Real Talk: “Woke” or “Anti-Woke,” What Is It?
Welcome to Real Talk with Loeb Leadership, a safe-space webinar discussion series as part of our dedication to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In this discussion, we explore the growing politicization of the term "woke" and its impact on social and workplace discourse. Loeb Leadership’s panel of experts engage in a thoughtful and interactive dialogue, explaining the origins of the word and its evolution into a highly charged and divisive concept. The panel analyzes how a word whose origin described heightened social awareness and activism, particularly regarding issues of racial injustice, has been co-opted and weaponized in political discourse, often portraying advocates as extremists. The panel will also explore the pitfalls of reducing complex social dynamics into simplistic labels such as “woke” or “anti-woke,” and the consequences this has on workplace culture and relationships.
Good afternoon everyone. We're just going to wait about a minute or so to let other people join us. We had a pretty large registration for this panel discussion, so thank you for being here on this Monday afternoon, and we will be with you shortly. Okay, we're going to get started. Again, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to Loeb Leadership's Real Talk. For those joining for the first time, Loeb Leadership is a certified woman-owned business that is a management and leadership training and development firm that focuses on executive coaching, training and development and consulting. We are joined by our illustrious panel of Joy Stephens, David Robert, Dr. Fritz Galette, and Dr. Michael Burchell. So there was a lot of interest in this topic. We want this session to be highly interactive. Our prep session was probably one of our most engaging and emotional I think since we've been doing these series.
And we greatly encourage the audience to use the chat and emojis and comment and interact with the panel and each other. So the topic of woke and anti woke is starting to show up more and more in the work that we're doing with clients. In fact, on one call there was a member of a client in a state that had anti woke statutes, and the person was concerned that even the topics of inclusive cultures and programming would maybe be in violation of some of the local laws. So we're going to start off to define the terms and bring some context and hopefully some practical strategies and solutions to how we can better communicate with each other in our organizations and in our personal lives. So Joy, I'd like to bring you in to start us off, and I know this topic is very dear to you, but if you could
help us understand the historical context of the term woke and how it's evolved over time.
Joy Stephens:
Absolutely. So we're going to run it all the way back to the late 1920s, 1930s, imagine if you will, Harlem Renaissance, the proliferation of a lot of radio and recording artists that were African American and able to have a little bit more than a local audience. You had your Chitlin' Circuit, et cetera, et cetera. And the word woke literally just me woke. It was, of course, a bit of what we might call bad English, what have you, but,
the first recorded instance of this was a jazz trumpeter saying, "Be careful out there, y'all. Especially going through the South, don't let them catch you asleep and stay woke." That's it. That's where it started. But it really meant, if you understand the atmosphere of 1930s America, traveling as a Black person anywhere, not just in the South, but especially in the South, could be fatal. And I meant the word fatal specifically, they will kill you.
There are still towns actually in between Louisiana and Texas that are called sundown towns, where if you are caught after sundown in that town, it would not be good for you. They did a really good job of re-imagining this in the recent series on HBO called Lovecraft Country, where you watch this group, a car full of Black people trying to make it across the county line before the sunset, because if they got caught, they were all going to die. That was actually the horror in that horror show. But anyway, to move on. So the idea of saying, well, just meant stay alert, stay on your toes, be aware of what's going on around you, that's all it meant and that's all it means. Now, it got popularized again with the advent of Twitter and internet and Facebook, et cetera, around 2010 ish where people were saying, oh yeah, he's woke, she's woke, et cetera.
Using it to say, I'm alert and I'm aware of what's going on around me on a massive scale, not just this neighborhood or this hotel or this street or this county, but this country. What is happening with my community and my people in this country? Am I aware of what's happening?
As a matter of fact, James Baldwin has a very famous quote. He said, "To be an African American in this country and be even semi-conscious is to be in a state of rage all the time." Now, it doesn't mean that we walk around being angry on purpose, but that if you are paying attention to what was happening in the 60s when he said that it should have made you mad regardless of what race you were, you should be outraged at the injustice.
And so the idea of woke standing for social justice, which has also been a phrase that's been used before, social justice warrior, et cetera. You can even roll it back to tree hugging hippie, whatever it is, if you were interested in the welfare of a minority group. You were alert to their plight, you were aware of what's going on, you were woke. And so because everything is popularized with social media, woke became synonymous with aware of the discrepancies, aware of the disparity, aware of the privileges that other people might have, and that's where it started to get the attention of people who resented the idea of people being aware of those discrepancies.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you so much, Joy. And David Robert, if I could ask you to join the dialogue and talk about how woke relates to other communities as well, and if you could talk culturally where it started, as Joy said, it was about being aware and connected and concerned. Where did it become something else?
