Name: Inclusive Leadership Lab: Model and Amplify Behaviors of Inclusion
Uploaded: 2025-12-04T22:30:24.127Z
Duration: 1 h 40 s
Description: Inclusive Leadership Lab: Model and Amplify Behaviors of Inclusion

Transcript for "Inclusive Leadership Lab: Model and Amplify Behaviors of Inclusion": Hello. Welcome. Oh my goodness. We've already got folks, like, ready to share in the chat where they're joining from. So welcome. And, yes, let us know where you're calling from. Got a couple of Canadians. Scranton, Pennsylvania. Carrie, I'm also in San Francisco. Hello over here. Over there. Boston, Mass, Chicago, Shelton, Connecticut. And I always like to invite folks to share, oh, Western Mass. I love Western Mass. New York. You are welcome to share however broadly or however specifically you choose. So if you wanna get, like, real granular about I'm in this particular room, in this building, in this neighborhood, great. If you wanna keep it real top level of like Northern California, that's great. We will officially get started in, like, two minutes. We'll get into it. This is a pretty saturated session. But in the meantime, welcome. Take a moment to land here. Yes. I see some folks dropping in the chat their LinkedIns. Is that the way to say it? LinkedIns. Yeah. LinkedIn profiles. I guess that's how we would say that. But, yeah, this is so awesome to see where folks are joining from. Squamish, British Columbia. Cool. Great. Napa Valley, Western Slope Of Colorado. I don't know what that means, but I like it. The Presidio. Great. Got excited about that because, again, if you missed it, I'm also in San Francisco, so I know precisely, where that is. Hi from Denver. Yay. Alright. You all really good to be here with you all today. Even though, I cannot see you, you can see me. I do know that you exist three dimensionally in space somewhere. So please take care of your minds and your bodies for the next hour or so that we're together. If this session intersects with meal or snack time, get your coffee or tea, whatever you need to have on hand. It's busy here at the North Pole. I would imagine so. That's a first. I haven't had someone from the North Pole. I am curious. I'm assuming you speak French. Okay. I would love to do a quick poll, and we'll actually use the chat here, and we'll use emojis. And I'm curious, to hear from folks if you have been to Culture Club before, je parf francais. Okay. Excellent. And, Erica, I like this distinction of, like, here's where I'm from, here's where I'm at today. So if you've been at Culture to a Culture Club event before, even if it's been, like, many moons, put a little thumbs up into the chat. And if you have not been to culture club before, if this is your first time at culture club, give a little wave. Okay. Great. And if you're feeling overwhelmed by these emojis, you can you can do something else in the chat, but just a little little gauging here. Okay. I like that somebody added the party emoji. Fantastic. Yelena, I like I feel like a side eye. I'm not sure how to interpret that, but I like it. First time, Donna. Okay. Great. Brilliant. Welcome. First time, Gail. Welcome. Okay. Cool. Great to have return folks here. Great to have folks who this is your first time. So, a lot of folks who are familiar with Culture Club, this is a lovely space in the interwebs for you all joining from different places, from different organizations, at different moments, to really connect with other people ops folks, to really get a sense sometimes it seems like I probably don't have to tell you all this. Like, you're in a silo. Right? So it's a connect with other folks who might be kind of contending with similar issues, similar themes, similar challenges. So to really connect with each other as well as with us from LifeLabs Learning. And, also giving you an opportunity, I kind of think of it like a little like amuse bouche, a little taste of some of our content. Most of our content, my guess is many of you are familiar with this. We offer we do custom programs with different companies or organizations, as well as we have kind of open enrollment membership models, but folks taking other two hour, ninety minute, or one hour workshops. So this is kind of touches upon, this session on behaviors of inclusion, inclusive leadership skills, inclusive behaviors. And there this is a really, really rich topic. I love teaching this topic. I have taught this dozens and dozens and dozens of times to folks from so many different organizations. And one of the things that I love about the way that we teach this is I've heard from so many folks over the years of, you know, I've had to go through whether it's, like, mandatory training or optional training, inclusion, diversity training. And it's interesting, but it leaves me feeling a bit overwhelmed of, like, now what? Right? I have this understanding about the reality of, like, the inequity of the world, right, or what might be happening on my team or within my organization. And so I'm hyper aware of it, but then I'm not quite sure what to do with that information. And so this is a very practical, tactical workshop. A real strategy is for, like, okay, here's what to do. Right? Those other other ways to address kind of, like, inclusion training, that's great, and this kind of builds on that. Yeah. So why does this matter? My guess is since you are here today and is you're probably opting into being here, is you are on board with the reality that the world is not an equally safe, accessible, equitable place for everybody, and that can feel quite daunting and quite overwhelming. I know I feel that at times. And it's saying, alright. Well, what's within our locus of control as leaders or as people leaders? Right? Or supporting managers or ICs within our organizations? What can we do to kind of make our little communities? Yeah. Yeah. But I right. What can we do to make our teams and workplaces as safe and inclusive as possible? Right? So kind of like narrowing the scope here to say, let's identify that. Let's make this actionable. Let's make this specific. Let's think about what's within our locus of control. Again, my guess is since many of you are repeat culture clubbers, I'm not sure that's the right term, but I'll use it anyway. You are familiar with us at LifeLabs, that this is primarily what we do. Right? We offer trainings, as I mentioned, working with companies and organizations, offering trainings both in person and virtually, working with thousands of different kinds of companies that span industry and size and configuration and location, and have this unique opportunity to not just provide training, but to also conduct