What you'll learn:
- Personal journeys and first-hand experience in championing inclusivity
- Proven systems on how to build and lead diverse teams
- Insights into science-backed behaviors that improve trust and communication on teams
Transcription:
Priscila Bala (00:09):
Good afternoon everybody. What an absolute pleasure to be here with you today to talk about inclusivity. Now, whenever you're going to start a session about inclusion, most people get some trepidation because they feel they're going to be told all the things they should stop doing. It is this really long list of things you might not be able to say or you might not be able to do. But what gets me really excited about what we're going to be doing here today when it comes to deliberate inclusion is that it's all about the stuff you can start doing straight away. Now, inclusion is such an exciting topic because it touches our teams across the board, right? Individuals get to do better work, they feel a greater sense of meaning, they're more productive when they think they belong. Teams have higher trust, they collaborate better, and they're more effective when folks feel like they're inclusive behaviors taking place.
(01:13):
And ultimately, inclusion shapes company culture. And it was so exciting to hear throughout all of the panels today, right? How we've been talking about the power of creating cultures that are self-perpetuating, that really hire for culture ads instead of just culture fits and how we can really create space and opportunity for everyone. So I get to nerd out on this all the time because at Life Labs we've trained over half a million people in more than 2,600 global organizations on inclusion leadership, manager training, individual effectiveness, including a lot of these folks that you see over here. And we get to really focus on doing meta-analysis of all of the research and literature in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, industrial and organizational design, behavioral economics, to really find out, alright, what actually happens in humans' brains when we're put together in a work environment, regardless of function, regardless of vertical.
(02:21):
Though I have a heart for finance because that's where I spent the majority of my career, and we're going to talk about that in a little bit. We also get to go into all of these companies and ask people, okay, who here is really excellent at including people? And then we get to observe a lot of those behaviors and then we distill a combination of both the research and the practice to give you the stuff that you can do straight away. So to get us started, and because we're very tacky and we want to try piloting new things, we're going to launch a poll. So if you downloaded the app, we're going to try and see if we can get the poll to work. And I wanted us to answer how comfortable are you speaking up when you notice bias at work?
(03:06):
And there is no right or wrong answer here. This is just a temper check to really help us understand what is the level of comfort in the room and what are some of our experiences. So get on there and see if you can answer. Alright. All right, so folks who are answering now, we're starting to see a bigger distribution. Some people are very comfortable, some folks are like, yes, I'm happy to speak up, but there's some hesitation there. Other folks are really uncomfortable. We would prefer to avoid speaking up, but if it's necessary or if it's good for the team, I'm going to step in. And some folks truly are very uncomfortable about speaking up and that is okay, right? The goal of this visualization is to help us normalize that there are varying levels of comfort with the topic in varying ways in which we can engage with it moving forward.
(03:59):
And one of the things that we are going to do today is try to push your comfort level by just about 10%. And you're going to walk out of this session regardless of your level of comfort with at least three tools that you're going to be able to walk away tomorrow, implement with your teams and make them instantly more inclusive and more effective. So that's my promise. Alright, thank you for all of the respondents. We can close the poll, they'll take a look at that distribution. Alright, so at Life Labs, one of our values which I really love is courage over comfort, right? And what does this mean for us? It's really about finding that a lot of the things that are worthwhile and the success that we want to see might be just on the edge of where we feel comfortable. So how can we encourage ourselves and others to act in uncertainty or to address topics that might be a little bit scary?
(04:56):
So one rule that we have, as I mentioned, is the 10% rule. So if you were to think about where is your current comfort today? And rather than saying, all right, I'm going to go from here all the way over here, what does it feel like to just stretch a little bit, right? And push yourself to have the conversation just a little bit farther out of where you are because that is the kind of practice that's going to help you and your teams make it all the more habitual to be addressing some of these challenges together in creating a much greater conversational capacity in plans of action. Because what a lot of the research shows us is that in order to really create alignment and change behavior, you have to talk about these items. You have to talk about the instances of inclusion, you have to talk about the instances of exclusion, and it is much more likely that your team will grow capacity if we're doing it on a frequent basis. Alright, so look at me all like bright-eyed and bushy tailed when I was in business school. So this picture is pre white hairs.
(06:03):
I have an interesting journey with inclusion and diversity because I was born and raised in a small town in the interior of Brazil actually. And I first came to the States as a first generation immigrant to go to college. I got a scholarship to go to Yale, and once I got there, all of a sudden I had to contend with a lot of the expectations and the assumptions that people would place on me for who I was or what I was capable of doing In this room, I'm preaching to the choir. All of us have at times been put in those positions. So on a personal level, we were talking about dating better men earlier. On a personal level, whenever I would go out with a guy in college, it was more likely than not that his family was going to think I was an au pair rather than a Yale college student. And then when I started working, it was more likely that people would think I was the assistant or my personal favorite that I cleaned the place once they found out that I was Brazilian. And even as recently as the job right before Life Labs, when I was a venture capital investor, I'll never forget my first week on the job being a consultant was working with the team and he introduced me to the room as the assistant.