David Robert:
Sure. Yeah, I can speak to this through the lens of LGBTQ. Obviously, as a gay man, I have a very different kind of relationship with this term woke. It's actually a relatively new term for me. I think I first heard the term maybe two or three years ago, but a couple of things come to mind. The first is when I hear the word woke, for me, it's sort of a cry for help. I mean, I don't think if people realized the intense fear and anxiety that gay people feel on election night or when we read the news about this unbelievable, unprecedented record number of anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation that are passing, to Joy's point, it doesn't rage you.
And I think most people are decent people. I think most people have good intentions but may not fully realize the level of stress that the LGBTQ community faces on a daily basis. We're demonized, we're demoralized, and I've felt that way, and I don't want anybody else to ever feel that way. So when I think about woke, it's about wake up. I mean, there's an intentional orchestrated effort to essentially erase people like me from the public square. And if you think that's okay, that's your prerogative. But I think most people would be like, wow, I didn't realize that was happening. So for me, I keep coming back to this cry for help, and I had this conversation with my sister recently.
She obviously loves me and supports me and supports my relationship, but she votes very conservatively. And I said, "How do you square that up?" And she says, "People vote for different reasons, David, I vote for my kids' education or for taxes or whatever the issue is." And because for her anti-LGBTQ legislation doesn't really mean anything to her, so it doesn't impact her personally. So she's prioritizing other things. And so me, I'm like, you really do have to do the hard work to really understand what's happening, right? It's not slowing down, it's actually getting more aggressive. And so that's my perspective on this term woke.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thanks, David. And Dr. Fritz, if I could call on you to talk about the impact in the workplace in our personal lives about this divisiveness that David talks about because it does impact a lot of family relationships, friendships, working relationships, creating, in my opinion, this tribalism of thought, even just these simple labels of woke and anti woke and using that as something to be divisive. How would you advise somebody to be able to bridge the divide under these circumstances?
Fritz Galette:
That's a big topic, and it really depends because all of us, our reactions to these concepts, to these words are so related to our subjective experience of who we are. Some of us, it's a term that we only learned a few years ago. For others, it's been a term that we've heard all of our lives. When we're trying to navigate this in work situations, interpersonal situations, I always encourage people to take the time, slow down to find out what these things mean to the person you're talking to. These concepts have a life, but they have a life inside the person who's giving meaning to it. And so if I'm talking to somebody, I have a house upstate New York, sometimes I can see somebody with a confederate flag outside, people think that means something. And I'd say, upstate New York, it might mean something different than another part of the country.
And when I've interacted with people who are wrapping their arms around conservative messages or messages that I might find offensive, I find out that to them it means something different. That's why I'm always encouraging people, get into dialogue with people and stop going just by the concepts or the word that they're speaking.
Now, these terms, they take on their own, meaning depending on who's taking them in and interpreting it. And so what woke meant the first time you ever heard it has changed till now. Heck, what COVID-19 means is something that's very different now. And words like viral and vaccine, all these things take on their own meaning. And what we always have to remind ourselves is to ground ourselves in the moment and try to talk to each other and try to understand what the lived experiences of the persons who are around you are, so that now you can navigate from there, but don't try to navigate from this concept. That's a really difficult place to navigate from.
David Robert:
So Fritz, this divisiveness concept is really intriguing. I actually read something online there. I'm not sure if it's true, but it actually is compelling to think about. So it said that if you have a group of red ants and black ants and you put them into a single jar together, they live in harmony. There's no issue at all. But if you shake the jar, they begin to attack each other. They see each other as the enemy. And so the point of that was before we start to fight with each other and dig our heels in, let's figure out who's shaking the jar. Because again, this is intentional. The anti woke movement is intentional. It's a huge backlash. Again, I'm generalizing, but I think there is perhaps an intention to get us to be divisive. Because when we're divisive and we're fighting, we're easily manipulated. And we always kick up all that dust, and we don't always see what's really happening across the landscape. So I thought it was an interesting point.
Fritz Galette:
I believe there definitely are conscious intentions to shake the jar, but the psychologist means constantly finding people's unconscious, implicit learning, supported by the systems that they're in to shake the jar. As soon as people get threatened, you feel uncomfortable, anxiety kicks in, threat kicks in. And what do people do, all of us, when anxiety and threat kicks in, we default to our primal urges. And a lot of the things that you see in the system are really the result depending on who is in charge and what happens.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Joy, did you want to add? And then I'd like to get Michael involved.
