A sense of belonging is the foundation of productivity, allowing employees to give energy to what matters instead of trying to suppress who they are to fit in. But how can business leaders tackle the challenge of creating an authentic climate of diversity, equity, and inclusion? In this episode, host Brandon Laws and guest DDS Dobson-Smith talk about the underpinnings of an inclusive workplace and how leaders can shift perspectives and facilitate real change.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
DDS Dobson-Smith is the Founder of Soul Trained, experts in executive coaching and leadership growth. DDS Dobson-Smith has extensive experience — over 25 years working with corporations of all sizes — in helping leaders shift in thinking and action. He is also the author of You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging.
This episode is sponsored by Swag.com. Get 10% off your order by going to https://swag.com/tyw and enter promo code TYW10 at checkout.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
AN OLD OR NEW CONCEPT?
It seems like belonging and inclusion are relatively new areas of focus in the workplace. But does that mean that today’s employees are starving for belonging at work, or was this need always there but too taboo to bring out into the open?
According to DDS Dobson-Smith, belonging and inclusion weren’t spoken about in the past, “but that’s not because the need wasn’t there.” He added that there is “something very important about the shifts and changes that come along with the different needs of different generations. This is how we “get change.”
We only need to look at the last couple of years — the tragedy, the social uprising — to see where this “upswell of needs” has come from. In today’s workplace, the employee’s sense of belonging is critical to a productive team, and businesses are realizing more and more that they cannot ignore it.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Craving a Sense of Belonging
“People talk about there being a ‘work me’ and a ‘not work me.’ And the reason why I’m attuned to that is, from a psychological perspective, I think there’s a problem waiting to happen […] when we reserve aspects of who we are for different contexts rather than being able to bring all of us, all parts of us, together and to live fully as ourselves in the here and now. And I think it’s problematic at an individual level because it takes an enormous amount of energy to be able to be someone in one context and be a different person in another context.”
Misplacing Energy
“When we work in a climate where we don’t believe that all of us is acceptable and will be welcomed and we are required to cover, code, switch, suppress aspects of our life, our personality, our behavior, it also has an impact on workplace performance. That energy that we’re using to be someone that we’re not — in order to be deemed acceptable by the others who have the say over whether we’re included — that energy […] would be available for innovation, it would be available for our performance, it would be available through relationships, it would be available for our customers and our clients. And I think having it available is the key to what I think of as success.”
Allowing the “Unallowable”
“I know from my own experience that I have had to ask myself how much of my queerness can I let out in this meeting. I know that black, brown, and indigenous people will ask themselves, ‘What kind of black person am I allowed to be?’ — and for parents, whether they allow themselves to talk about their children or whether it’s okay for them to leave at 5 pm because they’ve got to go and pick the kids up from school — all of these things that we think are unallowable in the workplace.”
Looking Around the Room
“In order to have the experience of belonging, you have to have the behavior of inclusion. And in order to have the behavior inclusion, you have to have the fact of diversity. I talk about the idea that diversity and representation are facts. You either have a diverse workplace or you do not. And the way to test that is when you look around, do you see people who are like you? Yes. Do you see people who are not like you? Yes. If you can answer yes to both of those questions, it’s likely that you can also say that there is a diverse representative workforce.”
Counting the Cost
“A prerequisite to the experience of belonging in a team is the idea of psychological safety. It’s an internal experience that occurs for us when we know that it’s not expensive to be ourselves. And with psychological safety, people are enabled to say things like, ‘I’m sorry. I got it wrong. I made a mistake.’ Also, they are enabled to say things like ‘I have an idea’ or ‘I think we could do this better or differently.’”
Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
“I cringe when I hear organizations talk about these topics by saying, ‘We don’t see gender, we don’t see color or sexuality.’ I understand that there’s positive intent behind that, but those phrases completely invisibilize the experience of people who are black, brown, or indigenous, or who are female, or who come from the LGBTQ community, or who are disabled.”
Thinking Outside the Box
“I encourage leaders to think about bottom-up recruitment so that you’re not just plugging in diversity at senior levels. You’re also creating opportunities at junior levels. I’ve always said that the climate of an organization is going to be shaped by the worst behavior that you’re willing to tolerate in a leader. I also say that the climate of an organization is shaped by the most junior people in the organization. And so it’s about getting better at creating those opportunities at the entry-level.”
LEARN MORE
Pick up a copy of DDS Dobson-Smith’s book, You Can Be Yourself Here: Your Pocket Guide to Creating Inclusive Workplaces by Using the Psychology of Belonging, wherever books are sold. You can also check out DDS Dobson-Smith’s blogs, videos, or podcasts here.