Zach has the pleasure of chatting with FranklinCovey's Pamela Fuller in this episode themed around the topics of engagement and inclusion. She also shares with us why she thinks that we're often talking about unconscious bias rather than just bias. Additionally, she gives us a practical example of what it means to tie inclusion to performance. Listen to the full show to hear Pamela's definition of employee engagement and a whole lot more.

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TRANSCRIPT

Zach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and look, we're back. It's Season 3. It's 2020. You know, you're probably riding in your hover jet or, you know, petting your cloned pig. I don't know what's happening in the future, but, you know, it's 2020 is my point. It's a new year, and, you know what we do. We have authentic conversations that center underrepresented voices in the corporate space--and corporate space is just another word for saying "work," so a 9-to-5 job. So underrepresented voices at work, that's what we do. We amplify those through having authentic conversations with black and brown executives, hiring partners, entrepreneurs, creatives, activists, artists, musicians. Like, anybody, right? And we're having, like, these evergreen conversations. Like, we're taking these evergreen topics rather, but we're centering them on black and brown / underrepresented perspectives, and we have, like, really great guests. Like, Season 1 we had some really incredible guests, Season 2 we had some really awesome guests, and Season 3 is no different. We have with us today Pamela Fuller with FranklinCovey. For more than 15 years, Pamela has worked in both the public and private sector supporting clients and solving complex problems. She currently serves as FranklinCovey's Thought Leader, Inclusion and Bias as well as a Global Client Partner responsible for supporting some of the organization’s most strategic accounts. Her solutions-oriented and client-centric approach has resulted in unique solutions that exceed client expectations and achieve results. Pamela works with clients to match the right solution to organizational strategic priorities and is particularly adept at designing tailored, competency-based programs to solve her client's most pressing needs. Through this work, Pamela has designed programs that have made an impact on hundreds of thousands--yo, hundreds of thousands--of participants to include FranklinCovey’s newest offering, Unconscious Bias: Understanding Bias to Unleash Potential. Prior to her current role, Pamela served as an EEO & Diversity Analyst and Trainer where she conceived and implemented proactive diversity programs to include human capital planning, training on unconscious bias and microaggressions, and statistical workforce analysis. She also served the non-profit community for nearly a decade, executing marketing, communications, special events and fundraising strategies. She is a highly sought-after consultant--I mean, come on, after everything I read, clearly she is a highly sought-after consultant--speaker and strategist, having addressed leaders across the world on leadership topics to include unconscious bias, high potential leadership and building an inclusive and effective culture to include the United Nations System, U.S. federal government and the Fortune 500. My, goodness. I mean, come on, y'all. Like, if that doesn't get you off your seats, if that don't get you paying attention to something, I mean... [ow sfx] Goodness. Pamela, welcome to the show. How are you doing?




Pamela: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I am good. I don't know if you ever get used to hearing your bio read. I think there's a humility that we're all raised up with that makes that feel so strange. So, um, anyway, I'm just thrilled to be here and engage in this conversation.




Zach: Man. You know, let's just get right into it, right? Like, a critical part of any conversation is language and clear definitions. I think, like, you know, the D&I space has been existing for a while, but I feel like that we're seeing a shift in the past handful of years where, I don't know, just the intention around the work is just that, more intentional. And so before we even get into this whole conversation, like, can we get your definition of inclusion and bias?




Pamela: Absolutely. I think inclusion--as I think about inclusion, I think we know we're being successful with inclusion when it is a metric of performance. If everyone in the organization feels included, valued, respected, then they are able to perform at their best, and I think that's really important, that connection to performance, because quite often people talk about diversity and inclusion around sort of a moral responsibility or it being the right thing to do, and while I firmly believe all of those things, I think that a conversation about the right thing to do is not as compelling in an organization as the impact on performance. So yes, it's the right thing to do for lots of reasons. Ultimately as a business or an organization, the reason it's most important is to ensure that we are positioning everyone to perform, to meet whatever our goals or results are for the organization, and people can't do that if they feel inhibited or encumbered or disrespected or ignored or tolerated, right? So inclusion is a sense that everyone feels they can contribute their best selves and that they desire to do so, because if I'm not included I don't even want to give you my best ideas, right? And I think bias, as we talk about bias, we define bias at FranklinCovey and in our new offering around--we define it as a preference, a preference that we might have about a person or a place or a thing, a circumstance, and the word preference I think is really important to the definition, because when we think of bias we often think of it being inherently negative. We think biases of prejudice or a stereotype, and if it's inherently negative we get a little bit defensive about it. So people bring up bias and a lot of people in organizations, particularly people who don't feel like they've been on the receiving end of bias, might get really defensive. You know, "I don't have bias," or "I don't have prejudice. I don't have stereotypes. I sort of treat everyone fairly," but if we define it as a preference we speak to what bias really is. It's a natural part of the human condition, of how the brain works, and we have preferences that on their face don't have value, but they impact our behavior, and that behavior has a result that can be negative or positive. So bias is preferences we have about kinds of things, whether your desk is messy or gender or race, you know? Bigger, heavier issues, or the sorts of qualifications people have or where they went to school, where they're from in the country, all kinds of things, and that impacts how we interact with other people, how we handle circumstances, how we make decisions, and those decisions, or that impact, again goes back to performance. So I think that these terms are really valuable when we can tie them to performance, because that's the result of inclusion and bias.




Zach: No, and I'm right there with you, right? I think so many times--let me take a step back. So I think premises, discussing premises is really important. So I do believe, in my experience and also from what I've read as well as conversations that I've had with other leaders, [that] a lot of times when we talk about diversity and inclusion it's framed around the comfort of the majority, right? So, like, just now when you framed inclusion around performance, that in itself is a differentiator--this is not even an ad for FranklinCovey by the way, y'all. This is not an ad. I'm just trying to shout--but, I mean, with respect, [laughing] it's a differentiator because with the tie-in to performance there's also, like, an underlying theme of accountability, right? Like, if I'm tying something to performance, I'm tying to something tangible and measurable, that means that there is an outcome that we're looking to achieve. I think a lot of times when we talk about inclusion though specifically they are moreso tied to, like, feelings or, like you said, moral imperatives, and the reality is, like, the world operates today very exclusively. There are plenty of exclusive spaces, and there are plenty of systems that are built off of exclusivity. So I don't know if that angle of positioning as inclusion as, like, the right thing to do is going to win over the masses, because if the moral imperative was that strong and people really vibed with it, we wouldn't have all the work that we have to do. So it's interesting though, kind of on with the idea of inclusion, a popular definition of inclusion is being asked to dance at the party you were invited to, right? And people say it--I'm sure you hear it often, but people say it with such, like--I don't know, like it's just such a [swaggy?] thing to say, and I'm like, "Okay. I mean, it's cool," but can we talk a little bit about the role that power plays in inclusion? Like, do you think that you can have inclusion of underrepresented employees without granting them some authority within the organization that they operate?




Pamela: Uh, no. [laughs] In short, right? But I think it sort of goes back to definition. So when we think about the moral imperative, there's a power dynamic in that as well, right? Because what we're saying if we say it's a moral imperative, we're sort of putting it in the same box as charity. Like, "This is a good will," right? "A charitable act that I will do for these underrepresented groups is to bring them into the conversation." So I think that's another reason I feel very strongly about reframing inclusion and bias around performance, because I think it's not a c