Joy Stephens:
I was just going to say that resonates with me what you're saying, David, around the ants and the jar and the shaking. Again, if you look back over time, I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Black History Museum in DC. And on the first floor, it starts from the history of Africans being in the United States from 1619, so on and so forth. But on the first floor, there was a discussion of a revolt, a rebellion that was working class whites and either emancipated or freed Black people, and they were rebelling against the government in the city of New York. And the rebellion was put down, the rule, whatever you want to call it, the white people that were included with that were sentenced and convicted, fined, et cetera, the Black people were hung. But the impetus was, if you team up with these people again, you will be in trouble.
And the idea of Black people and white people both having the same economic trouble, that's what the revolt was for economic freedom. If you try for this, we're going to tear it down again. We're going to continue to have different outcomes for different races so that you start to antagonize against each other. And that was the second to last time that a revolt included African American and European American people. They were like, "We're not doing it again because they keep punishing us and they're punishing us worse than you." And so next thing you know, they're pointing fingers. That's the shaking right there. But if you bring it forward to JFK and MLK, they were both about to pursue economic freedom for marginalized white people, not necessarily people of color or anything else, but just the disenfranchised in the United States as a whole when their lives were cut short. That's something else. It's a conspiracy theory I'm not going to get into today, but there's a lot to that around the shaking of the jar.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Joy. So Michael, I know you're real well versed on this topic. Again, there's a lot on the table from what everybody has said, and just over the weekend, I noticed a lot of op-eds and articles dealing with woke and anti woke, the commercialization of these things, Public Square online marketplace for anti woke companies, other companies that tout their diversity. Again, how do we create an inclusive culture where we can disagree with each other and still keep a relationship? And if you could talk historically when there's ambiguity and anxiety, how these themes reappear over generations.
Michael Burchell:
So I want to tie a couple of things together because I really appreciate what my colleagues shared. And I want to go back to what Joy said around rage in the 60s. And I think what's interesting is that we are in this moment historically, and this is important for all of us as leaders who are on the phone call here or on the webinar, that we're in a historical moment where there's a lot of rage. This is not the first time. In fact, you can go back millennia. But Joy started in the 1930s, if you think about the 1930s and the rise of fascism and communism in Europe and what was going on here in the US, and then you can move fast-forward, there was a push towards liberalism and then this kind of push back in the 60s into the 70s, again, in the late 70s, there was this progressiveness.
And then in the 80s, I don't know about all of you on the call, but I remember being chastised for being PC. So you have this pushback in the 80s around being too politically correct, and that goes into the 90s. So over the course of time, we continue to have this swinging back and forth in terms of how we think about liberalism and conservatism. And those are broad words, and I don't mean to use them in the political way that we think about them now, but this way of thinking about justice and what's going on in the body politic, the larger body politic in society. What's interesting now is that we've actually had this push as a result of the last handful of years from George Floyd on through. There's a huge investment in diversity and DEI work in companies across the US and indeed around the world.
And now, you have this kind of push back. You have organizations who were like, "Listen, this is just too much for me and I don't really understand it." And so the important thing I think as leaders of organizations is to understand that regardless of where people sit in terms of the overall spectrum and orientation in the workplace, everybody is upset. It is David's ants jar writ large. We have employees across the spectrum either because they don't feel like they're getting their due justice for one reason or another. And so you have employees that are really feeling the push and the pull and the stretch. And so this anti woke is coming from a particular perspective in a particular moment living in a VUCA world. And at the same time, you have folks that are really thinking about how do we create a diverse, inclusive, engaged environment?
David Sarnoff (DB):
Michael, can you please just explain VUCA for members of our audience who may not know?
Michael Burchell:
Yes, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, and that's the world that we find ourselves in. So when we think about things are not linear, and this has a lot to do with how organizations have really had to reimagine and rethink their strategy over the last decade. And so it is the way in which we think about change and what's happening in the world and even global economy and the impact, we're all thinking about working remotely now, which wasn't a thing. And we're struggling to figure out what does that look like? That is just part and parcel of living in a VUCA world. When you think about DEIB issues, it's part of how do we actually have a global economy? We live in a global world, and at the same time ensure that our people feel like they matter, that they're valued, that they're connected and engaged with each other.
You have all these different kind of forces that really create a sense of tension in the workplace. And I think most of our colleagues that are on the call here would speak to that. That there's a real sense of tension. And I think going to your specific question, answering it now, I think there's two things that I would just highlight and then maybe kick it over to my colleagues. One is that I think now is the time to reframe. And I think reframing is actually a really useful skill for the leaders on this call to be able to use in the workplace. Because in order to live in a VUCA world, you have to address the complexity, but also engage in the fact that we're living in a moment where there is this kind of tension between, and probably deservedly so, that the people feel the sense of frustration, anger, upset, that the way the world has changed is not what they had expected.
