Fighting the Fear of DEI to Improve Our Organizations w/ Toby Mildon
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with diversity and inclusion architect and author Toby Mildon on why leadership has a fear of DEI, the dangers of that fear for the organization and how to over come it.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is a diversity & inclusion architect. He is the founder and director of Mildon, a boutique diversity and inclusion consultancy helping HR leaders implement effective change strategies. He is the author of the book My Inclusive Growth: Future-proof Your Business by Creating a Diverse Workplace, which provides a practical framework to deliver a sustainable DEI workplace. His career has spanned time as an in-house diversity and inclusion manager at Deloitte and at the BBC, where he also was the chairperson for their disability employee resource group.
Connect with Toby, and learn more about his work…
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“People often look up at the top of an organization when they join, and they can’t see themselves reflected…they don’t see somebody that is like them, and they’re subconsciously telling themselves, ‘I just don’t have a future here. There’s no pathway for me to get to the top of the business.'”
Toby Mildon
Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Toby Mildon and here is why he is awesome. He’s a diversity and inclusion architect. He is the founder and director of Mildon, a boutique diversity and inclusion consultancy that helps HR leaders implement effective change strategies. Oh, he’s got a book. It’s called My Inclusive Growth, Future Proof your Business by Creating a Diverse workplace, which provides real practical frameworks to deliver a sustainable DEI workplace. Can’t stress how important that is. And his career has spanned everything from this and that, mostly diversity, mostly inclusion. He was also an in house manager at Deloitte and at the BBC, where he also was the chairperson for their disability employee resource group. For you acronym nerds. That’s ERGs. Hello, Toby.
Toby Mildon: Hey Russ, thanks ever so much for inviting me along.
Russel Lolacher: Oh, thrilled to have you here. DEI. Oh, oh, we’re going to talk about the fears of DEI and I, I’m really hoping we open a few minds to this. Cause DEI is certainly… the reputation of DEI has changed even just in the last five years, it’s gone from everybody should do it to, oh my God, it’s going to ruin everything.
So I’m super curious to hear your perspective. But before we do, I have to ask you the question I ask everybody, Toby, which is what is your best or worst employee experience?
Toby Mildon: Let’s go for the best, and, I’d like to share with you one of my first employee experiences. So, it’s going back quite a way now, but when I was a teenager and I was trying to get into the workplace a lot of my friends were getting jobs working in supermarkets, stacking shelves, and I, being a wheelchair user, and I’ve got, a muscle wasting condition, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do a physical job like that. I needed to do a desk based job. And I was applying and approaching different companies and trying to get work experience and I was receiving some knockbacks and rejections. But I had a really great experience with a bank manager. So I I, I went, I made an appointment with a bank manager to open up a savings account.
And but I had an ulterior motive, which was to try and get a job with the bank. And then at the end of the appointment, when I signed all the paperwork, the bank manager asked me whether there was anything else I wanted help with. And I said, ‘Well, yeah, I mean, actually, now that you come to mention it, I’d quite like a job, please.’
And to my surprise, he, he offered me some work experience and, and this is a big well known bank in the UK. It’s like one of the big major High Street banks that we have. And it was the first time I think that I had come across what we would call an inclusive manager nowadays. He could see that I had a physical disability, that I was a wheelchair user, but he could also see my potential.
And the bank that, or the branch that he worked in was quite a small branch in a rural part of the West Country. Not, not particularly accessible, but he spoke to his colleague in a bigger branch in a bigger town that was more accessible. And I got me work experience and I ended up working for the bank on and off during my school, college and university holidays for about four years. And getting experience with this bank was then a stepping stone for me to get some really fantastic experience working with other companies like British Airways, Accenture, the BBC and Deloitte.
Russel Lolacher: So it’s funny when I ask this question, I won’t lie 90 percent of the time, it’s something that happened to somebody 20 to 30 years ago. Which is interesting because it really cements how important those early jobs are. Those first jobs, those second jobs in molding us for the rest of our career, they set the bar high or low in whatever that’s going to be for the rest.
I really love asking that question to start, but I always seem to end up asking the second follow up question, which is what did you carry with you from that? Because I’ll be honest, not everybody is an inclusive leader like that. It stood out so much to you, but then you, you learn from that. You saw that and I’m sure you noticed that that wasn’t the norm? Sometimes. So what from your own career did you sort of carry with you through that?