(07:24):
So I always have felt a very conflicted about this. It's like, how do you do excellent work? How do you get to not be just the token representation of whatever identity or nationality that you are? And how is it that you get credit for the incredible achievements that your hard work is putting into something while at the same time not having to spend a lot of time thinking about the theory of it? And to me, that was being a person of action. That was the biggest thing. I was always torn about, when do I talk about this? When do I not talk about this? What do I let just slide off my back? Where is it that I intervene? Is it worth having a conversation? How do I get mentors into it? I mean, I see some head nods. It's a lot of emotional work and effort that we all go through on top of doing an incredible job in banking in high heels. Not anymore. After I had kids, I was like, no, no, no.
(08:21):
But then what I've discovered throughout my career and throughout this journey is that actually I didn't have to be the expert in any of these topics. I didn't have to make the right choice in each of these. I didn't have to understand a lot of the sociological theories or politics of identity. I could just do things differently and I could just encourage my team to do things differently. And so the point that I'm going to make today is that I feel like a lot of leaders spend a ton of time trying to change people's beliefs when they really should just start trying to change people's behavior. It's funny because even in my personal life, people sometimes will say, my husband and I are like, he's an introvert. I am a little bit more bubbly.
(09:07):
He never liked phone calls for a while. We were doing long distance and I'm like, no, no, no. If this is going to work, you have to be on the phone with me every day. He's like, what? I was like, yeah, that's what's going to need to happen. Then he started calling me every day. Now if you ask him now 25 years later, he'll say, I hate the phone, but he still gets on the phone with me every day because he knows that it matters to me. So it doesn't matter to me whether he believes talking on the phone is nice, but the fact that he does it makes all the difference and it actually gives me the sense of belonging and appreciation that I need right now. Even when we disagree about ideas and about nomenclature and about vocabulary. If you've been following any of the DEI conversation around the world, it's a sobering moment.
(09:58):
There's been so much backlash, which is super unfortunate, language wars that are happening in different places, A lot of censoring or folks feeling like they're afraid they're going to offend or feel shamed. The reality is, even when we disagree about all of that stuff, we can still act inclusively and we can still lead with inclusion and small changes add up to a massive impact. Part of the reason why I think that inclusion is such a scary topic, it's because it's so big, it permeates everything. It has to do with every behavior that we're faced on an ongoing basis. And it can feel very daunting going, where do we even start? And we can have metrics and KPIs and we probably have hiring goals and inclusion practices and promotion numbers. And if you saw the beautiful edition of American Banker that they had out yesterday, the first few pages had some statistics on the trajectory of women in leadership and how unfortunately you see that even in finance where we start at parody at lower levels, as you get promoted, that percentage decreases.
(11:13):
So for every 100 men who are promoted to managers, 70 women will be promoted. And by the time you get to senior leadership, we're talking 30 out of a hundred. Alright. But so what can we do in the midst of all of this? What can we do? We know it's super important and I've mentioned some of the reasons, but I also just wanted to list some stats because in 2023 there were 73,000 discrimination charges filed with the US Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission. Now, this feels like a drop in the bucket considering how many employees there are, but how pervasive is this? Because these are just the ones that were reported, right? 53% of women in finance report microaggressions, and this data is actually from 2021. Forgive me, that's a little typo from 2021, which is actually a little lower than women in general in corporate America.
(12:08):
They experienced it at 58%. Rates and microaggressions can have a massive impact in people's productivity, engagement, connection at work. And this is the most depressing statistic of all in my view. When the UN development program did some research globally on people's perception, 43% of people thought that men are better executives than women. Even though there's research that shows that when there's women in leadership, firms are more profitable, firms are more socially responsible, and client experiences are better and safer. So we got to break this. And of course, I'm again preaching to the choir because not only do we have massive examples of people that are changing the shape of the industry, but all you need to do is look around this room and to all of the women that we've been hearing from and to each other to recognize how much progress and how much success women in leadership truly bring about.
(13:10):
And so the point in sharing some of these numbers for me is not to again, repeat something as much as it is to say there's a lot that we still need to do despite all the progress that we've had. Now, don't worry knowing that some of our outfits need to fit well and be tight. I am not actually going to make you raise your hands. This is a trick question, far be it from me to jam your fashion style. But here's a trick question for us. How many of us don't have biases? Nobody. Nobody should be raising their hands because if you have a brain, you have bias. And that is something that I think is important. Again, it's old news for some folks, but if it's news for some people in your team, perhaps when you get back, make sure to know that our brains were wired to be biased because our brains were wired to protect us from dangers in the past.