And my friend, Dr. Fritz, says, "Change changes us," and we are living in a moment where there is constant change in the workplace and how people are experiencing that and then in their families and in their communities. And so I think to create hold that space for employees and help to reframe is a really, really important thing for us as leaders to do. And I think the other thing that I'm hearing right now is a lot of trying to figure out how to develop knowledge, skills, and capacity so that employees can engage around what does it mean to live in a diverse, inclusive place where everybody is able to belong and hold that tension. So I'll stop there for a moment, but I think we're living in a VUCA world. This is not new. We go back and forth between these two different parts of the poll. And so our ability to manage the polarities that are facing us at this moment from a DEI perspective Is really, really Critical. And I understand some of the angst that a lot of our colleagues on this call might be experiencing.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Mike. And again, encourage the audience, please submit questions or comments. The panel would certainly appreciate hearing from you. David, did you want to react to what Michael said?
David Robert:
I know this was said before, but I think it's still relevant, that change moves at the speed of trust, and we just as a country, we don't trust each other. And I think there's some validity to that. So it's not an irrational mindset to have. That's the first thing I thought as you were talking, Michael. The second is that when we're working with clients on conflict management, one of the things that we share is do you want to spend your time and energy proving that you're right, or do you want to redirect that energy? And this is probably your reframing, Michael, redirect that energy to optimize the effectiveness of the relationship. And I think from my perspective, we're at a point in society where we are trying to prove that our position is the right position rather than... And again, I think we come at this looking for solutions and it's not a problem to be solved. To your point, Michael, it's a polarity that needs to be balanced. I think if we approached it that way, I think it would hopefully deescalate some of this conflict and tension that we're feeling.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Wait, I'm having a little trouble with audio.
Michael Burchell:
Where's my little hands emoji? That's exactly what David [inaudible 00:22:24].
David Sarnoff (DB):
Great. So Joy, there's a lot of apprehension in organizations now in light of recent Supreme Court decision and other litigation that's moving forward where private employers are being sued about whether or not they should go forward with DE&I initiatives and also with a reluctance of being branded with either woke or anti woke labels. How would you advise them how to proceed in this climate?
Joy Stephens:
I would say that we are making history right now, and I think that this is the moment where you decide what side of history you want to be on. And it's easy to look back even in this country, let alone the world, to see where this sort of conflict, because as Michael Burchell said earlier, this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. This honestly isn't even the worst instance of it in this country. Let's not forget where we have come from. What side do you want to be on? And it is the side, there is no neutral because neither side will allow you to be neutral. They want to know where you stand, and if you don't express your stance, you're with the enemy regardless of where you might really fall. We see this again from a political standpoint where you have a very loud super liberal, a very loud super conservative, and the rest of us in the middle saying, I just want to go to work.
But they want you to choose. And so I'm not saying that you have to be extremely one way or the other, but you can say, "I'm not going to play this game. I want to make sure the people that work for me know that we care about them." At the end of the day, that's what inclusion really is. Do I feel like I can come here and be accepted for who I am, that you care about me as a person? It doesn't have to be overly emotional, but do you want me to enjoy my work and enjoy working with the people that work here? And if the answer is yes, then you want an inclusive environment. It's just that simple. And unfortunately, people that want to shake the glass, I'm going to keep using that analogy. The one that shake up the ants wants you to believe that being inclusive or being diverse or even if they want to label it woke or social justice warrior or PC or whatever it is, because every generation has a term, they want to maintain the status quo, which prioritizes their comfort over other people.
And so the decision that is being made is do you want to try your best to make as many people comfortable as possible in your environment, or do you want to continue to prioritize the comfort of one subset over others? And how is that going to affect your business going forward as the rest of the country becomes more and more other? That is happening whether we want to pay attention to it or not. And so you run the risk not just from a social perception standpoint of being seen as non-inclusive, as exclusionary, as prejudice, whatever word might come to mind for whoever's reading your website, but how are you going to attract new talent? Because even in the younger ranks, I'm talking 30 and under, not only are there more marginalized people that are expressing their desire to be accepted as they are, but they have a stronger allyship following as well, and they have people who may not belong to their communities that are also advocating for them to be accepted.