research. Right? To kind of go into companies and inquire and investigate who's excelling in a particular arena or skill set, and then identify what they're doing differently behaviorally. Toni, definitely. Culture Clubber's merch stat. I agree. Courtney, maybe you can get on on that. My colleague Courtney, who's here, she's like, I have plenty of other things to do. So we conduct research. We also look at research, meta analysis of research from the fields of psychology and neuroscience to identify what the common denominators are. So all of our content is rooted in psychology research, including today. Right? To kind of investigate what are these particularly and consistently inclusive leaders doing differently behaviorally. And this is our roadmap. This is what we're gonna cover for, until the top of the hour. Our agenda, we'll start with some brief awareness, kind of getting on the same page about what we're talking about here. And then we're gonna spend most of our time in the second topic, these specific behaviors of inclusion. This doesn't constitute everything that's included in the full two hour workshop, but it gives you a good taste of of what is included. And then in the last couple minutes, you'll have an opportunity just to, like, pause, reflect, consider what's happening for you at this moment in time given what we covered, given what's happening in your world. What's your unique action plan for what comes next? Yeah. You all are already doing this. We'll be using the chat. You're also welcome to use that q and a option, but you can also just drop questions into the chat as well. And that is a great way. You're welcome to keep using that as a back channel. I'll be kind of checking in on that, but if I miss something right away, I will check-in on that. But you're also welcome. As I mentioned, Donna, will you get a recording of this webinar and access to the slide deck? Yes. You will. Get both. Is that right? Yes. I think so. Okay. You will indeed. Thank you for that question. I should have anticipated that. So, yeah, that might inform if or how you take notes. It might not. Yeah. Question for you all. I'm I'm gonna invite you to reflect for a moment and then to drop this into the chat. Thanks, Courtney. Awesome. Why is this topic so hard to talk about? The topic of inclusion, of bias, diversity, and whether you personally or, like, maybe it doesn't feel hard for you to talk about. Right? But what you imagine might be going on for other people, what you've heard from other people. Yeah. Jackie, it makes people uncomfortable. Guilt, Isabella. Thank you for naming that. Yeah. Victoria, 100%. Different degrees of awareness, difficulty for some people to relate to the issue. Interesting, Rachel. Yeah. I feel like there's a right way to talk about certain groups of people, and I don't always know what it is. Don't want to intent unintentionally say the wrong thing. Yeah. It reaches emotions in ourselves and others. Guilt and shame. Yeah. Right. These are so so incisive. Absolutely. That that's really interesting. Right? The language that's acceptable keeps changing. It feels risky or easy to offend. Right? There can be this feeling of walking on eggshells. I don't wanna inadvertently say the wrong thing. Right? The shifting expectations from the federal government. Becky, that is so real, right? And I've seen this in, my teaching over the past year where it's like, oh, here's language I can use or can't use or yeah. Yeah. Where does the guilt and shame come from? Privilege. Interesting because people don't want to. These are such great insights. I know I said that already. Right? I was I was once asked by a supervisor by talking about if I was being political. Yeah. Tina, we're gonna talk about that, the guilt and shame. Where does it come from privilege? People feel attacked, unable to separate their emotions from the topic at hand. Yeah. So there's a real a real range here, and I do just wanna acknowledge, like, yeah, Emily, that, like, it's augmented what might feel hard. Right? Like, I've been teaching this for this topic for six years. Right? And, this specific workshop with LifeLabs. Yeah. Avoidance. Yeah. Feel feel free to keep to keep it coming. But, yeah, I just wanna name that, like, this moment of time is is very particular, right, where there can be these real the we don't exist in a bubble. Right? And and kind of thinking about the huge systems level of things can feel really overwhelming, and that's real, but also recognizing the real consequences that you might be seeing within other organizations. There's so much that's happening. It could feel dangerous. Yeah. Absolutely. We could spend an hour talking about this, but you all are touching upon it. And I wanna distill this down, and I hope this doesn't overly simplify things, but distill this down into there are two primary types of kind of pain or challenge that are activated when it comes to this topic. And as we talk about them, check out which my guess is one of these two feels more resonant for you. So the first is social pain. This is interesting. There's some, I think, really fascinating research that found that the way that people experience social exclusion, the experience of being excluded socially, the way that our brains are activated, it's the same parts of our brains that are activated when we experience physical pain. So there was a study that was done where folks went into an fMRI to track brain activity as they were excluded from a virtual game of catch, which might seem like a pretty low stakes situation. And they found that consistently, again, the parts of their brains that were activated are the same parts of the brain that are activated when we experience something like stubbing our toe in a particularly painful way, or I think the researchers used an analogy like spilling a hot cup of coffee on yourself. So I mentioned this because that language that we use of I wasn't included, it felt bad, that's actually how our brains are processing that. For folks here, and I'm sure there are folks here, all of us to some degree, right, but some folks here more than others who experience exclusion, revisiting that particularly in the context, right, we teach these workshops to folks in an organization, right, with colleagues. It can feel really uncomfortable or undesirable to surface that, right, to talk about that, to revisit that and invite that in. Yeah. Emani, absolutely. I'm just reading that. Yeah. Right? That that kind of emotional labor that's added into the mix. Yeah. And then there's another kind of pain that is activated, when it comes to when it comes to this topic, which