Toby Mildon: I think there’s the, I suppose I learned the characteristics of being an inclusive leader or an inclusive manager and what that looks like and that, that, that’s a lot of the kind of the training and the coaching that I do with leaders nowadays. But I think it just goes to show, because I’m talking about this story, what, 20 years or so later? Actually more than 20 years. And yeah, I’m showing my age now. But I’m talking about…
Russel Lolacher: You look amazing. Keep going
Toby Mildon: Thanks. Um I mean, I, yeah, some people say I’ve definitely got a face for podcasts. But I’m talking about this experience, what, like 25 or so years later, and it just goes to show how powerful positive and negative employee experiences have on, recommending a brand. So I didn’t even mention the organization in this and this is Lloyds Bank, if, if anyone is interested. But I’m talking about this as a positive experience. And if somebody came to me today and said, I’m thinking of, I’m thinking of getting a job with Lloyds Bank, I would talk favorably about that based on my prior experience.
Similarly, I’m sure there are people out there who’ve had really bad experiences, and they would not recommend a particular place to work. And you know in retail they, they have this net promoter score. So if ever you go online and you, you buy a product online or you use a service, and the next day they email you and say, Oh on a scale of 1 to 10, how much would you recommend this particular products or service to your friends or family? And then you go, oh, it was really crap. I’ll give it a one. They’re calculating the net promoter score and employers can do the same by creating the employee net promoter score. And when I do surveys with clients, we, we have that in our survey. We say, how likely would you recommend this employer as a, as an inclusive place to work, a place where you feel like you belong and you can really thrive regardless of your background? And it’s really interesting how people will or won’t recommend their employers to other people. And it, it sticks for a very long time. It hangs around for a very long time if somebody has had a negative experience.
Russel Lolacher: It’s so emotional. And it’s something, and I’ve mentioned this on the show as well. These aren’t bad days people are having, if they’re talking about this 20, 30 years later, it’s trauma. It is something that they’re carrying with them far longer than anybody should. But those leaders that are having, maybe they had a bad day and they’re taking it out on their employee, have no concept of the ripple effect of what they’ve done.
It’s, it’s much more impactful than anybody really realizes.
Toby Mildon: Absolutely.
Russel Lolacher: I have to get into some baseline work with you first, Toby, because DEI is thrown around like crazy to the point where people will say DEI and don’t even know what the, it’s an acronym. They’ll just think that it’s, Oh, right. It’s that thing that we have a program for that. We just fired people around.
Like, it’s just, it is, it is this thing that certainly, and I want to talk about with the influence of the pandemic in a bit, but what in your definition is DEI?
Toby Mildon: Yeah. Very good question because this, the acronym is thrown around and it’s not always D, E, and I honestly, you can get it in any format. Sometimes it’s E, D, and I, sometimes it’s the D before the I, and other times it’s the I before the D. Other people throw in a B for belonging or a J for justice.
The E could stand for equality or equity. It’s, honestly, it’s a bit of a minefield for me in its simplistic sense, let’s go back to basics. I think if you imagine a pyramid at the bottom of the pyramid you’ve got the e for equity because We unfortunately we don’t live in a fair society. We don’t have equality And but in order to create equality in order to create that level playing field we need to make sure that we’re providing equity. Now what I mean by equity is seeing the Individual for who they are, recognizing what challenges they may or may not have, and giving them the tailored resources or support that they need in order to create a level playing field.
So I’ll give you a practical example. If I was to come and work for your business, and you gave me a standard issue laptop, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. You’re giving me the same equipment as every other new starter. But I still couldn’t do my job because I can’t use my arms and hands. But if you spent three or four hundred dollars on speech to text software and the one that I use is called Dragon NaturallySpeaking, if you put that software on my computer, I’m then able to do my job just as well as anybody else because now I can write reports and emails using my voice.
So that, that’s an example of equity. It’s about understanding what challenges I have and then you’re giving me the support that I need. Once you’ve done that, you want your people to feel like they’re working in a fantastic, inclusive culture. This is the I. And this is where I’m working in a culture where I feel like I can bring as much of myself to work as I would like to, that I can be myself, that I’m able to do my best work, that I feel like I have a sense of belonging in the team, that I’m empowered to do my best work, that I am able to progress in my career.
