Eddie and I worked together at Microsoft. I was part of a SWAT team he led for Inclusion and Diversity (I&D). I was drawn to his passion for this topic as well as his methodical manner in helping the organization shift from a ‘check box’ to a true living component of our organization. We both moved on to other places, and it was a pleasure to watch Eddie’s career and the impact his work had on others. Today, more than ever, we need not only a focus but a global enablement to I&D. The day we stop needing to ‘teach’ others about it ensures it’s become a long needed fiber of our lives. Eddie is one of those people who gives it his all and lives his beliefs as he makes changes. I am sure you will enjoy Eddie’s article as much as I enjoy knowing him.  We need more Eddie’s in our world.

You have been working in the inclusion and diversity field in a variety of roles for 20+ years. Enablement of I&D is more relevant and urgent today than ever before. Many people may have misconceptions as to what an I&D program is and why it may be relevant to many types of organizations today. Please take a few moments and bring us all up to speed on the purpose and outcomes of a successful I&D program.

For me, the purpose of a broad comprehensive I&D program is to integrate the concepts, philosophy, content, etc. of this work into EVERY aspect of the employee lifecycle in an organization.  By this I mean, integration into talent acquisition, movement within the organization, and representation at all levels of the organization for talent management processes (e.g., promotion, development), learning, and retention/attrition.  I&D work, in my opinion, needs to approach an organization from a systems framework and treat the business as a complete interrelated system. For example, you can’t just worry about bringing in black and brown people into your organization without worrying about the workplace environment, the processes associated with development, whether your leaders are capable of managing and leading difference, and so on.  It is all related! Ultimately, I&D is about the diversity of talent (broadly defined) you bring into the organization AND the processes, structures, and policies that ensure a sustainably inclusive workplace.  I believe when you think of I&D as something that get integrated into the very fabric of an organization it is relevant for any business, anywhere.

We all need a little bit of positive input these days. Please shine a light on some of the positive highlights of your career.

Over the past 20+ years, I think my absolute best highlight is all of the people I’ve connected with, helped, motivated, inspired, encouraged to take this work seriously, own this work, and make this what they do each and every day as business folks, HR folks, and I&D professionals.  I set out to make a difference in people’s lives as my ultimate mission and I’ve been able to do just that.  I do look back at my involvement with starting the Women’s Conference at Microsoft as a big accomplishment.  I look back at starting the Executive Mentoring program at Avanade that played a significant part in an amazing Black woman’s rise to CEO.  I look back at all of the leaders around the globe that I visited and helped understand the value of doing I&D work.  I look back at the 100s of presentations I’ve done both inside and outside the companies I worked for as a big highlight.  All the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet along the way, like President Barack Obama, Chimamanda Adichie, Debra Meyerson, America Ferrera, Laverne Cox, Hall of Famer Dan Hampton, many of the US Congressional Black Caucus members, and others as a huge highlight.  This work fills the soul.     

Today, more than ever, we all have a need to practice civil discourse as we engage with others.  Too often, the very things that I&D seeks to enable are the very things we are all finding it difficult to “bake” into our culture. For example – do we all feel safe representing diverse cultures and opinions? Do we feel respected for our opinions? Do we feel we can openly share our cultural, physical and religious beliefs in our daily environment? As you think about your mission to enable others, what have you found to be the most immediate method to develop these elements in ourselves and others?

There isn’t one silver bullet for creating the kind of workplace environment where people feel comfortable opening up, being vulnerable, or willing to pushback on what they perceive as exclusive or oppressive.  This takes multiple actions and time.  Clear and overt Executive championship & actual behavior that reinforces the importance of this kind of environment.  Clearly stated corporate values that make inclusive behavior an overt mandate and not simply implied. Continuous learning strategy that creates inclusive-minded employees up and down the ranks. A story telling culture that celebrates the events and actions that confirms this desire.  Reward people for this kind of behavior.  Although not an exhaustive list, these are some of the actions that will foster a culture of inclusion, awareness, and innovation.