(14:04):
So if a saber tooth tiger was going to show up, you didn't want to be open and curious about, I wonder whether this one is going to eat me or not. You just wanted to run. So this idea of having our brains instinctually start thinking about what's in group, what's outgroup, what is familiar, what is different is something that all of us are really ingrained with. And we're going to talk about how to break out of the cycle a little bit because biases in and of itself are neither good nor bad. Some biases are actually positive and it can be very helpful for us to, for example, create affinity with one another and build relationships and bridge gaps based on certain points of familiarity. But what we do need to think about is how is it that we can protect ourselves against any of the pernicious effects that bias can have? So I'm going to be a little cheeky because the question of the day is how do we bust workplace bias?
(15:16):
We kind of don't. We don't because every single one of us is bias no matter what. We can't change people's brains, but we can counteract it. So it's never going to be about how do I remove the bias, but how do I go around it? Alright, so here are the three tools that we are going to talk about today. We are going to talk about deep blurring, opening the circle in equal phatics, and I'm also going to name some of the specific biases that I think these are going to combat very nicely, so that if you have to educate others when you go back to the office, you can do so as well. So yesterday we had a really interesting conversation about conflict resolution and feedback. Feedback is a hot topic because every single one of us is dealing with feedback on an ongoing basis.
(16:04):
We have to give it to our teams, we're receiving it ourselves. Now, a super simple but massively powerful tool to really counteract a lot of these biases and to give higher quality feedback is called deep blurring. And the idea here is let us notice when a word could mean different things for different people. And the reason why we have a camera here is that this is a little trick where you want to only say things that a camera could capture or that if you got yourself and a bunch of other people in your team to say, okay, what does this mean exactly? Everybody would have the exact same understanding. Now, I particularly like deep blurring to combat attribution bias. So you may be familiar with this one, but attribution bias in the literature is defined as attributing success or failure to different factors depending on demographic characteristics. So suppose we have two people in the office and the guy closes this huge deal.
(17:09):
Why did he win that deal? You can shout, he worked hard, he was competent, he was strategic. A woman closes a really big deal. She might get the credit and say some of those things, but what else might be said? She was lucky. She had a mentor, the team carried it over. That is a classic example of attribution bias. We see the same outcome, but we give it different causes depending on the group that we're thinking about. Now let's think about deep blur. Have you ever heard any of these? Okay, so I want you to look, I love the laughs, like, oh yeah, bend there, bend there, right? So I want you to mentally underline which of these words are blurry words. Actually, let's have some fun. Y'all are very quiet. I can't cope.
(18:09):
Say to me which of these words are blurry, strategic, strategic, friendly, realistic, awesome. There's two more there. Also, always more. Oh my gosh, this class is incredible, right? Tone always unfriendly. Also, what do these things mean? This is the kind of feedback that we get, or sometimes it's the kind of feedback that we give and how can we actually get on the same page and support performance and support coaching if a number of the words that we habitually use don't actually mean the same thing to different people. So the key here is to say not your proposal isn't realistic, but it is to say something like your proposal doesn't take into account the dependencies or the resource allocation that we have at the moment and the timeline that we're going to need to execute on these things. Well now once you've told me those things, I know the next time I need to think about the dependencies, the resource allocation and the timeline, and if I do my next project and I put all of these things forward, wow, that will have been a better outcome. So how can we get to that specificity? This is particularly important because research shows that performance reviews and feedback that's given to women and to underrepresented minorities tends to be much blurrier than feedback that's given to men.
(19:44):
So what does this do? So on a personal level, I love de blurring because it's helped me so much both in terms of how can I intentionally think about as a leader when I'm asking something of my team, am I making it as clear and specific as possible? If I ever throw out words like accelerate, more, better, effective, productive, what do I actually mean And am I saying that to them very clearly so that any one of them can think about what success is going to look like? And similarly, when people are coming to me and they're telling me things, I can also probe a little deeper to truly understand how can we be on the same page on this? And this has had a massive impact because not only does my team feel better coached, but now they can translate that specificity to others and they can transmit that specificity to others.
(20:41):
So here's what I want you to do. As you go about the day, now you can start asking other people, what does realistic mean to you? What does strategic mean to you? We've mentioned aggressive before, what does aggressive mean to you? What behaviors would a camera capture that would actually say, well, you interrupted this person during their commentary and they weren't given a chance to complete their thought before the meeting was over. That's much more specific and practical, but also most importantly, we can be asking ourselves why do I think X and could X be a bias? Whether it is when I assign competence to someone or whether I assign incompetence to someone, like where's that coming from? Why do I think this and would I look at it in a different way? Alright, so I want you to take one minute and I see that our friends gave us lots of notebooks. If you need to write down or just think, but think about the last conversation you had at work or ongoing conversations that you have with people in your team. Are there any blur words that you notice and that you want to be on the lookout for or that you want to ask for clarification about when you get back into the office?