How does that change? Who comes to work for you? Who wants to hire you? Who wants to sue you? So everything needs to be seen beyond just the current moment of this false equivalency of woke and anti woke. At least the way I'm using the word, if someone says, "Oh, this person or that person seems pretty woke." They're aware of the social issues going on around them, even if it doesn't pertain to them personally, like David's sister. If she were woke, she would understand that the way that she is voting has a very real effect on his life. That's being aware of something that is not necessarily directed at you. If you anti woke, not only are you not aware of it, but you're specifically ignoring it for fear of losing some convenience or comfort on yourself. And so there's a phrase that I've heard before, and it's a gender-based phrase. It says, "Men live in fear that women will laugh at them. Women live in fear that men will kill them."
And that's the second time I've used the word kill on here because I need y'all to understand that this is much more serious than whether or not someone gets a promotion. At the end of the day, this goes into the way people are allowed to live. And to David's point, if I'm afraid to go in your city after dark, I can't work there. I can't be comfortable there. If the headquarters is there, I'm not coming. And if I'm looking you up, I'm not even going to apply and I might be the number one in my law class. So how is this affecting you going forward? So to sum it up, you don't have to choose the vocabulary because the vocabulary is going to change every 18 months, just like technology. Choose to do the right thing for the people that work for you and stand on that. Don't be swayed by the word of the day.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Joy. Fritz, if I could just bring you in to address, what if organizations do nothing? What if they ignore the issue or in light of political and news events feel like they don't want to get canceled if they enact programs or not enact programs, what's the psychological consequence, if any, on the members of that organization?
Fritz Galette:
What came up to me in the moment was what's the psychological implications of a parent allowing someone to come in and abuse the children, but doing nothing? Doing nothing is a huge communication to that child and they are not safe in this world. And so if our organizations don't do anything, they're speaking loud and clear that our lived experiences does not matter. It's probably the fastest way to tell people they're invisible to do nothing and not respond and react to what is going on. We've got to work on our systems. I started my career working on individuals, but I've watched systems operate just the way systems do. We're a society with many traumas, and we've never really come to reckoning with them.
And I can tell you when a person has a trauma and they've never had a chance to talk about it, they've never had a safe space to process it, it kills them from the inside in many ways, and often they act out and it hurts them on the outside. So you've got to, in our systems, create practices and policies with our people, channeling you, David Robert, that we work on our culture to the point where it's psychologically safe for us to represent who we are. I could say I'm this political party, I could say I'm that political party and we still be able to coexist. But in a polarizing culture, you're afraid to say that, any of that Stuff, you're afraid to represent who you are for fear that it's going to be held against you. You've got a lot of work to do. Always glad to work with this group and have this platform to talk about it because-
David Robert:
Yeah, absolutely.
Fritz Galette:
... we got to keep on doing it.
David Sarnoff (DB):
So David, how would you advise an organization of where to begin to start the process to do what Fritz just said, where people can express themselves without being ostracized or marginalized on the full spectrum where we could be in a place where we could disagree but still contribute to the goals of the organization?
David Robert:
So my first response, it's a little bit snarky, but I would actually have a display in my lobby of all the banned books and make them accessible to people. So rather than being afraid, that's the first thing I would do, but I go back to resource groups or affinity groups. So it's not to further marginalize people, but it's to give people a psychologically safe place to talk through their lived experience. I know a lot of organizations have these. Some I think are more productive and effective than others, but that's a great tool that organizations can implement relatively easily to start the conversation. And I think the last thing I would say about that is don't be bullied into not doing something. Because that's really what's happening is there's an effort to bully organizations into backing off of DE&I. I think that it's an opportunity for organizations to be real brave and say, no, it's important to us, it's my business, and continue to make those investments.
David Sarnoff (DB):
So to David's point, Michael, how would you communicate that to your organization and the world to be effective? We're not backing down, we're doubling down, but how do we do it in a way that's going to bring everybody along?
Michael Burchell:
So a couple of things. One is you can't change what you don't understand. So you have to still build the practices. And like I was mentioning before, the capacity for people to understand what we're talking about. So if you are thinking about leaning back or leaning out or pausing, now's not the time to do any of that. Now, actually, there's lots of studies that would indicate that even if in a down or soft economy, now's the time to invest in your people because they'll help you get out of this current moment that we find ourselves economically. So I would actually double down on creating capacity. I would actually help people understand the moment that we're sitting in terms of change. I also think just in terms of the reframing bit, I would support managers because the managers are where it's at and helping them to figure out how to develop high trust relationships with all of their people individually, one-to-one.