And that’s, that’s, that’s very much like a culture piece. Now, if organizations can conquer that, then the icing on the cake is, or at the top of the pyramid, is the D for diversity. They are in a much stronger position to be able to attract and recruit. a diverse workforce and retain a diverse workforce.
And we know through lots of research that’s been done by the likes of McKinsey and lots of academic institutions that diversity, or diverse teams outperform homogenous teams. They are better at problem solving. They’re more innovative. They’re more creative. They… it’s easier to attract and retain people into a diverse workforce.
But the thing is, you, you, you’re not able to attract and retain a diverse workforce unless you’ve got that kind of culture of inclusion underpinning it.
Russel Lolacher: So as a communications nerd, I’ve noticed when you communicate your work, you don’t say DEI, you say diversity and inclusion. You don’t even see equity or equality in your language. Is there a reason for that?
Toby Mildon: Yeah, it’s a bad habit, if I’m honest.
But it’s all, it, it might, it, it might also be an example of how language has evolved even in recent years because when I started off working in the field of diversity and inclusion at the BBC, I started doing it kind of proper around about 2014. The terminology was D and I. D ampersand I. Diversity and inclusion.
Then, we have started to see E being introduced more, E for equity or equality. It kind of, it’s used interchangeably quite a lot. But the thing is, it’s, it’s, for me, it’s about, it’s not, the acronym honestly changes so much, depending on so many different organizations. And they all have their different reasons for using different acronyms.
So some organizations will intentionally put the I before the D because they’re saying that the culture of inclusion is more important or having a focus on culture of inclusion first will help them attract and retain the D, the diversity. Other organizations say, well, we really need the E in there because we need to make sure that we don’t forget that we need to create equity in order to, before we start to think about having an inclusive culture. So, honestly, there’s always some rationale or explanation behind it.
Russel Lolacher: I like your reason is ‘like, I just can’t keep up.’ You’re right. Because…
Toby Mildon: It’s always evolving.
Russel Lolacher: Fair. And I’ve seen it where it’s almost like a math equation. If you do diversity and then you do equity and then you do inclusivity, then it equals belonging. So I’ve even seen that a few times. So this all sounds like a no brainer. This sounds like this is how work should happen.
I’ve done conversations about accessibility on this show, about how the, all the benefits behind really embracing all, any acronym in this realm. So why are organizations afraid of it to some degree or how are they afraid of it?
Toby Mildon: So there’s a number of challenges. When we look at senior leadership teams, who really should be driving this agenda from the top of the business, because they set the tone for the organisation. They are often afraid of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, causing offence or embarrassment to other people or themselves, but their reaction is to recoil and avoid having difficult, awkward conversations, avoid showing vulnerability as a senior leader, and therefore they tend to Avoid the topic rather than leaning into their discomfort or their awkwardness or their vulnerability and having those brave conversations.
Russel Lolacher: It’s funny that basically leadership is afraid of this because they’re not leaders. Is that really kind of what I’m hearing? Because if you’re a great leader, adaptability and adoption and change management and humanity should be a huge part of yourself as a leader. And then you’re literally saying that’s the reason they don’t.
Toby Mildon: I think it’s not so much that I think it’s about maybe a lack of confidence around some… we call it inclusive leadership behaviors, but every time I do this inclusive leadership training or coaching or mentoring with leaders, I’m sitting there thinking to myself, this isn’t, this isn’t necessarily about inclusive leadership, this is just good leadership.
So one, one, for example one of the, one of the, the, the key behaviours of quote unquote inclusive leadership is empathy. And this is something that all leaders should have. And empathy isn’t about feeling like you do understand what somebody else’s lived experience is like, but taking the time to create a space to understand where they’re coming from.
So it’s a bit like active listening in a way. And let me give you a really practical example. So recently here in the UK, we’ve had some, you may have seen it in the news, we’ve had some civil unrest where there were, racially motivated rioting happening in some of our urban areas. And at that time, senior leaders were faced with the challenge of people in that organization not feeling safe coming to work. So people were worried about their commute to work because they were worried that if they would take the train or the tram or the bus that they would be racially abused, physically or verbally. And people were afraid to go to work, they were afraid to send their kids to school.
