difference in not graduating high school? Pretty different but not so different when you just talk about hiding. So that's amazing. So again, I wanna go back to the leadership team and when I work with leadership teams and they think of diversity, equity, inclusion, they right away think of it as a you know, it's sex, it's race, it's, well those those are the main two things and they, you know again getting real pragmatic.
There's one team I look at, and frankly it's a bunch of white men in their fifties and early sixties that make up the leadership team and they look at it and go well we get it, we get it's important, but what are we supposed to do? Like we keep being told, you gotta model it from the top down.
I'm not gonna fire myself so I could bring a younger, you know, so when you think of, you know, there are still a lot of leadership teams around that are not diverse, whether it's disabilities or it's race or sex. How should a leadership team be pragmatically thinking about the steps they can take?
[00:25:45] The Cure to Inclusion
Ruth: Sure. No, I've built out a whole framework for exactly this conversation, Mike. It's called the Cure to Inclusion, and it's an acronym for C U R E, which is connection, understanding, representation, and empathy. And I've built out steps and where it starts, Mike, to your exact question, is it starts with understanding with the leadership team.
The idea is where have you felt different in your life where you needed to fit in? So there's an introspection piece because before you can do really good DEI work, it starts with understanding. It starts with understanding yourself. Where have you felt like you needed to fit in? Where have you felt like you have felt different?
And how do you understand difference, because that's a piece of it also. What do you know about differences? How have you done the learning and being proactive? I can tell you when George Floyd's death happened and Black Lives Matter was really in its rising phase, I had a staff who said, so Ruth, what's the action plan?
[00:26:47] C. Connection
What are we doing? You need to get on top of this. And I had to take a step back and say to them, I have a lot of work to do outside of here. It is not your job as my team to teach me. It's not the students and families that I was working with, their job to teach me. I had to proactively go out and learn what I didn't know and do the work outside for understanding, because only then could I come back and listen and connect with them.
That's why connection is the second step. It's the understanding piece that has to come first. And then it's about how do I then connect? How do I listen with empathy? How do I listen with questions? How do I listen and share? That's the second step is connection. And then it's doing an almost an audit or an inventory of your team, Mike, the idea of whose voices are heard on your team.
Whose voices are missing from the table. So there's this representation piece. It's an audit or an inventory that becomes important to start to look around as a leadership team to say, even again, if it's all white men. And again, I love working with teams with white men like you do, because I think that there's space for learning on both sides.
What have you had the power around and what do you still need to learn? So that representation piece becomes a critical tool in this leadership process. And then it's thinking about empathy. How do we not necessarily put ourselves in the shoes of someone but how do we start to listen with empathy? How do we ask questions out of curiosity?
[00:28:22] U. Understanding
How do we understand someone else's perspective? And how do we value different perspectives? Because at the heart of all of this is belonging because those are the cultures we wanna create in our workforces. And the reality is 61% of people of their employees are hiding something about themselves.
That's this Deloitte study from 2013. I actually think that number's higher, um, that most of most people on our teams and leaders are hiding something. So if we create a space around understanding, connection, representation, and empathy, that's what drives the idea of belonging and the feeling of belonging.
Mike Goldman: What I love about that is, frankly the way I have thought about it in years past, and the way a lot of leadership teams think about it is they just think about, oh, I've gotta have diversity on the team. You know, I look across, I don't see, I don't see different colors around the table. I don't see different sexes around the table. And not that that's not important, but if you do the things you talked about, you know, around understanding and connection and you know, the audit, the inventory, empathy. You could do all of those things with the team you have now.
Ruth: Totally.
Mike Goldman: And if you do all those things, what will your team look like five years from now? Maybe the team itself will look a little different than it does now and more diverse, but I just love the idea that there are actions you can take without people throwing up the hands and saying, well, I can't just fire people from the team and hire other. That's not what it's about. There's a lot of things you can do that have nothing to do with changing who's on your team right now.
Ruth: Right or put out a statement that feels like it's nothing, right? Like sometimes that's what I saw companies also do is just start by putting out a statement and not necessarily the tangibles behind it. And so yes, you can start with your team and I don't think it takes five years to implement. I think you can start those conversations and start to realize.