(22:36):
All right, now I'm going to go do that thing when I bring you right back and you're like, no, the conversation was just adding good. Don't do this too short of a break, but we're going to get going. All right, so you have a few blur words and you can share some of those with your team or with your table. And here are the key takeaways that I want you to remember and bring with you as you go back into the office, right? Notice blur words, convert them into observable behaviors. Try to be as specific as possible because that will give you clarity and it'll give your team lots of clarity and it is totally okay to be open about what you're doing and to actually label that out to people. You can tell your colleagues, Hey, I'm trying out this technique called deal blur and I just want to make sure that my thinking isn't being guided by assumptions.
(23:28):
Can you tell me what does tone mean to you? What does realistic mean to you? What does effective mean to you so that you can invite them into the conversation and role model, getting examples about specifically what those behaviors are. Now this is particularly important for folks who are early in their careers as well. We were having some conversations about how do you progress? And I was sitting at a table at lunch where we were talking about lessons learned and what advice would you give, and this was an important one, being able to align early on what success looks like for a particular deliverable or project or assignment is going to make the difference between you accelerating your career or feeling like you might be spinning your wheels at times. Alright, do you feel accomplished? We got through one tool already. Shake yourself a little bit.
(24:25):
Let's now go to tool number two, open the circle. Now I'm going to take a look at another type of bias and some other behaviors that we can also create. So for us, opening the circle is all about creating opportunities to invite different perspectives and participation. Now because we're at a conference, we'll notice that sometimes opening the circle, the first thing that we see is how we do it, even with body language, right? Humans, we're so attuned to how we stand together. So imagine it's networking time and there's a little group of, call it three or four people and they have this closed circle and they're having a conversation and you're standing on the outside of it and you're like, hell no, I'm not going to tap on anybody's back and ask for space. How do I even engage in this situation? Which is why in tech conferences now they talk about the Pac-Man setup where you kind of do this half Circle thing or if you want to call it a croissant so that you're creating openness so that people can walk in and engage.
(25:33):
Now how many times in the office are we doing behaviors that feel like the equivalent of a close circle? And it is so hard for people to actually come in because there's also a big difference between invitation and permission. By and large, we all know we have permission to do things like we were hired, we're attending the meeting, we were invited, we're part of the agenda, we know we can participate, engage, do the thing, speak up. But it feels very different when we're invited to do it right? It's like here we are all sitting at a table and I can jump in and I'm trying to measure, okay, when is the right time for me to say something versus the other people saying something and can I rock the boat? Can I breach this other topic versus someone saying, I haven't heard you share your perspective yet.
(26:27):
Can you tell us what you think? Or you work very closely with the risk management, can you tell us how you see it from your perspective? What else might we be missing? So the invitation can make a big difference and the invitation can protect us against consensus effect because this is another bias that our brains by and large do. And this is one where we basically assume that the majority of people think exactly like we do or are in agreement with us. Now this can be a minefield at work or professionally because when you think you have alignment or when you think you have agreement or when you think you're on the same page or that everybody thinks this is a great idea, it might not be the case. And if you didn't open the circle to invite those other perspectives into truly gauge where we're folks in each of these, you might get surprised. So how might we fix this? So the first one is invitation statements. So a few different tools that we can use whenever you are in one-to-one interactions or in a team setting or in meetings or watching out for your colleagues is explicitly including other people into the conversation, invite them to participate. And as a leader, it is wild how powerful it is. What a difference you can make in people's days and lives just to invite them in.
(27:58):
It's at Life Labs. I started doing this thing where to open the circle, I created a list of all of my teammates, and again, I'm in a room that loves spreadsheets, so I feel so seen and I put them all on a spreadsheet and I'm trying to track have I engaged with each of these people and have I invited in to comment on each of these projects? And once I started doing that, I remember even if it was just a brief, those were the messages that carried the greatest resonance. And when it came time for my own 360 reviews or when it was time for people to talk about engagement with the organization, they would list the fact that I had asked for their opinion bridge statements. So many times we're in the middle of a conversation and it's really good or we're getting ready for the meeting.
(28:49):
Some people might have arrived a little earlier, they started chatting and folks haven't arrived yet. How can we now tell someone who's just joining the conversation how to participate effectively or where we are? This is a signal that you care about that person being a part of the conversation that was ongoing and it feels like such a simple thing just to say, Hey, welcome we were discussing X, Y, and Z. You can find the link on the agenda or feel free to share your perspective on this. What are you doing? Those are the kinds of things that can help people feel really prepared to jump in. Context statements very much like bridge statements also support much greater awareness of how we can now engage with each other and have the same language so that the conversation can be effective. We talked earlier about learning acronyms for and goodness knows, we all love our acronyms.