Now as an inclusive leader, like if you’re a white inclusive leader… if you’re a white leader who’s never really been on the receiving end of racism, it’s not about empathy, is not about thinking, well, I, I, I know where you’re coming from because I’ve been in your shoes. That’s not empathy. Empathy is about taking the time to understand what somebody’s experience is like, how they feel about that particular situation and then just creating that space to be able to really understand. And then you can go in and provide the necessary support afterwards.
And empathy is really important and it’s backed up in my own podcast. I did an interview with an author of a report from the Capitalist Organization. You should get them on your podcast. Honestly, they’re such a great organization. They do loads of great thought leadership. And the report was written around the time of George Floyd’s murder in the States.
And the, I suppose the real… the pandemic as well. And they said that this perfect storm had happened where organizations were trying to figure out how to respond to these social incidents and and the crisis. And they, in their, in their research, they basically said that empathy was the number one skill that leaders needed to have to deal with the situation.
And then they said also authenticity was really key because if people didn’t think that your anti-racism policy or your COVID response policy was authentic, they would sniff that a mile off. So the conclusion of their report was authenticity was critical and empathy was the number one skill that inclusive leaders had to have.
Russel Lolacher: I find, I’m curious what you think, especially with, I’m glad you mentioned George Floyd. I’m glad you mentioned the pandemic because there was this outcry during the pandemic. We’re all sitting at home. We’re like, why don’t we treat people better? So there was this really push on organizations to get DEI right.
They hired heads of DEI in these large organizations. Fast forward a couple of years, most of those divisions or leadership are gone. Never to mind the fact that most of those DEI leaders were people of an were also diverse themselves. So they’re saying it’s an other person’s job, which just blew my mind.
But needless to say, what has changed so much over the last little while? And can we bring this back?
Toby Mildon: There’s been lots of different outside pressures. There’s been a lot of rhetoric amongst our politicians and our politics both in the U. S. and the, in the U. K., there, there’s also economic pressures as well. A lot of businesses are struggling at the moment, cash flow isn’t great, and unfortunately diversity and inclusion is, is some of, one, one of the first things to get dropped.
And I think that in part it’s around the mindset that we have about it. It’s often seen as a kind of extracurricular cost center to the organization. It’s not seen as a strategic imperative. And it’s really interesting because at the time of the first lockdowns during the during COVID, I actually ran a series of webinars which asks the question of if organizations continue to focus on divesting inclusion during the pandemic, would they be able to, would they be able to bounce back harder and faster than those organizations that, that decided to not focus on diversity and inclusion? And I think the conclusion when I was running my webinars and I was doing various focus groups were that organizations that continue to focus on diversity and inclusion during the pandemic would probably future proof themselves stronger. That they would have the ability to bounce back, much more confidently after the pandemic.
Russel Lolacher: They’re almost shooting themselves in the foot by being reactionary. I mean, I can’t tell you how many studies I’ve read where embracing DEI will actually help you with productivity, innovation, all the things we say we want, and then when it comes to tactics, we’re basically having this cognitive dissonance where it’s this, we know it’s successful, but we’re going to do this anyway.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Russel Lolacher: So I want to get back to the fear piece a bit, of the nervousness is saying the wrong thing or just approaching it wrong. How does a fear like that, coming from our leaders, how does that impact the workplace, our relationships, the employee’s perception of leadership?
Toby Mildon: Yeah. For me, it’s It links into a bigger culture piece. I think, senior leaders are afraid of saying we’re doing the wrong thing for a number of reasons. There’s, there’s a cancel culture that they’re worried about. They don’t want to embarrass, embarrass themselves. A lot of senior leaders have this kind of mindset that because of their seniority or their position, they need to be seen as having all of the answers or know what they’re talking about.
Again, that goes back to that lack of vulnerability of saying, you know what, I’m not an expert on everything. I don’t know everything, but I’m here to learn. A lot of senior leaders, there’s an ego that they have to, to, to live up to. It’s just part of the human psyche, I think. But yeah, there’s this fear of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, causing offence or embarrassment getting quote unquote cancelled.
Not, not being seen to know it all, have all the answers. Again, that lack of vulnerability.