is ego pain. Right? That my guess is all of you here, right, all of us here today, I'll include myself in this, we would like to think of ourselves as being thoughtful, unbiased people who really like assess each interaction and each individual based on what's happening. And when we've got to confront the fact that we've got gaps in our knowledge or that we might say something that's inadvertently hurtful to somebody, it can result in that feeling of, like, shame or guilt. Right? That sense of, like, challenging our sense of self of, like, that but I'm a good person. Right? And that can result in people shutting down or getting defensive or just being unwilling to talk about something. Right? There's this concept in psychology known as protective hesitation where it's like, I'm not even I don't wanna say the wrong thing. I don't know what the language is, so you know what? I'm not gonna say anything. And so I find it really helpful just to normalize that this happens. Right? This happens for all of us. And again, for everybody here, you know, it's not the same as, like, we don't have this interactivity of activity of working in breakout rooms or whatever. But even just being present today, my guess is that one of these two things is more activated for you than the other. You might have, like, a lovely combo platter. But what's helpful about recognizing that is that what we see consistently, the kind of differentiator of highly inclusive teams and leaders, is that they're able to withstand the discomfort. Right? Those kinds of pain and not like acute pain, but the discomfort really, of talking about this in the interest of building inclusivity. Right? So the goal, a kind of through line that we'll talk about today and that we talk about in this workshop, is how to build what we call conversational capacity, that ability to withstand that discomfort in the interest of building inclusion. You can't kind of bypass it. You've got to be able to to flex that muscle. Yeah. Gail, absolutely. It is a lifetime journey. Right? And so as part of that, we, let's say, invoke what we call the 10% rule. And the 10% rule is in the interest of building conversational capacity in the kind of container of this session. Can we go 10% outside of your comfort zone when it comes to this topic? And I always like to frame it in a way of, like, 10% for you in this moment today might be really different than it looks tomorrow, right, or next week, or that it looked like last week. And so it's it's it's not about saying, like, we're all gonna get super real and bare our souls today and share our deepest, darkest secrets. That's not necessary. That's not appropriate. Right? But it's, again, in the interest of building this muscle. Twenty seconds of courage. I like it. Right? That's like just building that 10% rule. Yeah. So I'll invite you to kind of invoke that today. I'll use it for myself also. Yeah. That 10% rule. Many of you talked about this in the chat, the reality of bias. Right? That is one of the biggest barriers to inclusion. It's the reality of having a brain and a body. Right? We all are biased, evolutionarily super useful development for our brains to identify patterns, to make shortcuts, to be able to assess a situation that might create danger to keep us safe. Right? And so that's just a biological reality. Our brain makes automatic reactions to categorize what we see as good or bad or safe or dangerous. So I'm gonna invite us to do a little activity here. So in just a moment, I'm gonna flash through a series of images, and I'll invite you to put your first response to each image into the chat, but your vocabulary is limited to the two words good or bad. You can even just put a g or a b because I really want us to do this as quickly as possible. In when I teach this to companies, we just do it unmuting and saying it out loud or in person. You're always unmuted in person, so just saying that out loud. Yeah. So you can just practice that. I like doing it out loud because it takes away that kind of, like, barrier, like, thinking here. Because the idea here is that it is your first unfiltered, uncensored reaction to each image that I put up. Okay? I haven't started yet, but I was like, when you see it as quickly as possible, again, your vocabulary, there might be nuance there. There probably will be nuance, but your vocabulary for the purposes of this activity are just good or bad. Alright. Here we go, you all. Yeah. Okay. Great. K. You got it. Okay. Next one. I kinda like this because we can't see specifically even. Like, okay. Yes. K. Great. Next one. K. Next one. Alright. Last one. This is super interesting to do it this way. Okay. Cool. Bad. I like Rob. You're like, all caps. And whoever that web, Maria Elena. Good. This is the goodest. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. Great. Okay. We made it through you all. Maria Elena, in the chat, do you mind elaborating? Like, you seemed very kind of passionate about goodest boy. So if you're able to kind of talk talk us through or just share a little bit more about, like, what prompted you saying that? Where did that come from? All dogs, I think, these people always look so similar to my sweet people, Sarah. Yeah. She probably has a dog like this. No no further elaboration. Okay. Great. Okay. Great. So, you know, if we had time and this was a different, a different workshop, we could kind of hear from every person here to kind of talk through this is arbitrary that we're stopping on the slide. We could do this for any of these images to kind of talk through and say, okay. You said bad. What let's investigate. Right? Let's get curious. Like, what made you say bad here? But the highlight the what I wanna highlight here, the takeaway is the bias and belief can actually be incompatible. Right? What do I mean by that? I actually love that we use this image in this deck because I consider myself I'm a major dog lover. I'm one of those people who, like, I wanna meet your dog walking down the street, wanna meet your dog. I had a dog, who was a pit bull, who was my first dog, and she was so sweet. And my primary experience with pit bulls is that they're kind of goofy dogs. Some of you might have this experience. They're sort of goofballs and very lovable. And so the goofiest. Yeah. And so this is actually my lived experience and my opinion. And I still notice for myself, if I'm walking down the street and there's an unfamiliar to me pit bull approaching, I have, like, a microsecond of hesitation. I'm like, are you are you are you safe? Are you friendly? Just just a microsecond because I'm not immune to all of the stories about pit