(29:47):
In finance, every single vertical and function will have so many of those, right? So particularly when you're thinking about growing your team, coaching people, supporting them to understand how to best participate, it's an easy tactic that once you start doing the rest of the team picks up really quickly. I'm always amazed that at Life Labs, when we hire someone within two weeks of them being there, we see them doing this to other people, which is so encouraging and exciting because it's the kind of behavior that makes everybody feel good. Because once you do something like this, the recipient is so excited and so grateful and you beam and then everybody notices that both of you are beaming and now everybody wants to get in on it as well. Now, oh, lemme go back opening the circle in my career. For me, one of the also transformational moments of opening the circle is when we decided to make projects and strategic planning visible to the whole organization.
(30:48):
So at Life Labs we do this thing where every initiative must have a summary plan that we call an A four because the idea is it should fit in a one page piece of paper, but it has a summary of here are the key objectives, here's the working group, here are the timelines, here's the approver, here are the KPIs, here are the deliverables, and all of those a fours are visible to everyone across the whole org. Well what does that do? Now? People have access to the information. Now if you want to participate in a project or if you want to learn more, you can go direct to the source or you have context to know how you're going to couch your conversation. Or you also know that that team is really swamped because they have about four a fours that they need to deliver on and you're going to cut them some slack and you're going to show some empathy.
(31:37):
But that transparency in sharing the information widely creates shared context for everyone and really support people being able to engage with it in a different way. I want you to take another 30 seconds and I want you to think about, okay, who can you open the circle for in your next conversation? Is there someone in your team that you haven't really heard a whole lot of about or you don't know exactly what their working style is or what their interests are, what their energizes are and you want them to participate a little more? And then I also want to think about where can you be using this tool, right? Because again, it is a really exciting thing to do when you're out at conferences and networking, but it also works in our one-to-one meetings. Any other social interactions? Simple but massively effective.
(32:30):
Alright, invitation statements, bridge statements, context statements. I see some head nods. Alright, anybody falling asleep after lunch? I'm always afraid that they'll be like, it's siesta time. Priscilla, why are you doing this to us? Okay, two down team want to go equal phatics? Now this is an interesting one because it means taking the time to build connections with everybody on the team. So phatics, if you're not familiar with is a nomenclature that comes from linguistics and phatic communication. It's all of the little communication sentences we use to check in with people. So it thinks it like, how are you? Good morning, see you soon. How was your weekend? Now it feels like such a small, small thing, but phatics can have a massive impact on trust, collaboration, and performance because they are unevenly distributed.
(33:45):
It's an unconscious instinct that all of us have to have more fat communication with the people that we feel are in group and we have less static communication with the people that we feel are outgroup. And this just bleeds through unconsciously. Nobody's actively trying to do this, but it does happen. And as humans, our brains are wired to notice these things. Okay, so then why do combat's affinity bias? Well, again, we tend to favor similar characteristics, backgrounds. I mean if any of you have bright red nail polish, we're going to be best friends immediately right off the bat. I don't care who you are, it's going to happen. There are certain things that just bring people together and you can see, I mean look at this, the amount of camel and chestnut and maroon that's going on here, these two are going to be best friends no matter what, but you could also like somebody because they went to the same school as you did or they're from state or the same city that you're from.
(34:48):
You have the same hobbies, you like the same type of fiction. All of that is going to, and those are all super well-meaning biases and they're positive. And in many cases, as I said, they can be shortcuts to relationships, which is really exciting. But the key thing here when we think about phatics is really focusing on the word equal. It's the equal part that matters because otherwise those are the moments when you're sending signals to your team that some people belong more than others. So you can imagine, for example, this was supposed to be the image. Yeah, this was supposed to be an image of people sitting around a meeting. So just visualize it with me. Okay, so imagine before the meeting starts, the senior person in the room is asking, how was your weekend? To all of the people who are their same age or in their same circle and everyone else is kind of on the outside of that conversation, how does that make you feel?
(35:52):
An unequal distribution of this static glue of these conversations can deteriorate relationships and can continually make people feel like they don't belong even if they are doing excellent work. And it becomes a negative spiral because the more you notice, and when we think about again, the arc of our careers and in this room I was very impressed. Some of us have been with the same bank for 30 years, massive shout to you. Imagine if every single day there was a drip of this feeling and you're spending all of this time feeling a little bit on the outskirts. So talking about your weekend with a colleague might not seem like a big deal, but that is the kind of stuff that will ultimately build trust and belonging for folks. And most importantly, research actually shows that we're more likely to give promotions, to give stretch assignments and to give raises to people we have more static communication with.