Russel Lolacher: And I can just see all these employees thinking, you don’t take this seriously. You don’t because they meet leaders are often executive are so out of touch. A lot of the times they’re more figureheads. They’re more the faces that show up on a Zoom call or a that sort of thing. So from an employee perspective, they’re like, well, if I don’t look like you, you don’t care about me.
You are not prioritizing me. I am… there’s no success here for me if you don’t do even the basics for me to be able to do my job. So I can see that huge cracks in the organization.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. And this is what I hear a lot, people look up in their organization. Oftentimes the, the lower ranks of an organization look more diverse or are more diverse than the most senior parts of the, the business, the, this the board level. And that’s, I think that’s just a consequence of historical lack of inclusion.
And it’s hopefully something that we’re going to see shift over the next few decades, because this is something that’s not going to change overnight. But what that means is that people often look up at the top of an organization when they join, and they can’t see themselves reflected. And they might not consciously be thinking this but it’s often happening on this kind of other than conscious level, where they’re looking up at the top of the business, they don’t see themselves, they don’t see somebody that, that is like them, and they’re subconsciously telling themselves, I just don’t have a future here, that there’s no, there’s no pathway for me to get to the top of that, the business. So I’m gonna start looking elsewhere, where I might see people that are more like me. Because human beings are, are creatures of habit and familiarity. We like to be hanging out with people like ourselves. We have this similarity bias and, and we will go and find our own kind.
Russel Lolacher: It also highlights the ignorance of the top, not realizing what they’re communicating. I can’t tell you how many websites, I’ll just go to their, their leadership tab on their corporate website and they show all these smiling pictures and I’m like, wow, white guy, white guy, white old guy, white. Oh, there’s a female like it’s…
Toby Mildon: Who will often be the HR director.
Russel Lolacher: Still the homogony. So you’ve been in the space for a while. You’ve been trying to move the needle for lack of a better phrase.
Toby Mildon: Mm hmm.
Russel Lolacher: What is that Aha moment? What is that thing that helps overcome this fear for organizations and their leadership?
Toby Mildon: So the Aha moment for a lot of organizations is really understanding their why. Sorry to have to kind of steal words from Simon Sinek, where he talks about start with why. It does start with why, and senior leaders need to get their head around the why. One thing I quite often say is that lots of senior leaders will go out and they’ll, they’ll kind of get this on a very cognitive level, they’ll read the McKinsey report, so they’ll read something from the Harvard Business Review that talks to you, talks about how important EDI is to your, to business.
But what they are, they really struggle to translate that into their own world, into their own organization, into their own industry. And they really need to get to the core of their, their unique why, because it, it, it varies for different organizations. So I’ve worked in, in healthcare, for them it, it, it links back to patient safety, about delivering health outcomes for patients.
For a police force, it’s about building stronger relationships with what they would call underserved members of the community. And therefore, being able to report back to central government on effective, crime busting strategies. For a retailer, it’s about. Building strong consumer relationships with a diverse customer base and being able to sell more products to those consumers.
So every organization will have its why, but you need to, like Simon says, he says that, that your why is not an invention. It’s a process of discovery. You need to go on that discovery. It exists. You have to just go digging around for it and, brush it off and grind it down and a bit like finding a diamond.
It’s, you’ve got to go through that process of discovery.
Russel Lolacher: I love one of the tools you can use, which is the Five Whys.
Toby Mildon: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: Which is not just saying why, but then just continuing on the process, because how many organizations are like ‘to make money’? I’m like, Oh, you’re missing the point of this exercise.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. Yeah. I use the Five Whys exercise all the time. It’s really simple. And, and this is an example of how actually I’ve managed to take a lot of work from my project management days in I.T. We would do the Five Whys analysis as a root cause analysis within I.T. And then when I moved into diversity and inclusion, I was like, hang on a second, we could use the same tool for diversity and inclusion, and it works.
Russel Lolacher: Love that. So what about the leaders that are like, okay, what’s the ROI, Toby? What, where’s the numbers? Show me the numbers. What, why should I invest all this money? Why can’t I, we we’re hiring fine, even though, as you point out, there’s this missing rung in the corporate ladder for, for those that want to move up. So is there a measurable way to really hammer this home for some leaders?