This is probably where it gets into Fritz's territory, but you can create the practices and the policies and the structures that David mentioned. But I think at the end of the day, people need to know that you matter, that you're cared about, that you're involved. And so creating that relationship, just because we find ourselves in this really interesting back and forth around woke, woke is, and that kind of stuff doesn't give a break for managers to actually lean in and manage and provide thoughtful leadership. So there is a requirement for managers to lean in and provide a sense of a high trusts workplace and develop those relationships. And in that moment, that's when you create the psychological safety that's required for this. So I think that's really, really important. Let's not forget the fact that the managers have to figure out better ways to manage.
And so to agree that the folks that are on the phone can be thinking about how do you do that carefully and thoughtfully and consistently, that's really, really important. I would also say too, that I think we have a moment where the reframing bit, I would focus on ways to not get hooked in the back and forth and in the arguments. So think about it from almost like it is a... I'm not very good at this stuff, but what is it, Tai Chi? [inaudible 00:34:07], just let the energy flow. Did I guess that right, Joy? Just let the energy flow. If it's coming at you, don't resist. Let it flow by and then reorient, reframe and get the conversation back to where it needs to be, which is about how we're trying to create in this organization at an inclusive place where everybody matters and everybody belongs. So let's have that conversation about what you need in order to show up right.
Joy Stephens:
I'm going to add on top of that because David Sarnoff, your original question is how do you bring everybody along for this journey towards that full inclusion? And I want to just add in here, you can bring everybody along that wants to go. There's going to be people that are going to refuse this, and that is their right and their prerogative. I go back to the phrase, "Your right to swing your arm stops in my face." What we're asking people to do is not give up their pension, not give up their job, not give up their position, but just scooch you a little bit. Let everybody else have a seat at the table. It doesn't take anything away from you to be inclusive, but if you are going to continue to discriminate, continue to make derogatory comments about a particular community or group.
If you're going to continue to judge people based on their gender, their sexual orientation, their neurodiversity, their race, et cetera, and not on the meritocracy that's supposed to be everywhere, and it's actually very few places, if you're going to continue to do those things that harm other people, you have to stop or you have to go. You can stop doing those things or you can find another place. And I think that worries people because they wonder where does that line get drawn? Is it everyone that ever had a bad thought or is it only the most critical offenders? And again, this goes into what do we define as a bad apple? Are you just having bad thoughts and correcting yourself, catching yourself, allowing people to say, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't use that word anymore?"
Are you accepting feedback on improving your behavior in certain instances or are you doubling down for the wrong reasons and deciding you're going to go even harder on that? So that can't tell you what to do, and you've been here 20 years and how dare they make you change at all? This is the same people that still use Blackberries. Not to be a techno snob, but change is good. And if you want to keep up with what's happening, you have to accept that maybe we can live in a world where we don't denigrate each other, where we do look at people's actual merit. I mean, a lot of the things that are happening right now with affirmative action, if you look at it without the context of history, it's not that bad. We want people to be judged only on what they can do and what they provide and what they offer and on nothing else. And in a world where there is no historical disadvantage, that is where we want to go.
But we still have this history that unfortunately is trying to be covered where if we don't study it, we fail to understand why these discrepancies exist in the first place and that we are in a moment where we're trying to shore that up. If we can shore that up, then maybe the next generation doesn't have any of these programs because there's no need for them because we think differently, but we're not there yet. And so as we mentioned earlier, as we try to figure out which side we want to land on, what we should do as a company, as a firm, as an individual, help us shore that up.
Recognizing that it's not going to take anything away from you. I've said this before, if you share knowledge, share understanding, share your access, et cetera, it doesn't take away from what you have. It's not like pie. If I give you my piece of pie, I have none. It's like fire. If I am a flame and I light your flame, there is more light in the room. It does not mean that anything is lessened, only that we are spreading it, and we can do that, but we have to be willing to do it. That's all there is.
David Robert:
So to build on what Joy said, I think we have to, business leaders I think need to understand and appreciate the role that corporate America has played in advancing civil rights. Because when organizations embrace and go all in on programs and policies that foster inclusion and equity, that changes people's hearts and that spills out into our communities and it has a profound impact in terms of how we see each other. And so I think Michael Burchell is right. I mean, now is not the time to lean back and now's the time to lean in. And we always talk to our clients about their broader value proposition and does that value proposition truly reflect the intention that you have as a business leader or business owner around fostering inclusion and equity? It's a real opportunity to really have an honest examination in terms of what you're offering because that really is the message you're sending to your people about the degree to which you care about them.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thanks for sharing that. Joy, I love the fire analogy as you know, but to go back to what you said about meritocracy and affirmative action, because a lot of the advocates for the prevailing side in these recent Supreme Court decisions, their position was we should be colorblind. College admissions, job applications, a promotion, we should be colorblind. Now, I have a personal reaction to that in the context of everyone's lived experience, but would you or any of the panelists like to react to that first?