(36:59):
So as a leader, so in my career, one of the tricks that I've used I mentioned before is I will literally put my entire team on a spreadsheet and I'll go, okay, have I checked with all of y'all on an ongoing basis? So that's one trick. Another one that we instituted at Life Labs is we ensure that if we're going to do static communication at the beginning of meetings, we carve aside time so that everybody can go. So we'll assume that the first five minutes of every meeting is going to be for us to go around the room and ask a question of everybody because even though we can feel like small talk and they're like, Priscilla, come on, are you for real? We're dealing with billions of dollars here and you want me to spend time talking about my We can. Yes I do, because that is what's actually going to create that connection that is going to make that person much more likely to tell you when they made a mistake. That was another conversation we're having during a launch. It is like when is it that people come up and they actually tell you so that there aren't any surprises? That's when they're actually going to ask you when they need help or when they're confused, that's when they're going to tell you where there might be gaps that need to be addressed. It's because they feel comfortable talking to you about all of those things.
(38:16):
So similarly, I want you to take a moment and think about, there might be one person in your team that you're like, okay, I don't know this person so well or the level of comfort in getting together and having that kind of relationship, small talk with them is lacking today. So let me give myself a mission to understand what is their work style, what are they good at? How do they think about their own belonging and relationship with the team, right? Find a few minutes in the coming week to be intentional about creating that space and making that opening for that conversation with them.
(38:56):
Alright. Use equal phatics across your entire team that is going to help build rapport, build equal phatics in your meeting norms. If you're someone who has the authority to be shaping agendas and to be setting up these spaces for folks, or if you want to give feedback to the people who do please make sure to do so. And of course demonstrate curiosity. This isn't about being intrusive as much as it is truly wanting to get to know that person and ensure that they feel comfortable coming to you and speaking with you as well. Alright, so we've covered three tools. De blur, open the circle equal phatics, and my mission for you is going to be to definitely pick one that you are going to implement in the coming week. Now, another value that we have at Life Labs that I wanted to share with you is 80% is better than zero.
(39:53):
Gosh, my lunch was so rich, everything at lunch I was like, I'm now talking about, we talked about staying clear of perfection, ensuring that there's action as well as progress versus waiting for things to be perfect. So the idea behind 80% is better than zero is that you don't want to have to wait for the perfect moment and small changes will make a big impact. So making progress in all of these conversations is going to start creating again that capacity that we see for the entire team. So don't wait for it to feel comfortable or to feel perfect to start taking action. Now sometimes people go, okay, that was very interesting, super easy. I now understand the tool. Where can I use it? Or how do we think about how this tool can really make a difference in our organizations and the practices and systems that we have?
(40:48):
Because as we talked about, inclusion permeates everything that we do. So when you're giving and receiving feedback, that is a hotspot for ensuring that it is well deeply blurred when you're responding to asks or statements. We were talking about how is it that you sometimes can also say no to asks or statements that are made of you? And one of the best ways to have a well-informed no that's going to be received well by the other party is to actually blur exactly what's being asked so that you can specifically address the concerns, constraints, trade-offs, or whatever situation there might be for you to say no when setting performance criteria. This is particularly important when we're talking about hiring or promotions, ensuring that there's calibration across the board and that the entire team is talking about the same thing. Even if we are going to say, Hey, they need to be a culture fit.
(41:44):
Even knowing, okay, what would that even look like here and what does that mean and what makes for it? What are the behaviors next? When can you use open the circle, right? We talked about when soliciting strategy feedback. This is a particularly useful and important one because we forget that as leaders we may set strategy but the team will have to execute it. And earlier on one of the panelists was talking about an exercise she had to do where her eyes might have been closed and she had to do a puzzle without a lot of direction. That can be the feeling people have when they're trying to move a process forward without a clear understanding of what they're trying to achieve. So this is a particularly good one to test that in stretching the boundaries of inclusion when you're communicating new policies and why decisions were made, it is so important and useful to sometimes have a working group that you're going to flag this to beforehand of the end users or the folks that need to be involved.
(42:45):
Particularly if you're asking yourself, whose perspective are we missing or what group might be impacted by this that hasn't had a chance to share input yet, this is going to set you up for success because you can catch a lot of the consequences that let's be honest, are going to happen no matter what once you roll out the policy, but now you can prepare for them and in many cases you can mitigate any backlash that could happen, the return to office for Amazon. Interesting statistics. I was attending a conference last week with LinkedIn and since they decided to make the office five days mandatory, 70% of Amazon employees have changed their status on LinkedIn to open to work, talk about a policy backlash when considering a new software service provider, things that the team are going to be is going to be using, right? That's a great opportunity to just bring everyone in because what you're doing is this is inclusion, or actually this is change management masquerading as inclusion or it's inclusion driving successful change management.
(43:58):
At the end of the day, that's what a lot of this conversation is about. And then with equal phatics, you can use them to engage everyone in your team meetings. Now this is also fascinating. There's a lot of research that talks about the fact that if somebody speaks in a meeting, even if it is with something as simple or inane as how was your weekend, the likelihood that they will speak up during that meeting increases materially. We're talking 30 to 40% more likely that you're actually going to participate. Just the simple act of participating in the beginning unleashes or unlocks your willingness and your capability after that. So again, it can feel like small talk, but it is actually huge.