Toby Mildon: Oh, yes, there is. And I love it. I love the ROI. And I wish I could have more conversations like this with Chief Financial Officers. Because I normally talk to a head of HR. I would love to be talking to more Chief Financial Officers and Chief Operating Officers because it goes back to the real core business case here.
But to your point around what is the ROI? I’ll give you a simple example. So I do a lot of surveys with clients and my favorite question on this survey that employees have to fill out is, ‘Are you seriously considering leaving the business in the next six months because you don’t feel that you’re respected or that you belong?’
And then employees can say yes, no yes, but for other reasons, or prefer not to say. And then what we do is we correlate that with the salary data that we collect at the same time. And I’ll just give you an example because we run this through an algorithm. I’ve been working with a technology company. They employ just shy of a thousand people. And of the employees said that they wanted to, they were seriously thinking of leaving because they didn’t feel respected or that they belong. We calculated that it would potentially cost the business one and a half million pounds. So, we then sat down with the CFO and we said, look, this is potentially costing your business one and a half million pounds. So, if you were to run a program to try and improve the culture, to try and reduce the number of people that were seriously thinking of leaving the business, let’s say you put 30,000 pounds into that project, that potentially represents a really good return on investment. And that’s one way of being able to position it.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah. If you can’t put it in a spreadsheet, sometimes Toby.. People don’t, or a Gantt chart, or like if you can’t put it in something that people can touch, whether it’s on a screen or in front on a piece of paper, it’s almost like it’s not important enough…
Toby Mildon: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: For them to, to, to invest in.
Toby Mildon: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean that, that’s one metric. I mean, there are loads of others that organizations want to pick. I mean, you might want to think about the, the cost of reputational damage. Look at years ago, look at the sexual harassment claims that were made against Uber and how much that cost them in dollars and also the reputational damage as well.
That, that’s another way of, of being able to look at it. If an employee successfully claims unfair dismissal on grounds of discrimination and you end up in a, in an employment tribunal, that is a very costly place to go.
Russel Lolacher: You mentioned earlier about the fear of making a mistake, which could be blown up into just failing at implementing DEI initiatives, or just into the DNA of your organization. So I don’t know if organizations understand that generationally Gen Zed, Canadian Gen Zed, Gen Z will go on Glassdoor and social media if they see things that are not embracing of accessibility, diversity, and so forth. So does that reinforce the fear that it could blow up as a PR problem? But then I mean, like, I mean, if they do it, it’s great. If they don’t do it, it can become this huge thing. And yet they still don’t do a thing.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. I mean, there’s some really interesting research coming out about Gen Z or Gen Z, depending on where you are in the world. The general consensus is that. It’s a bit of a generalization, but the general consensus is that Gen Zs are really interested in organizations that are doing good things, have got social impact, that are, that take diversity and inclusion seriously. doing good things for the environment, and they’re choosing to work for organisations that are in alignment with their personal values.
And it is a buyer’s market out there, as in these candidates are actively choosing who to go and work for, or leaving an organisation because they don’t have that values alignment. And I think unfortunately, those organisations that don’t recognise that, are the ones that are going to miss out on this new talent that is coming through in our markets. Because they are, they are our future talent. They are our future leaders and organizations need to act now to be able to attract and recruit and retain these people.
Russel Lolacher: And, and I was just noting this as I was catching up on a few bits of research that in the Edelman Trust Barometer, I think it was in 2023, they talked about Gen Z but not only of, as exactly like you’re saying is this is the next workforce we need to pay attention to, but also their influence on other generations like millennials and Gen X. 93 percent I think are listening to Gen Zed about work life balance, about diversity, equity, inclusivity.
And they’re saying, yeah, why isn’t it like this?
Toby Mildon: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: They’re questioning the status quo based on the conversations they’re having with those younger generations. And I don’t think organizations get that enough.
Toby Mildon: Absolutely. And also organizations, when they’re talking about being inclusive of different age brackets or generations. There’s a lot of focus on the Gen Zers, but we’ve now got, what, four to six generations working within the same organization, and inclusion is about actually being inclusive of all of those different generations, and they all have different expectations and requirements.
So baby boomers who are still working in, in businesses have got their own set of expectations. They’ve got their own experiences that we need to still respect and value. And they, their skills and experience will complement the perspectives and skills and experience of the Generation Zed coming through into the workplace.