You have worked for and with large corporations and implemented a fair number of I&D programs. What is the most challenging component of implementing these program? What is the most compelling component to organizational success? What makes an I&D program become like breathing vs. only become a token effort within an organization?

Because I’ve worked for really large global companies, scaling our I&D efforts was a big challenge. This is particularly true in situations where the ability to employ global talent in remote regions wasn’t supported. The most compelling components to organizational success are dealing with I&D as a system to be integrated into the very fabric of an organization.  Make it sustainable because it is a part of how work gets done daily.  Be absolutely intentional in your approach.  Be surgical in how you address the gaps you’ve identified. Have the courage it takes to do what is right and not what is expected.  Think globally and act locally.  You need to think of the work as top down, middle out and bottom up.  You need to create awareness and capability through smart learning tools but make sure this is embedded in a comprehensive strategic approach.  You need to address structure, process and policy so efforts are embedded in how the company works. You need to get business leaders involved in meaningful ways and empower them to own this work as a true partner.

True success with an I&D program is more than putting a ‘check mark’ next to the attendance of a workshop. A variety of measurements must be built into the program, adhered to and religiously measured. What types of scorecards and assessments have been the most impactful? How does the leadership of a company, group and team reflect in the measurement process?

This could be an entire article in and of itself.  Interestingly, I think the most impactful “assessments” are those that are visual in nature.  Nothing like a well-designed bar graph to hit you right in the face illustrating disparity.  More practically, I would say scorecards that have both numbers and percentages, so the entire picture is evident.  Scorecards that leave no doubt the direction an issue is trending are impactful.  For example, the use of red, yellow, and green indicators enables very quick understanding.  Scorecards that have positive trends or perspectives illustrated. A strong positive qualitative attribution or verbatim can be powerful and just as effective if not more than numerical data.  I also believe data should be represented as intersections and disaggregated.  For example, it only tells one story if you have data on Women in your organization or at certain levels.  Disaggregation and intersections bring so much more richness. In other words, data on women showing white women, black women, asian women, etc., broken out by level, tenure, geographic location, and so on provides a much better more comprehensive picture.  This enables pinpointing exactly where issues are and prevents aggregation from masking problems. These rich data comparisons should reflect multiple “groupings” within your organization.  For example, data rolled up to show a CEO and their executive team, data broken out by leader and their business line, data comparing HQ to field based organizations, data illustrating multiple teams in one organization compared to each other, data illustrating comparisons between teams geographically distributed by country.      

There are several keywords you mention on your website. Please unwrap these terms a bit more. “Cultural Competence and Integrated Inclusion”.

Cultural competence is simply advocating for how important it is for people in your organization to develop an understanding of how cultural difference plays out in interactions at work.  This is particularly important for global teams that have folks representing multiple countries, backgrounds, and geographies.  Culture is such a powerful driver for how people behave, act and react to, for example, interactions with team members in meetings or in their ability to give direct feedback to a leader.  The key is to recognize that culture does matter and that judging everyone or their actions from your own cultural lens only will lead to significant misinterpretations.  Integrated Inclusion is a reminder that it isn’t enough to just give diverse folks, the proverbial, “seat at the table.” Integrated inclusion demands that this diverse talent needs to have power, drive decisions, be empowered to voice a diverse perspective, engaged in meaningful business priorities, lead teams, and so on.  Organizations, unfortunately, settle on the mere representation of diversity in a business as a win and don’t see this as “window dressing.”  Integrated inclusion also demands that all of an organizations systems, processes, and structures have inclusive mechanisms, tools,  and actions embedded in them.  Diversity efforts in an organization without ensuring sustainable inclusivity is lipstick on a pig. 

HR has had to adapt to include a far more diverse offering than 30 years ago. What are some of the more dynamic inclusion developments being offered today?