Who is missing? Like who's supposed to be here with us and are there people, not necessarily on the leadership team, but those employee resource groups or affinity groups that we can start to learn from and also connect with to meet our company goals. Because that's what we really, that's the power of affinity and employee resource groups is they have an ear to the ground and they also have a lens and they need executive sponsorship and dollars to continue to build out that piece, they're the recruitment tool for your company.
That's why people wanna work there. They connect with them. And the key to this whole thing, Mike, is that unhiding builds connection. That's the key to this, because when we hide, we stay apart. When we unhide, we get connected.
[00:31:11] The Loop of Increased Trust and Vulnerability
Mike Goldman: You ever read, the Culture Code by Daniel Coyle? If you haven't, you should read it. And, for the listeners, if you haven't read it, it's a wonderful book. Read it right after you read mine and Ruth's then read that book. But he talks about and I forget if he calls it the trust loop or the vulnerability loop.
And you, Ruth, you, you had mentioned this before. You didn't call it this, but you said almost what I'm about to say, where the idea of the trust loop. You start as opposed to saying, I will trust someone when they earn my trust. You start by trusting and being vulnerable and I share something with you.
I unhide with you. I share something with you that makes you trust me more and you feel more comfortable sharing something with me, and then you share that with me. I feel even more comfortable with you. And we get this loop of just increased trust and vulnerability, which is beautiful.
Ruth: Absolutely. And I think what you're also bringing up and to add onto that is it's also a two-way street, right? We can't just expect people, leaders to be vulnerable and then staff and teams not to, right? Like it's a two-way street. You have to look at it from both angles. They have to both come together because otherwise, it doesn't work. That loop stops, it doesn't keep going. and then somebody feels burnt or they feel that, you know, why did I waste my time? This person's not getting it. It has to be a commitment on both sides to create that space for trust.
Mike Goldman: I guess I'll call them nuts and bolts, CEOs and CFOs that may be listening saying, this all sounds good, but I've got a business to run.
Ruth: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:49] In a Business Case
Mike Goldman: And I've got, you know, I gotta hit this net income, I've gotta, you know, hit these quarterly revenue numbers. Is there a business case for this? What's the return on investment of getting better at this?
Ruth: Yeah, no, it's a great question because when you run a business, it is at the end of the day, this is not turning into a Dr. Phil show or a Jerry Springer show to make it even more intense. This is really about running a business and I think that it hits three things when we think about diversity and inclusion in a different way.
It hits a retention thing because something that we're all dealing with right now in terms of getting teams to stay in our workplaces, getting people to, because we know the cost of losing employees, it's high, so it manages, it helps through the retention lens. It also engages people on the engagement part of work.
And so how do people feel like you get the best out of people when they feel like they belong? So, and that means that your numbers are gonna go up. That means that that return on investment for spending the time thinking about it, your engagement scores are gonna go up and your innovation scores are gonna go up.
Because when you bring your best self to work and your most valued self to work. You get more innovation out of people. You get people who believe in the brand. You get leaders who are trusted leaders that people wanna work with and stay with. You have leaders who wanna stay and are trusted, and you also have a community of people who are seeing that because you now represent that diversity and inclusion in a different way are important to you as a company.
It becomes your value, you value different perspectives and the company starts to shine. So there is absolutely a business case for it. I think we are taught an old model often with leadership, right? And you, this is your work and your bail house, your Bailey Wick, is that the right word?
Mike Goldman: Uh, Either one works. I think it's Bailey Wick, but either one works.
Ruth: Anyway. We're taught an old model of leadership to your point, we're taught, oh, be strong, be tough, don't be vulnerable, don't show flaws, don't show weaknesses. And I'm saying you can maintain that and still show empathy and build empathy. You can still continue to build out that there needs to be a business case for why we're doing this and how we're moving it forward. And you can start to build empathy with your leaders and yourself.
Mike Goldman: I love it and you're thinking about a business case. You talked about retention. You talked about productivity. You talked about innovation. Along with that goes, you have all those things. You're attracting better people into the organization and more diverse folks, more diverse ideas into the organization.