Joy Stephens:
Okay, so we should be colorblind. We're not, and this is basic affinity bias. One of the first biases that we notice, even babies notice when their skin color is different from the nurse or from their mother or whatever. So thinking that we can get past it just because we want to without any work is naive. However, if we could exist in a society where we do judge people everywhere only on their merit, then yeah, we could have a colorblind society. That means you're taking the names off of all the resumes, you're taking off anything that indicates race, gender, sexuality, anything that has been historically discriminated against is now not included. It's only a candidate number and a list of accomplishments, and you choose the best one based on that. But unfortunately, a lot of the power structures, as David Sarnoff was saying and David Robert was saying, in corporate America, in academia, in medicine, a lot of them, especially in this country are older, are Caucasian, are male.
And affinity bias says they're going to look for something that looks like them, not out of a desire to discriminate, but there's a bias for as well as the bias against. And that bias for means they're going to want to lean that way. How do you stop that? And you can't say that you're being colorblind because your bias still exists. And as long as your bias exists, there needs to be programs to prevent that bias from running rampant. And that's where affirmative action comes in. So until we get a better representation of all people at the highest levels of power, then we can start to say, "Well, maybe bias is mitigated or controlled better now, and we can have that colorblind society." We ain't there.
David Sarnoff (DB):
That's right. So we have a question in the chat and a raised hand. So if I could just go to that and see who would like to take it. The question is, as an HR leader, what can I do to get buy-in from our CEO to lean in and do this work? Who would like that?
David Robert:
Well, I can start, and I think Michael Burchell probably has an interesting perspective on this as well, because we work a lot with CEOs in companies. My first reaction is it's always a little bit heartbreaking to think about the reality of a CEO not taking initiative, not seeing for him or herself the importance of investing in their people. And it's a little bit heartbreaking and frustrating, but however, I know that that's our reality. So one of the things that we do, I would advise is that again, start the conversation and do researches. I mean, there is decades of research and more coming out on a daily basis seems that sort of dramatically underscores this concept that when you invest in your people and you create an inclusive environment, you outperform your peers. There's no question about it.
And if I were a CEO, I mean, I am a CEO, but if I owned a business, that would pique my curiosity because your revenue and profit margin is higher, your retention rates are higher, the level of productivity is higher. There's no negative. With the exception of time, it takes time to put some of these policies and practices into place, but there really is no downside to making these investments. And so it's hard to wrap my head around why a CEO wouldn't be all in on this. It's not terribly expensive. The return is unbelievable and it's just the ethical, moral thing to do from my perspective.
Michael Burchell:
I would just add, David, I would just add that this is an interesting question for me because a lot of CEOs have been carefully taught, no offense to any of the CEOs that might be on this call. CEOs have been carefully taught through their MBA programs or mentoring to focus solely on numbers and not attend to the human element as it relates to diversity. But you cannot, you absolutely cannot do a Google search of DEI value and not get 20 articles from a Harvard Business Review. They're just going to pop up. And so CEOs and other executives, because they've been carefully taught around what matters in terms of stakeholder management to focus on the "bottom line" are probably going to be listening very carefully about what is the economic business case for this? And so, I would put together some of the information from Harvard Business Reviews.
There's a great McKinsey study that comes out almost every other year about the DEI case. There's some interesting stuff around from great place to work if you just Google and go onto their website and pull one of their blogs. There's a lot of really great material out there right now that talks about just the absolute economic impact. And it's not like a little bit, it's significant. Those organizations that invest in DEIB efforts actually in outperform their peers like three to one in terms of the stock market growth. It's just significant. And if you're trying to figure out how to manage the current moment, because we're coming to economic softness, again, like I mentioned before, those organizations that doubled down and invest in their people around DEIB issues are going to find themselves in a much more improved space coming out of any economic recession than their peers. So the evidence is out there, and I would start with the intellectual and then I would move to the emotional and the head... Once you get to the head, then you can focus on the heart and the hands, right?
Michael Burchell:
Don't get there until you actually at least speak to what is in their head and the stuff that is actually blocking them.
David Robert:
I'll also need data, Michael. It's easy to dismiss anecdotal stuff or rumor, but it's hard to refute data. And so, one of the things that I would advise is because we assume that CEOs are completely plugged into the underlying sentiment of their people, and they're not, rarely are they. And so you have to bring that sentiment to that person. And the best way to do that in a non-defensive way is to collect data across your organization about how people feel about the organization and then share that with the CEO. And that often helps frame the conversation in a way that actually I think is more digestible to somebody who's a chief executive.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Joy, did you want to weigh in?