The understanding that Inclusive Leadership as a concept and real method of leadership is monumental.  HR understanding that it is a scaling solution for I&D efforts, including Inclusive Leadership tools, is a powerful development in an HR function. HR organizations have focused more on either developing or partnering with I&D teams to develop methods of measuring inclusion.  This is evident in the creation of Inclusion Indices as independent metrics or as part of engagement survey tools.  Honestly, HR organizations simply recognizing that Inclusion is the key to any “diversity” effort has been an important shift in how their work gets done and in how they influence their business clients.  I also think HR teams have gotten better at reinforcing the notion that inclusion is best understood in intersections represented in the workforce.  For example, how included an Asian transgendered employee feels may be significantly different than a white male Cisgender employee so it is important to recognize this in doing people related work or in helping business leaders understand this real dynamic.    

Mentoring is one of my favorite topics! How does mentoring play a role in inclusion and diversity?  How do you measure successful mentoring from both a mentee and mentor viewpoint?

The majority of research indicates that women and people of color are significantly helped by mentoring programs especially when sponsorship is a component. Mentoring and sponsorship programs should be key development tools in any I&D strategic toolkit. I am a big fan of Mentoring Rings (or circles) as a compliment to individual mentoring.  This is where you have two mentors and seven to ten mentees in a mentoring relationship over a defined period of time. This really enables a “collective” learning and development process that goes beyond individual mentoring. From a measurement perspective, for both the mentor and mentee, mentoring can influence metrics related to retention/attrition, promotion, engagement and inclusion indices.  Thought of this way, a mentoring program should be used as a tool to drive key people related metrics. I believe this is better than using the number of people in a mentoring relationship as an indicator of success.      

When you began your career, did you ever envision this would become your life’s passion?  What changed things for you?

I honestly knew this was what I wanted to do, period, in the corporate world from almost the very beginning.  I have always had a strong drive to help people and make a difference (as corny as that sounds) so I&D work fit what drove me.  It isn’t really what changed things for me as opposed to what influenced me to make this a lifelong pursuit.  I got really lucky that Charles Stevens was my first boss coming out of grad school because he fueled the I&D passion in me to the point it was a flame that could not be extinguished.  I also had many people, events, and experiences along the 20-year journey that worked to rekindle the roaring flame when it dimmed a bit.         

What are three key pieces of advice you have for today’s leaders specific to building an inclusive work environment?

  1. Make I&D your own and encourage those around you to do the same! Understand what it means to you and your team members personally as a starting point.
  2. On top of social identity work, make any I&D strategy focus on embedding content and concepts into the processes, policies, and structures of your organization that impact the entire lifecycle of an employee.
  3. Treat I&D strategy as you would any globally significant strategic imperative, i.e., fund it, empower it, measure it, and demand results from it.

Think ahead to five years from now.  Where do you envision yourself?

At the point in my career where I continue influencing in this space via writing and speaking. 

If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be and why? Cape or no cape?

I would be able to morph into any other creature I want.  It would be amazing to fly like a hummingbird, zipping in and out of branches of a tree, or swimming in oceans with the ability to breach out of water like an Orca Whale or experiencing what a Cheetah feels like running 60 miles per hour chasing down a Gazelle.  

What are the top 1-5 things that you are looking forward to in 2020-2021?

  1. A change in Political leadership in this country.
  2. A vaccine for Covid-19
  3. Companies following through on promises to dismantle/change systemic and institutionalize forms of oppression, discrimination, and inequity
  4. A halt to the killing and brutality of Black men and women.
  5. The ability to safely travel! I want to personally help jump start Hawaii’s tourism economy!

If you could have dinner with 3 famous people (living or passed) who would they be and why?

  1. Nelson Mandela
  2. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  3. Harriet Tubman
  4. Rosa Parks

Had to add a fourth.  I want to talk to them and absorb what they have to say about courage, empathy, love, self-sacrifice, fear, and honestly why they did what they did.  

Please include any sources that people can use to connect with you.