bulls, right, the reputation that they have. I know in certain locations, there's breed specific legislation, right, that there are limitations for, like, where, for renting or whatever it is. So all of that kind of permeates our subconscious. And so that's what I mean about, like, that can be present, but it doesn't mean that I have to believe it. And I'm not equating people or groups of people with dogs. I'm just saying this is applicable to anything. Right? Our brains are trying to make shortcuts to to keep us safe, and it's really on us to be aware of what our biases are rather than to say, like, I just don't see difference. Right? I've heard this before from people. I'm like, I don't see color. I don't see difference. Right? And it's like, well, it's not helpful. Right? You don't have to believe it to recognize that bias does exist. Right? And again, bias kept us safe in the past, evolutionarily, our ancestors responding quickly, getting the heck out of there when they encountered that saber toothed tiger rather than saying, oh, let me consider, might this one be friendly? Chomp. Goodbye. Right? Like, helpful to have bias in that situation. In today's world and in today's workplace, a primary effect of bias is it keeps us separate. Yeah. I know I went through that pretty quickly. We dig a little bit more deeply into this in the full workshop, which is useful essentially just to get on the same page about the reality of bias. There's another and in some of the resources you will have available to you after the session, as well as in the docs tab that is in where it says chat, and there's a worksheet that you are welcome to open, that there are some other resources available there, including information about the implicit bias test, the IAT, the implicit association test. Some of you all might be familiar with it. It's a really useful tool for helping to uncover your own biases. That's not the focus of our inclusion workshop, but it's a really worthwhile endeavor. And like so many of you mentioned, it's a lifelong process. Right? I always like to say, like, wouldn't it be great if after this workshop, it was like, check the box. I don't have bias anymore. Amazing. And it's not how things work. Right? Alright, you all. Thank you, Courtney. So let's move into getting into these specific behaviors of inclusion. So we've got, like, the what the reality of bias, and we're gonna get into what to do about it, the behaviors of inclusion, And we're gonna look at these four specific behaviors today. Let's see. There's the your organization has blocked the site. Courtney, I'm gonna let you follow-up with that if you can, that comment about the resources. And I'm gonna go ahead and get us into some research. This is part of some research that we've conducted at Life Labs and other research that we looked at has identified these top three of the top bias hot spots kind of where bias can especially show up in the workplace. K? This doesn't constitute every part of it, but these are, like, where they can kind of manifest. So the first is around group gatherings and meetings, feedback and decisions, thinking about what kind of feedback you get, what kind of feedback you give, what the culture of feedback is, how this impacts hiring, promotions, assignments of those really exciting projects, those kinds of things, right, those different decisions, and then microaggressions. And of course microaggressions aren't, limited to the workplace, but they're not excluded from happening there either. So starting with group gatherings and meetings, because that's so much of where work happens, whether they're formal or informal gatherings, groups of people coming together. And my guess is for those of you here, you're working in so many different configurations in terms of fully remote or hybrid or in person. It's every configuration under the sun, but it's still groups of people working together. And this can be a real prime arena to unintentionally exclude if we're not being intentionally inclusive. Right? So that's what we wanna kind of focus on. It's like, there certainly are some people in the world who are like, I'm out to exclude this person or this group of people. This workshop would not be particularly useful for them. But for most of us, exclusion happens unintentionally. So thinking about how can we kind of course correct to be intentionally inclusive so that we're not being unintentionally exclusive. So the first skill and behavior I wanna share here is something that we call open the circle. This is one of those things that seems like common sense, and so often common sense does not necessarily translate to common practice. So what do I mean by that? The tendency of a group of people, and you can think about a recent in person gathering that you've been to, even like a social gathering or whether it was at work. If there's a group of people talking, the kind of natural inclination is to form a circle so that everyone can hear and see each other in that conversation. We are social animals, you all. We are really attuned to what other people are doing. And if you're on the outside of a circle, you see a whole bunch of backs facing you and you're getting the message, this is a closed circuit and I can't come in here, even if you're not aware that you're taking that away. So again, seems obvious, seems simple in concept, we can just forget to do it. Physically opening the circle, making room for others. I know for a while, tech conferences, they use the the shorthand Pac Man just as, like, a reminder. People will be chatting with each other and then just, like, a a reminder, hey, Pac Man. Let's open this up. And then people see that there's a spot for them to join in. If you are a more kind of pastry minded person, you can think about a croissant rather than a doughnut or a bagel just as a shorthand of, like, oh, let's open this up. Perhaps more applicably for many folks here, conversationally opening the circle might be more relevant. So these, the three invitation, context, and bridge statements. Thinking about maybe someone's kind of on the conversational outskirts. Are they newer to the team? Are they more introverted? Are there just a lot of people who are dominating the conversation? Right? So explicitly inviting someone in. Right? To read them, curious, what do you think? That can actually go a long way in just encouraging someone to share. Yeah. Context statements. This is one of those things that, again, is a small thing that can make a really big difference. My guess is many of you can relate to that where there are a lot of acronyms or shorthands or terms that are very