(44:49):
Now when you're convening a new team or starting a new project, this is particularly important because when you do these practices early on, odds are they're going to build on each other and become much more habitual practices for the entire group after that. And if you're working on hybrid scenarios or your team is distributed, it's particularly important to do equal phatics with remote team members or team members that may be in other offices because of course when you are in person and you tend to do more fat communication with the people that are there with you.
(45:28):
Alright, all right, we've done it. So now I'm just going to get you excited. I want you to remember after the session you can counteract bias, you can stretch yourself 10% beyond your comfort zone and 80% is better than zero. So don't wait for perfection. Truly be the change that you want to see in a lot of these spaces. Alright, so now we have a closing poll. What are you taking away today? So we can launch that and you can go back to the app. I'm very curious about what you found useful from this session and we have a little bit of time for questions, so once we complete the poll, we can also see if the audience has any questions and I'm sure we have mics somewhere. Yes. So there's a question over here.
(46:18):
It's coming. It's coming.
Audience Member 1 (46:29):
So I love the semicircle the circle concept, but what if you're the person standing on the outside trying to work your way in? How would you suggest approaching that?
Priscila Bala (46:41):
So that is such a good question. I think that a lot of it has to do with, we talked earlier about standing, what's important to those stakeholders? So if you're on the outside, it can feel very tricky sometimes to again be the one that's knocking and saying, let me participate in this conversation. Being prepared with context that's going to be relevant for whichever circle you're trying to knock on the outside of is going to be super important. So if it's about a new vertical you want to break into, or it's a group that's discussing a new strategic initiative or it's a group that you just want to build another relationship with, sometimes you are going to have to again, take that 10% rule and stretch yourself, but you will maximize your chances of success if you've done some homework to understand what is relevant to the conversation that's ongoing.
(47:38):
It's one thing to interrupt a conversation and all of a sudden say, here I am and I can contribute to what's happening versus here I am and I dunno what to say next. Yeah, so have something of value to add to that conversation in whatever shape or form it is. I mean, I started my career in sales and trading, and so sales was a lot of what I was doing and I had to constantly try to find out what is going to make this client tick. It's the same behavior in a way. It is like how do we identify what is going to make this closed circle of conversation tick? What do they care about or how do I get there? And then bring something of context and value. Yeah. Oh, there's a question there.
Audience Member 2 (48:25):
Yeah, I think equal phatics is something easy to do when things are going well, like oh, easy start to the day or the meeting. But do you have advice on how to keep that concept going in times of high stress or high challenge for your team?
Priscila Bala (48:43):
Gosh, I love that question so much. This is what we forget. All of these things feel instinctual and easy or almost like, oh, come on, Priscilla, seriously, that's the advice that you had for us, but this is why it matters, is it takes hard work to remember that you have to do this on rainy days and on good days. I joke because sometimes I'll be talking to heads of L&D or chief people officers at banks and they'll say, Priscilla, absolutely no way that we can do training because my people are already working a hundred hours a week. I am not going to take two hours out of their day to put them through this training. And I'm like, okay, I hear you and let's talk about what's going into those a hundred hours and you'll see the parallel to the stressful situation. What is going into those a hundred hours?
(49:35):
Well, 10 of those hours might be miscommunication. I'm redoing things because we are now clarifying what happened. 20 of those hours might be trying to just get alignment and refine because we didn't really get set from the front end and now we're having to catch up because we're discovering information as we go along rather than everybody having the same context on one go, I got this piece of information from my MD and then this piece of information from my director and then this piece of information from my VP and now I'm piecing it together, but it's taking a while and then another 10 hours might just be emotional pain. I'm like, this was so difficult and what am I doing here? Or the joke that we had earlier where we were talking about twice a month you consider your career choices. So if you give me the two hours and we can shave 20 of those hours, this was a benefit.
(50:34):
And that's what you need to remember and that's what you need to again, be an example and a role model in practicing, I have to center myself and call myself and remember, yes, when I'm stressed, I'm less likely to spend these five minutes making small talk with my team, but if I do that, I'm going to pay for it with two extra hours of pain and miscommunication and misalignment down the line. But I know that it's hard, especially when you're young to try to, this is where it's so important for leaders to role model this because we do have a lot more power and permission to shape the conversation. And my team knows that if I'm giving them time to make small talk, they'll be okay. Making small talk. When you're younger, it is a little tougher to push that, but once you start seeing the benefits, then it becomes it's no longer something you need to convince people of. I've had the benefit of now going through these cycles with my team and I'm like, we end up being more productive and it saves me time and I get better outcomes and I get better results because people feel super aligned. Does that make sense? Okay.