So we need to be inclusive across the board. And then we’ve also got intersectionality happening as well where we’ve got people who have multiple characteristics and identities. So, with an aging workforce, we see an increase in disability. The vast majority of people will acquire their disability during working age adult life.
And, organizations are needing to make sure that they are inclusive of people who have got different types of disabilities or impairments within the business.
Russel Lolacher: I’m really glad that you made it a little more clear that diversity isn’t just one thing because… but, but you’ll get that where you’ll see, well, we’re a diverse workforce and all that leadership is seeing is color of skin, right? If they’re pigeonholing what diversity could be when it is a kaleidoscope of different, basically people that aren’t you. I’m sorry, but it’s at that person at the top, but they’ll see it as a check box exercise going, but, but Toby, we are very diverse.
When their identity, what their definition is not the same as perhaps of those of their employees.
Toby Mildon: Yeah. And an example that I use in my trainings is that diversity is a bit like an iceberg where you see 10 percent of the iceberg poking above the waterline. And these could be our visible characteristics and some of the characteristics may be covered under equality legislation. But then there’s 90 percent of the iceberg below the waterline, which is harder to see or invisible.
And these can be some of our classical traits. So somebody’s sexuality, for example, may not be visibly obvious to you, and therefore hidden beneath the waterline. Or they might have an invisible or non apparent disability. But it could be other things like whether you’re introverted or extroverted.
Whether you grew up in the countryside or in the middle of a big metropolitan city. The, all of these different experiences contribute to our unique perspective on life and our differences and our diversity.
Russel Lolacher: We’ve been talking a lot about the top of an organization, their senior leaders, but leadership is everywhere. So I’m kind of curious as to your thoughts of, and I hate the term best practices, maybe better practices or practices that might work, things that organizations within leadership, maybe it’s middle management, maybe it’s emerging leaders, junior executives.
What is something they could be doing to help foster this culture? Maybe the top of the organization’s failing at this so they want to take their best step forward throughout the organization themselves. Like, and I’m thinking of ERGs cause you, you were a president of one. Is there anything else they can do?
Toby Mildon: Yeah, one of the, one of the, I think one of the most challenging levels of an organization is middle management. I, I call it the sandwich effect because quite often as a middle manager, you, you’re feeling pressure from the top where a senior leadership team is saying diversity and inclusion is so important to our organization. Here’s our lovely strategy that we’ve developed. Now, middle managers, you have to go and implement it. And then you’ve got all the pressure coming up from the bottom of your organization. You’ve got team, you’ve got team members who are putting in requests and demanding change at the grassroots level.
And as a manager at that middle level, you’re being squeezed at both ends. And it’s a very, very difficult position to be in. Your question is quite broad, and I think maybe a place for a manager to begin, if they’re, if they are interested in, in how they just become a better manager, is to perhaps just go and research the, the skills of an inclusive leader, or what I just called just a good manager, to be honest with you.
We’ve already talked about one, which is empathy. We, we work with a team of occupational psychologists who’ve developed six behaviours, empathy is, is one of them and it was based on a project that they did with the Metropolitan Police in London. They were asked by the Met Police to help the organization become an anti racist organization.
And the, the psychologists basically concluded that your relationship with your manager is, is so critical that it comes down to how well your manager behaves. And they developed six behaviors and empathy is top of the list and it’s backed up by that research that of catalysts I mentioned earlier.
The other behaviors are having a, a learning orientation or an open mindset, being flexible in how you work with other people or having a different approach, and composure as well. Being able to kind of be aware of your emotions, not let your emotions get the better of you, i. e. fly off the handle every time you’re stressed or frustrated.
And these are behaviours that we’re able to measure, on a scale of 1 to 10. And then having a coaching conversation with yourself, you don’t even need to do the assessment. You could sort of say, you could just sit down with yourself and go, okay, when the pressure’s on, when I’m feeling stressed and under pressure, like, how composed am I on the scale of 1 to 10? Or how empathic am I when a client, when a, when a colleague comes to me and shares a personal challenge or difficulty that they’re having in their personal life or at work and say, okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, okay, and then just draw like a little X on the line and then ask yourself a coaching question.