particular on your team or within your organization. I know when I started at LifeLabs and I was like, what the heck are people talking about? Right. So even giving a little bit of backstory, whether it's if you use Zoom and in the chat, right, or just letting somebody know, hey, here's what this means, Or there's reference to a project or initiative or something that happened in the past. It's not digging deep into something, but just giving a top level. Right? Hey, Jackie. The backstory is when we started working with this client three years ago, they were a really small company, and they've since grown and expanded. So it's been a much bigger contract. Right? Just that can sort of apprise someone of that context so that they can potentially participate in the conversation rather than thinking, well, I don't know what's going on. This doesn't apply to me. Yeah. Even thinking about if you're if you've been at a party, you walk into a room, people are laughing, and you're like, I don't know what just happened. Right? How good it feels when someone says, hey, we were just watching this video of this dog on a Roomba or whatever it is. Right? Then you're like, okay, cool. I get it. Thank you. Bringing someone in. Bridge statements. Same idea here. We were just talking about this. Maybe somebody was dealing with a doctor's appointment and they showed up late to a meeting or had a daycare drop off or just like, had a fire that they needed to put out. Right? So they come in kind of midstream, and it's a great way to just, like, bring them in. Right? Yeah. And it can, again, be something like using a chat or just taking one moment just to say, hey. Welcome. We're glad to have you here. We were just talking about this skill of opening the circle. Right? It doesn't have to be a huge thing. So this skill, this behavior of opening the circle is especially useful for kind of informal gatherings. Right? Those kind of like conversations, again, in person or conversationally. Just checking out the chat to see if there are any comments here. Do do do do do. Croissants. I know. I wish we had croissants. Okay. Gonna move into the second behavior that's relevant to group gatherings and meetings. And this links up with an insight from a large study of high performing teams with a high degree of psychological safety. One of the findings was that equal turn taking was one of the best indicators of team performance. Right? Even more so than the individual intelligence of team members, that didn't matter as much as how skilled teams were at sharing airtime, at taking turns in those meetings. And so knowing that, we've broken the skill of monitoring turn taking down into a few different discrete skills to see what this might look like in the different meetings that you participate in, that you lead or that you're a participant in. Some of you probably can relate to this. We live in the era of meetings. People are in more meetings now than ever before. Part of that is due to the technological ease of scheduling, inviting, holding those meetings. And meetings are where a lot of things happen. Right? Decisions are made. The work is identified, and so really thinking about how can we lean into the skill of monitoring turn taking. First habit here, providing thinking time. So what do I mean by that? Thinking time is simply solo reflection processing thinking time before being asked to actively participate in a discussion or conversation. Yeah. I often ask people, do you who here prefers thinking time? Right? You can think about your own preferences of, like, okay. Before being asked to contribute or brainstorm, yeah, I like to kind of reflect and think on my own. Yeah. K. Yes. I love it. I just saw that. Right? This is my only non meeting break in my day to day. Yeah. I need a moment to gather my thoughts. Okay. I also love thinking time. K. Jackie. Exactly. Yeah. So there are so many reasons why people might prefer thinking time. Right? Again, I love this, this explanation of quiet thinkers, neurodivergence, introverts, non native English speakers, or if there's another language that you all conduct business in, if there are non native speakers of that language, people who are newer on a team might be more just need a little bit more time or just preference. Right? Yeah. Manita offers a moment to evaluate what needs to be said. So it's it offers so many benefits, and this is a little bit of an overgeneralization. But particularly in America, we can sometimes conflate readiness to talk and extroversion with intelligence, which is just not true. Right? And I I say this, I'm a pretty extroverted person. Right? And, doesn't mean just because I'm, like, ready to talk doesn't mean that it's, like, I've let the best thought here. And so it might seem like a simple thing to do, but sometimes I see people are like, well, I don't wanna kind of derail things or slow things down. And so, like, I just won't say anything. But it truly benefits everybody. Many ways to ask for thinking time. The one that's up here, can we take two minutes to write down our thoughts first? I really like that because it doesn't kind of put the onus on somebody else to say, like, you know, Erica really needs thinking time. So for her, can we right? And often for my, fellow self identified extroverts who might be here today, often it's easier for us to do this, and it can potentially really get some voices in the room that might otherwise not. Right? So a small thing that can make a big difference. Yep. And that's another way to do it. Provide, pre work. Right? There are a lot of different ways to approach it. Second skill I wanna offer that could be helpful in monitoring turn taking is to have time drowned robins. My guess is some of you do a version of this already or some folks within your organizations do, especially for stand ups, kind of like check-in meetings of, like, alright. Let's do, updates or wins or frustrations from the past week. So essentially having a standardized prompt, and then everybody in that meeting shares in response to that prompt. Yeah. A thing to add here that is less common is to have them be timed. Right? And that can be really useful even if it feels like a little bit awkward initially, because a really common phenomenon is that people run out of time or one person really dominates and is really talkative, and then it can eat into somebody else's time so that person doesn't get to share or then we don't get to everything on the agenda. So having those time drowned robins. And you can also use them as an interventionist strategy. Right? As it says up here, since we haven't heard from everyone, how about we do