In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, host Brandon Laws talks with Nikki Innocent, a leadership coach and DEI consultant, about the hidden gaps in workplace culture. In this timely discussion, Nikki shares the defining moments that led her to challenge outdated norms and push for greater transparency, inclusion, and authenticity at work. Listen in to explore how leaders can foster trust, break down barriers, and create workplaces where employees feel truly seen and valued.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Nikki Innocent is a humanity activist, keynote speaker, and social entrepreneur focused on women’s leadership and diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a certified leadership coach and DEI consultant, she helps individuals and organizations foster inclusion, belonging, and collaboration.
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.”
HERE ONE MINUTE, GONE THE NEXT
When workplace culture discourages open conversations about departures, it can be puzzling for those left behind. Nikki Innocent recalls a jarring experience from her corporate days when a close coworker suddenly disappeared—no explanation, no acknowledgment. “You were on his team, but you were the more junior folks. Where did he go? And everybody acted like we don’t say the name,” she explains. Despite his dedication, often going above and beyond for leadership, his exit was shrouded in mystery. It wasn’t until years later that he reached out, revealing he had joined the military. For Nikki, this wasn’t just about one person leaving—it exposed a deeper issue: how some workplaces struggle to acknowledge the complexities of humanity in these professional settings.
This experience became a pivotal moment in her career, prompting her to question the workplace structures she once accepted. “It was like a glitch in the matrix,” she says. “Even when you do all the right things, this dramatic mystery of disappearance and then people acting like you never existed in the first place—there’s something much deeper there.” Over time, she recognized how systemic issues of burnout, lack of transparency, and dehumanization shape workplace culture. Now, as an advocate for more human-centered workplaces, she helps others navigate and challenge these systems, ensuring that employees are seen and valued—not just for their work, but for who they are.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Acknowledging What’s Toxic
“When we are not able, allowed to, and witnessing conversations that are messy, difficult, or uncomfortable, it then creates all these, like, interpersonal fissures that aren’t necessary because the environment hasn’t been set up for us to actually talk about difficult things. And so, yeah. The toxicity—and the thing I feel like happens when we talk about toxic workplaces—is it’s like, ‘Oh, well, that was a toxic boss.’ And it’s like, ‘Okay, but I actually think it’s more about the environment.’ […]
If we give ourselves permission, when we look at workplace toxicity, to not point a finger and say, ‘You are toxic,’ but instead realize that, especially in traditional workplaces—the ones that are trying to do things the way they’ve always been done and not acknowledging the gaps in our ability to be human, to navigate the innovation of technology, or even just how the workplace foundation has crumbled in the last five years or so—if we’re not able to acknowledge the need to figure out where sturdy footing can be, then it starts bubbling over in different places. We think, ‘That person and I don’t get along,’ rather than realizing the entire situation is set up for none of us to feel stable.”
A Hindrance to Growth
“I think that when we’re constantly putting ourselves in a hero-and-villain binary, both of them are really dehumanizing. Neither is allowing you to be a whole human who has good and bad traits, is learning things, and is evolving and growing. And yet, we were brought up on storylines that have a very clear hero or villain. We have good and bad and right and wrong as very extreme things.”
We’re All Human
“If you’re sitting next to me at a bar, we’re usually going to end up having some version of a human conversation about something. You and I, right—we started talking about applesauce before we hopped on here. That wasn’t our plan. Being human is something that, if you give yourself permission, makes it so easy to connect with people. But I think when we put ourselves in work confines, we’re told, ‘You can’t bring that here. You can’t do that here.’”
Showing Up Authentically
“There’s not some secret sauce or five-step plan to get there. It was just showing up and being like, ‘Yeah, what you just said is legitimate. That’s a difficult thing to do. How did you feel about it? What do we need to have happen next? Where do you feel like you’re having a lot of frustration with this so we can detangle it and engage with it moving forward?’ Rather than saying, ‘This is uncomfortable, let’s get rid of it,’ or ‘Let me believe there’s something broken or wrong about me because this is hard,’ just giving the permission to acknowledge difficulty. And that doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, and it doesn’t mean you’re weak. But the permission to say that, ‘If I can acknowledge those things and feel my emotions, I’m actually stronger and more equipped to figure out what the solution might be.’”
A New Kind of Leadership
“Millennials are now the largest generation alive and the largest generation in the workplace. One of the key areas of my work is understanding what Millennial leadership looks like. But honestly, I often refer to it as Modern Leadership because the more I talk about it, the more older generations say, ‘Yeah, I want that too.’ […] In order to move toward that future, though, we have to acknowledge the broken parts of the past that make people feel like they don’t belong. There’s this belief that if you belong, I must be left out in the cold—it’s not that, but it really is a permission structure of trying and failing a little bit, and stumbling, and watching yourself grow.”
Learning at Every Turn
“I’m not anti-school or education, but I think that giving ourselves permission to realize that we learn things in every aspect of our lives, and we’re inevitably going to figure out how to bridge the divides—that even if you take books away or you take education away or you take all of that stuff, if we try to kind of wrangle it in a way that we’re trying to control, there are going to be ways that people learn things. And again, I think TikTok was a really fascinating example of how much people have learned through one particular social media.”
Multigenerational Collaboration
“When we try to silence and shove things down, it doesn’t actively go away. It creates inflammation and eruption. [It’s] the ability to metabolize more information and trust that we are in this together versus opponents of each other, looking at it as more of a collaborative ‘we’re in a boat trying to go in the same direction.’ It allows for especially multi-generational workplaces to hopefully bridge the divides and heal the harm that is done in the ageism that happens across the entire age spectrum. It allows for there to be a cohesive, collaborative, and, again, compassionate way of looking at our differences rather than being a volatile, combative way.”
LEARN MORE
Explore more of Nikki’s work at nikkiinnocent.com and check out her podcast, Checkbox Other. To connect, follow @nikkiinnocent on social media or reach out at info@nikkiinnocent.com!