I'm not sure there's a better business case than if you can truly impact those.
Ruth: And we want people to return to work, right? We want people to return even to the office, even in a different way of thinking about it. Well, how are we gonna get them there? We need to provide a culture that sees them and that hears them, and where they feel like they belong.
[00:35:55] What Should A Leader Be Focusing and Taking Action On?
Mike Goldman: What would, as we start to wrap up, if you can give one piece of advice to a leader who really hasn't done much thinking about DEI, they haven't made much progress. What's your advice? What's the first thing they ought to be focusing on? The first thing they ought to be taking action on.
Ruth: I think that to know that they're not alone, I think a lot of companies, Mike and a lot of leaders are struggling with this, the DEI piece, because we're not seeing the needle move the way that we had wanted it to. And so I think there's that piece of just recognizing, hey you're not alone. So not to run from it and not to dive head in and not think about how to do it, which I see both happening with leaders is either I'm gonna avoid it or I'm gonna dive in.
And they haven't thought about the action strategy. So I think the first place to start is that understanding part, just to take some self-reflection time to think about how am what are my DEI leaders and my HR leaders in my organization saying, right? What do I not know? What have I heard and what do I not know?
Asking some questions, being curious, and then going out and being proactive to do the learning outside of work so that you can have those informed conversations and connections when you come back. It's a starting place. It's not the only thing, but it's a starting place is to start to have that introspection time of what do I know and what do I not know around DEI?
Mike Goldman: And for folks that wanna go further with that, tell me a little bit about the types of work you do with your clients.
[00:37:36] Speaking To Raise Awareness
Ruth: Sure. So most of my work is through speaking, I come into companies and this is also a place, Mike, that I think a lot of leaders can look at is bringing in people with differences to start those conversations and companies where employees may not feel safe to quote on quote out themselves with differences, whether it's around race or gender or sexual orientation and disability.
To bring in and start to navigate and kind of look at who is talking about some of this stuff and start to bring in those speakers. This, what I do with companies is I work with leaders to expand the conversation on diversity through The Cure to Inclusion. So it starts typically as a keynote to raise awareness and then I work with leadership teams around how do they start those conversations internally as a leadership team because again, it be belongs with leaders.
How are they thinking about their employee resource groups in terms of what's working and what's not, how do we give them more voice? So that's a space that I work with. And then I do some coaching with individuals on leadership teams around how can they be more inclusive as a leader. And so that's really kind of those three.
It starts with, typically though, people bring me in to speak and they say, how can we continue? Because we know 60 minutes is not enough time to change mindset. It's just a taste. And then how do we build out what that looks like? And how do we think about, I mean, I work a lot of times with advertising agencies and media companies.
How are people being represented? How do we think about representation? So that's another piece of my work.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. Excellent. So in addition to obviously everyone listening to this is gonna go buy your book Singlehandedly out on Amazon. They're gonna buy it for their leadership teams. They're gonna buy it for their friends, their parents, their kids. In addition to that. Where Ruth, should people go if they wanna find out more about you.
Ruth: No thank you, Mike. I think the first place is my website, so ruthrathblott.com, and then I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Probably similar to you, I connect with people on LinkedIn to really talk about this conversation of expanding diversity and unhiding, because what I'm trying to do is to build a community around unhiding so that we create that as a norm.
Rather than it being seen as somebody who's just being nice that wants to you know share their secret with you. No, it's a community where you feel safe to share what's going on so that you can thrive and you can belong at work so that it's not holding you back anymore.
Mike Goldman: Amazing. Those links will be in the show notes for those listening on the website for the podcast, the link to her book and link to all this stuff will be in the show notes. Ruth, this was amazing. I appreciate you coming on.
Ruth: No, Mike, I'm so grateful and I'm so grateful for the work that you do with leaders because that's what's moving the needle forward, is how do we get leadership teams to actually embrace concepts and think about how to do things differently as we move forward? How do we reinvent leadership?
Mike Goldman: I love doing it and I know you love doing what you do, so hey, thanks again.
Ruth: Thank you, Mike.