a time round robin? I'll put a minute on the clock to hear from everyone. I'm just curious. Temperature check. How is this proposal landing from everyone? Feel free to pass. Right? So you can always offer that so it's not a mandate of, like, you're now in the hot seat. You gotta talk. Feel free to say pass. Yeah. Couple tips that I'll offer about timed round robins, using an audible timer, again, especially if it is a newer idea for you all to use a timer for round robins, and it might feel a little bit awkward, but it can take the onus off of you. It's like now I'm, like, interrupting timer app on Zoom. Or most of us, I would be surprised if we all didn't have our phones right near us in this meeting. Right? So using a timer on your phone, so it doesn't feel as awkward or personal, and it's in the interest of keeping everyone on track and creating that space to hear from everyone. Second tip is to consider starting meetings with round robins, and I'll share a little bit of research from doctor Itul Gawande, the surgeon, writer, and researcher. Some folks here might be familiar with him. And he did some research on surgical teams, and he found that there were some high performing surgical teams. And he found that there was something that they did, which is that at the beginning of each shift, and if you think about, people in hospitals, they're working different shifts, so there are different configurations of teams every day. But at the beginning of a new shift, some surgical teams would gather up and they would just go around and do quick intros. Right? Simply saying names and roles. Right? Yeah, Mara. Exactly. He wrote the checklist manifesto. Yeah. So, right, I'm Mara. I'm the head surgeon. I'm Gail. I'm the I'm the head nurse, whatever it is. He found that teams that did that consistently, there were thirty five percent fewer deaths from surgical complications, which I consistently find to be an astonishing statistic. Why was that? Because essentially normalizing even before the surgery began that everyone's voice was welcome in the room regardless of what your role is. Yeah. Regardless of what that status, if you think about kind of power dynamics and status in a hospital, right, surgeons and medical assistance people who are like, well, it's not really my place to say anything, who might think that it had been kind of like the ice was broken where it was normalized that they could speak up when they saw something that potentially concerned them. Yeah. It is very common, Beth. Yeah. So I I'm very grateful. I don't work in, like, life or death situations in my day to day work. If you don't either, just thinking about, like, what might we be missing by not starting meetings by doing round robins. Right? Whose whose voices might not be as able to kind of join in and contribute? Two more kind of sub skills here to monitor turn taking. Ritual questions. My guess is some of you, have kind of go to questions already. These are just kind of go to questions to weave into meetings to ensure that you're actively seeking out and inviting in different voices, different perspectives. For those of you who exclusively meet virtually or at times meet virtually, it's cliche, but, like, can you hear me? Can you see me? Am I frozen? Right? How's the audio and video? Can everyone see and hear me so that everyone is able to connect? Before we go any further, I'm curious, if you've got a kind of go to or ritual question that you tend to ask in a meeting or you hear other people do, feel free to drop it into the chat. I'll put this in there. Oh, Becky, I love that. Yeah. What am I not seeing? Yep. Does everything make sense? Anything else on your mind? Mhmm. Yeah. All nines clear. Awesome. Oh, cool. Anyone wanna play devil's advocate? Who is it that said that? Yeah. Terica, I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your name. We have, a workshop on yeah, does anyone disagree? I'll finish my thought in a moment, but, Candace, even thinking, considering, rephrasing to say, who disagrees? Right? So it's not does anyone disagree, even that simple shift of, like, then you're kind of, like, presuming. Right? Somebody might be less inclined to be like, well, I do, but saying, like, who disagree? Yeah. Who disagree? Who disagrees? I was gonna say we have a workshop on conflict and collaboration. And one of the things that we talk about there is especially for, like, teams or cultures who are conflict averse, right, where there just really isn't they're not as accustomed or comfortable with conflict to kind of make it, like, almost like a role where it's like, alright. Now your job is to step into playing devil's advocate or actively dissenting. Yeah. Oh, I like that, Ryan. Any quips or qualms? Nice. Okay. Brilliant, you all. Last skill to assist in monitoring turn taking, monitoring turn taking is to track completion. So you might already have a sense considering the meetings that you're part of, of there might be some patterns or trends about who tends to get interrupted. Maybe you're like, it's me. Right? There was some research, I haven't seen recent research, but from some years ago before pre pandemic that found that, people in meetings who are most consistently interrupted were women, introverts, and remote workers. Right? So, now I say it hasn't been updated because there are so many more people have become remote workers. Yeah. But just sometimes there's a trend of, like, who tends to get interrupted. And so the idea here is just being attuned to when interruptions happen in the interest of tracking completion. So whether it's on your own behalf, hey. Actually, I didn't get to finish my thought. Can I get another minute here? Or, again, if you clock somebody else getting interrupted, sometimes that's the easier way to do that intervention of advocating for them. Hey, I think we didn't hear the rest of Alex's idea before we move on. I'd love to hear that. Right? And that can actually enable them to share. And why that matters is because, especially for somebody who is more introverted or newer on the team or whatever different reasons, it took a lot of activation energy to speak up and then they get interrupted, they're unintentionally getting the message, it wasn't worth it. Right? They might be less inclined to speak up in the future. Kind of a pro tip here, the focus is not about, like, getting super rigid about eliminating interruptions, but focus on completion. Right? Sometimes interruptions happen because there's a lot of enthusiasm or energy. Right? So it's not about quashing that and shutting people down, but about recognizing that. Yep. Alright, you all. I'm gonna give