(51:44):
Any other questions?
Audience Member 3 (51:47):
Yeah, what do you suggest for the, oh, thank you. What do you suggest for the employee that you try to bring into the circle and they're very hesitant. So I think I do a pretty good job of trying to include everyone in decisions we're making for the team, but there's those two or three people that they just don't want to contribute.
Priscila Bala (52:11):
That's a super good question. You can bring a horse to water, but here's what I'd say, naming and labeling the impact. I think that at times what is tricky for people to understand when you have to do something that isn't natural to you or that you don't like or that doesn't feel like an energizer, is that without understanding truly why it is important that I do this thing or what the consequences of me not doing this thing or going to be can truly increase their likelihood to participate. So for example, being able to explicitly say, well first ask them what do they want and see if this is a good fit for them. So for example, if somebody says, I want to grow in my career, now you have all of the ammunition that you need because you can center all of the feedback and coaching that you're going to give to them on that is because I'm invested in your success.
(53:06):
Let me tell you what it's going to take to be promoted, or let me tell you what it's going to take to grow and it will take these behaviors. I understand they're not the most comfortable, so let's think about how can you do it most effectively so that this visibility is going to matter. But I think sometimes you have to name it to them because folks, and I think that I see this with younger workers all the time, you think that just the quality of your work is going to do it all for you As long as I do, I put in good work and I do good work. That's going to be enough for me to be recognized. And we know that it won't, right? You also have to demonstrate it. You have sometimes to advocate for it, you have to share it with others, and you have to know that it is something that matters for your growth. If they still won't do it, then I think you've done a lot of what you could do in the situation. But I would push for, again, naming to them what is the impact of them not doing that behavior so that they understand what the price might be. Yeah.
(54:14):
Any other questions? Yes. How I think similarly to the conversation that we were just talking about, oh, how do you handle people who are persistently negative? That's another one where I would encourage you to explicitly share with them the impact of that behavior in the team and elsewhere. I once read an article that was very interesting on this and it was the concept of friction. Imagine you have two people, equally capable performer, performers, very competent, one is positive, one is negative, who's going to get promoted? All things being equal. It is important for people to understand that negativity is not, it's not a neutral state of mind. It is actually a detractor from the rest of the team because now it's not just about their own performance, but it has a bleeding effect into the experience of a lot of other folks. And I think that it is important for you as a leader or a manager to label it to them as such.
(55:38):
It's like, I understand your work is excellent and we need to talk about the attitude. So at Life Labs, we talk a lot about the what and the how. And negativity for me fits into that how category is you are doing it, but you're doing it in such a way that is weighing everybody down and it's creating friction. And when there's friction, we are not going to be able to go as fast or as far as we want to go, being dragged down by this. Is that helpful? It's Sure. Come on. There must be another question. Yes. Over there.
Audience Member 4 (56:30):
I'm curious, your take on how to show that there's value to equal phatics for senior leadership teams or executive teams that maybe work in a high pressure environment and they don't put a lot of emphasis or value on that?
Priscila Bala (56:46):
One of the things that's going to happen is this presentation that I shared is also going to be on the app, so you can find it. There are some research links down below. Follow up with me. I will send you a whole list of research that talks about some of this. And I think it is important, particularly when it comes to leaders that are feeling reluctant to have you or someone be naming these things to them, right? Because the challenge when you get to a position of power is you forget how it was like to feel like there were impediments to your participation. And I think it is about framing in those ways for those leaders as well is we've spent as A CEO, I'm very cognizant of how much I spent to hire that person, how much I spent to train that person, how much I'm spending to keep that seat.
(57:37):
And if we want to get productivity and effectiveness from that role, I need to now also invest this modicum of time in ensuring that I'm giving them the conditions to actually do their best work and to participate. And so for me, it's like frame it as an ROI conversation. It's like, yes, these five minutes or these 10 minutes are going to save us this many hours of other work that wouldn't get done. Or even more importantly, they're going to mean the projects or the initiatives or the deals that we're completing are going to be done much more effectively and much faster than they would otherwise. So there is an exponential return for sure. And for some of those chiefs of people, I'll say, give me two hours, I'll give you 20 back. Right? And a 10 x return is pretty sweet. Last I checked. So is that helpful? Yeah.
(58:37):
Alright. Any other question? One final question. We're getting a time. Well, thank you all so much. If there are no other questions, if you'd like to stay in touch Oh, and look at that new action to try out. I love it. Awareness, some new language. Super, super cool. Stay in touch with Life Labs. Oh, I think I ended the presentation. Stay in touch with Life Labs. Really appreciate you all. And remember that this journey is about not just what you can do, but how you can help the rest of your team also make more progress into creating workplaces where we can all do our best work and get promoted as we should. Thank you.