Well, if I was just to increase that by one point, what, what might that look like? What, what, what are the skills or behaviors that I would need to demonstrate just to increase it a notch. And that’s one thing that a manager could do.
Russel Lolacher: I’ve often said that self awareness is probably one of the greatest superpowers any leader can ever have, because it, it will start you down a path of understanding how you react to, like you said, anger and frustration as much as joy or anything else. So I’m thrilled you highlighted that. Are you hopeful, Toby?
I mean, you’ve been your… you’ve been in this role as someone that’s been championing DEI. You’ve seen the push of embracing DEI. And then you’ve seen the other side of it where it’s sort of been pulled back for many reasons. Are you still hopeful for the path ahead for organizations?
Toby Mildon: I am, I am. I talk to a whole mix of organizations and I talk to a spectrum of organizations that have got very little time for ED& I. They just don’t see it as an important part of their business strategy. I also talk to loads of organisations that see it as a critical component of their culture and the future success of their business.
And guess which organisations I end up working with? I do end up working with those organisations that I would say are more forward thinking and advanced, but then I’m going to be biased when I say that. So I am, I am hopeful and I think what I would like to see happen over the next decades is that in a way organizations do make their ED&I people redundant, not because they are trying to cut costs, but they’ve finally realized that it’s just good business. It just has to be embedded into the DNA of the organization, into their infrastructure, into their systems and processes. They’re, they’re human centered design when they’re building their products and services and employee user journeys and things like that. And they’re like, you know what, we don’t actually need a separate ED&I department to be doing this.
We have upskilled and equipped and everybody in the business has got the capabilities to do this themselves. And I always draw parallels to health and safety. It’s like everyone in an organization knows what they need to do around health and safety. They know how to keep people safe physically. They know often how to respond if there’s an incident that happens. Often you have a health and safety manager there who’s just there to make sure that the governance is in place and the policies and the processes are there. But at the end of the day, health and safety is everybody’s responsibility and I would like to see ED&I get to the same place.
Russel Lolacher: I think that might actually even be a roadblock, and I’m sure you would say the same is putting it as a separate department is you’re literally treating it like an other, like it’s somebody else’s responsibility. Oh, that person that’s in that division in the other state or province is responsible for all our DEA DEI.
Oh, it’s not in the hiring practice. Oh, it’s that person’s fault. So yeah, I think it’s literally part of the problem. So I love the idea of making it less detached and more part of the DNA.
Toby Mildon: Yeah, yeah,
Russel Lolacher: Thank you for this, Toby. Really appreciate your time and your insights and your experience and knowledge in this. I’m sure it’s a conversation I will continue to have on this show and I’m sure it’s on yours as well. It’s just too important not to. So we’re going to wrap it up, Toby, with the last question I always ask, which is for you, what is one simple action that you suggest people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?
Toby Mildon: One thing I’ve been practicing lately, because I wouldn’t say I’m a brilliant manager, is radical candor, and by the book, I think it’s Kim Scott that wrote the book Radical Candor, and what I’ve learned from her work and her model is she kind of presents this two by two grid, but radical candor is about being direct with people, but also caring at the same time.
I often fall into the trap of what she would call ruinous empathy, which is where you are not direct with people because you’re trying to avoid hurting their feelings. And it’s, it’s almost like a kind of over empathy. And therefore you’re not being direct with people and you’re caring because you care too much in a way.
And I’m trying to practice more with my team this, what she calls radical candor, which is about being more direct with people, setting clear expectations, expressing your concerns, fears, and, giving direct feedback, whilst also caring for the individual. Which is what she calls radical candor.
So, sorry, I’m waffling, but the short answer would be to, to try and practice that. And if you are in any doubt about what that entails, then just read her book, which is very good anyway.
And I don’t get any commission by the way from her.
Russel Lolacher: No money changed hands. No, not at all.
Toby Mildon: No, it’s just a, it’s just a really good book.
Russel Lolacher: That is Toby Mildon. He’s a diversity and inclusion architect, founder and director of his own consultancy called Mildon. And speaking of good books, you should probably pick up, he’s written a one called My Inclusive Growth, Future Proof Your Business by Creating a Diverse Workforce. Thank you so much, Mildon.
Toby Mildon: You’re welcome. Thank you.