you a little bit of, yeah, indeed. Right? To kind of like reframe here, Keifer, of like, yeah, extraversion doesn't necessarily mean mean strength. And sometimes this is where it's like intentionally being inclusive about, like, the different ways that people think and process and participate and contribute. Yeah. Cool. In that vein, Becky, I'm gonna, invite you all to take a moment. And there's a spot for this on the worksheet to kind of reflect on your where it says two on the worksheet. So you're welcome to capture notes there or capture notes elsewhere or just kind of reflect on your own, thinking about the meetings that you participate in, perhaps thinking about these different skills that we just talked about. What's working? So it's good to notice what's working well if you're like, the parking lot works really well. Right? What can be better? What other behaviors and habits do you use? Yeah. So take a moment to reflect on that on your own, and then I'll also you're welcome to share into the chat. When we teach this, as a full two hour or ninety minute workshop, often what we do is have breakout rooms or smaller smaller group discussions about this to share with each other. And it can be really useful because sometimes there are sort of patterns within an organization about how meetings go or even in different departments. Right? You could kind of, like, cross pollinate and get inspiration. Be like, oh, cool. You do this thing, or I have never thought about this. Yeah. Yeah. Tina, something that is really can be really useful with round robins is and I do this I do this where I'm always like, yeah. Simone, round robins is like, okay. Here's a prompt, and now everyone has time and space to share. So I the round robin is like, okay. Everyone's gonna have two minutes to share their thoughts about best practices for meetings. K? So I'll be keeping track of time, two minutes for everyone. Simone, it's for you. You're up. You can pass. Right? It is always an option to say pass. That is really, really crucial, right, where it's never like you must share. And sometimes what I even do when I'm teaching workshops and I'm like, I might, specifically call on somebody or invite somebody to share as my way of kind of, like, opening the circle. And I say, please, if you pass, I will celebrate that. Right? My intention is never to put anyone on the spot, and sometimes I actually demonstrate it, and it just kind of was like, okay. Great. Right? Oh, Janet, I love this because we have a lot of outgoing personalities on the team we've adopted. The two minutes in silence before talking. Yeah. Great. Yeah. I think, Rachel, the thinking about the why, right, that it's not it's like it's kind of like in the interest of, like, having space and time for everybody. Yeah. Alright. These are lovely. Let's move along, you all, into the second hot spot here, which is around feedback and decisions. And as I mentioned, this is where, right, things can get really high stakes. How does feedback impact promotions, impact salary decisions, right, performance reviews, all that stuff. And so the skill to leverage here, and this might look familiar to anybody here who's familiar with our feedback skills workshop because this is where we talk a lot about this skill of deblurring and blur words. Deblurring is all about getting really clear and specific with our language. So blur words is a term that we came up with at LifeLabs to refer to all of those kind of vague and unspecific words and phrases that we all use as part of our language. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with periodically using it. However, in the context of feedback conversations, it can cause a lot of confusion, and it can potentially mask bias. So we wanna get in the habit of leaning into curiosity, removing personal judgment, and asking the question, wait a second, what can a camera capture? So for example, you can check out these four pieces of feedback. Right? So they're full of blur words, and we wanna start by mentally underlining those blur words. Right? Those words that can mean different things to different people. Yeah. So unprofessional, too seasoned. Right? It's not anybody saying, oh, we can't hire him. He's so old. Right? So it's often not like, Yeah. Maria Elena. Awesome. Right? So it's it's aggressive. Right? That is something that, like, I have some stories about, like, that being used for me as a woman and a male colleague in the same circumstance not being used for him. Right? So it's just like pausing to kind of recognize and saying like, oh, interesting. Wait a second. What did I specifically see here? Right? So to lean into asking a deep learning question. And the idea of going back to what we talked about at the beginning of this session that, like, ego pain and social pain, it's not about, like, canceling people or criticizing them. Right? But just to kind of recognize we all have gaps in knowledge. So, oh, interesting. You said, this person you're just debriefing about an interview that you just and you said this person wasn't a culture fit. What does not a culture fit mean to you? Or what specifically did you hear them say? What's an example of that? What's the impact? Who else does this? I love that last question in parentheses because that is a really good question. Those are really good questions. Just a self reflection of, like, oh, my brain told me she was super unprepared. That's interesting. Where did unprepared can mean different things to different people? What specifically did I hear? What specifically did I see? Right? So it's kind of like creating the speed bump to lean into that curiosity to ensure that we're being inclusive here. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Last hot spot we're gonna dig into today, microaggressions, you all. And I like this definition of microaggressions that they're a small comment or action that reveals a stereotype. So they're also known as bias leaks. Right? Because they're not said with the intent to harm, but it reveals a a bias. Right? Reveals a stereotype. So I'm gonna share these three examples of microaggressions. Why do these hurt or what might be implied about these? And you can focus on one of them specifically if it's standing out to you or just, like, all of them. Yep. Terica. Yep. That's I've heard that same phrase. Right? Death by a thousand cuts, a thousand paper cuts. Right? It's not like the one paper cut. It's like over time. Yeah. Exactly. You're so articulate. It may imply you thought a person was not smart or articulate. They perpetuate stereotypes. Yeah. Right. So, like, immediately face value, you might read it quickly and be like, uh-huh. But, like, where are you really from? Yeah. And, Gail, interestingly, over the years, I've heard from a lot of folks of Asian descent that they get consistently asked that. Right? I'm from Buffalo. Okay. But where are you really from? It's like, I've gotta figure you out. Right? So it just kind of reveals, that it's like it's not just that really. Right? That qualifier really is is the kicker here. I had a learner once tell me, yeah, I get asked where are you actually from? Because it reveals that it's like, wait. This doesn't align with my image of what someone from this place looks like. Right? So again, it's not said with the in with the intent to harm, but it reveals that. Yeah. So the reason why these, like, death by a thousand paper cuts. Right? Yeah. And it's not to say never ask where somebody is from. Right? But it's just recognizing that, like, for folks who get asked or told one of these microaggressions or a variation of them, it tends to happen over and over again. So if you got told or asked one of these things once in your life, you might be like, that's kind of annoying, but it's the kind of cumulative impact, that chronic exposure. I think of it like a program that's running in the back of a computer. That's just like taking all this energy and effort and this sort of emotional energy to like still yourself to fend off these microaggressions day in and day out, what's going to be the cumulative impact? And so the kind of behavior of inclusion to cultivate is to engage in what's known as micro interventions. Yeah. And we don't have a lot of time for this, but I do wanna touch upon it today that often the most effective way to do a microintervention to essentially speak up, say, or do something is as a bystander, someone who witnessed them, not necessarily as the person who received it. It's hard to do them, you all. It is hard to do them. And so we like to practice now, to kind of isolate this muscle to ideally be able to more readily respond in a situation in real life. So I'm gonna show you a short video. Okay? Imagine you're in the meeting and you see this following exchange. Hey, team. I'm excited to introduce you all to Rob who just joined engineering. Hey. You don't look like an engineer. Oh, you don't look like an engineer. Ew. Yeah. Right? So having this moment, it happens really quickly. Time marches on cringe exactly. You might have this internal, like, oh my goodness. I can't believe it. What the heck? And we don't have the ability of like, this is a deep cut, but I bet there are some people here who remember that TV show Small Wonder. Was that it? Where you get to put your fingers together like this in freeze time and be like, okay, let's think about what to do. And it's like, okay, I gotta do something. Do I say something in person, in the moment, in front of other people? Right? Do I say something? Do other people hear me? Can you hear me? Yeah. K. Weird core memory. Okay. Sound is gone. Interesting. Okay. My sound should be on. Okay. I can hear you. Great. It can be really hard. You didn't hear the video. Okay. Hopefully, you saw the subtitles at least. Right? So it can be really hard to know if, what, when to say. Yeah? So couple of options here, and we don't have time to fully dig into this. Let me see. I'll stop sharing, and then I'll start again. Maybe that'll help. Refresh. It's worked. Okay. Thanks, Jackie. Great. So somebody said and I'm trying to scroll back. Yeah. Nicole, you said something like, what do you mean by that? Right. So that could be something to say in the moment. Right? Some people might have an instinct or ability to kind of leverage humor. He sure codes like an engineer. Right? So, like, there isn't one hard and fast way to do this, but essentially finding a way to kind of center the person who was on the receiving end of the microaggression. Right? We're gonna do it imperfectly. We're gonna do it wrong sometimes. What I see is that often people on the side of not saying anything because they don't know what to say. And I I would encourage us all, and I'll include myself here, to on the side of saying something. Right? The key is to separate the person from the action. So it's not like you, right, that comment, right, that didn't land right for me. Four kind of private conversations offline and often the most effective strategy and again, this is not a hard and fast rule. There's so much nuance here. We don't have yeah, Vanessa. There's so there's so many variables to consider. We don't have time to dig into it in today's, in today's conversation. This is really like skipping the rock across the surface, but just having these things in mind of, like, what can work really well is, like, a one two of, like, saying something in the moment and then digging deeper to have a full conversation offline in private. Again, for anybody here who has taken our feedback skills workshop, this might look familiar. It's the same kind of approach to frame to frame the micro intervention of, like, deblurring. Right? Instead of saying, I noticed you said this really messed up comment. Yeah. Definitely, Carrie. Right? That you say, here's what I noticed you said. Just you said Rob doesn't look like an engineer. Here's why I'm bringing it up. Right? Here's how I perceive the impact. How did you see it? Did you notice it? Right? Again, separating intent from impact and noticing that that that defensiveness might come into play. Yeah. If and when you do it, because we're all a mixed bag, it's not like in the world there are some, like, microaggressors and micro interventionists we all will say and do the wrong thing at times. What we've seen over the years is, like, folks who are the most effective micro interventionists are often folks who had committed a microaggression in the past. So it's not like I'm coming at you from high up here. So if someone does a micro intervention to you, acknowledge it, focus on them, and get curious. Alright, you all. This is a really saturated session, and I we're almost at the hour, and I wanna make sure that we hear from you. So two things, you will have access to follow-up resources from this session. Please take a moment to share some feedback with us. We love feedback at LifeLabs. You can scan this QR code. You can click on that link. Tell us what you'd like to tell us what you'd like to. I just got distracted. That made no sense. Tell us what you liked. If you wanna follow-up, book a longer session for your team or organization. There's that little request meeting button at the top of the screen. Thank you all for your time. Have a great rest of your day. You're welcome.