Joy Stephens:
Yes, I have two things now, but go ahead. Go ahead, Burchell.
Michael Burchell:
I want to make one more comment for Fritz, and Joy, jump into this and please do. But there's an interesting, again, a Harvard Business Review, study that came out several years back where they looked at the hiring rate of "diverse candidates." And what they discovered is if there was a slate of five qualified candidates, if there was one man, I mean, if there was one woman or there was one and/or person of color, the likelihood of them getting hired was zero, absolute zero consistently. And so if you posit for example, that one of the values in having a diverse inclusive organization is the innovation that happens, the ways in which we can broaden our ability to serve our clients and our customers. If there's all these good things that happen from an inclusive, diverse environment, but we're having a hard time trying to even bring people through the front door, then there is a lot of research that says it's about how people actually, even this kind of race conscious, gender conscious hiring has to be addressed.
Because if you actually have a slate of five candidates, and they did this research with all different organizations, all different size companies and places, the way in which managers think about who they want to bring in, if there's just one candidate, it's just not going to happen. So there really is, I mean, we have to be thinking about why would managers not be thinking about this? If we want a colorblind society as Joy mentions, then we have to by its very nature, now, be color or race conscious, gender conscious, sexual, we have to be conscious about those things now because the very fact that we're not actually is doing disservice to our organization.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Joy?
Michael Burchell:
I'll stop there.
Joy Stephens:
I forgot the second thing I want to say, but the first thing was going back to the idea of having the data and looking at the bottom line. Inclusion is a long game. So the return is not going to be in 11 months or about the first quarter of next year, but the data is there, the money's there. So that's the economic side or the factual side. And then Burchell, you mentioned the emotional side of it. If you are in HR and you're trying to convince your CEO to lean into this, what legacy does that person want to leave when they are gone? How do they want to be remembered? This is a watershed moment in the country where people are deciding what side of history, we talked about this earlier, do you want to be on? Do you want to be visionary or reactionary?
And this is my personal opinion. Visionary means understanding the power that inclusive diversity, not just diversity for numbers' sake, but having those people be an integral part of your organization and contribute and be themselves so that they can bring the whole selves to work and all of their ideas and innovation with it. That is a visionary approach as opposed to being reactionary and only reacting in the moment, like what's happening this month or this year, short term. You've got to look at the long term and that leads to potentially a better legacy if that is what they want to do. I had something else and I forgot.
David Sarnoff (DB):
That's okay. Thanks, Joy, and Fritz, do you want to weigh in? And then I promise we'll get to the raise hand.
Fritz Galette:
I'm soaking it in, but I heard David talking about quantitative data, Michael talking about qualitative data, and then Joy, you've touched upon legacy. When I sit down with those leaders, I try to figure out what's going to move them. Yes, most of them are trained for data and we'll dismiss the qualitative data unless you have some good quantitative data. But then I'll check in and ask, "How is this making sense to you?" And I'll ask like a psychologist, "What's coming up for you?" Because you can give the best compelling qualitative data and narrative how their people are feeling, but if it doesn't move the marker inside them, they're not going to change anything. We don't change just because of intellectual knowing. We change because there's a balance between the intellectual knowing and the heart. They got to go in concert so somebody can vote a certain way. That's because their heart is not in the lived experience of the people who they're voting against.
But as soon as you put them like the George Floyd, nine minutes, 32 second video, many people went from thinking that was a problem way over there to nine minutes into it of watching it. Oh my God, this is a problem for all of us, and that's going to be our work going forward, which is not only to try to get people to intellectually understand. So many smart people on this call intellectually know, and then we all intellectually know that if we get the narrative in front of them, maybe that'll move them. But the psychologist means always saying, you better check in and find out what's going on here. Because if none of it resonates with them, they're not going to change your behavior.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Fritz. Lindsay, can you please allow the raised hand to speak?
Lindsay:
Absolutely. Francine, you should be able to speak now.
Francine:
Can you hear me?
Loeb Team:
Yep, Yes. Yes. Hi, Francine.
Francine:
I would've put this in the chat, but I couldn't find the chat. I put some comments in the Q&A, but I don't know if you guys are even looking at Q&A yet. So not so much a question, but just a couple of comments. So when it comes to the woke and the anti woke, I think for people that are maybe not there yet or the people like just want to go to work, the change is too much at once. I mean, I think what's happening is people want to get there, but they're feeling like the woke, I don't know what you would call it, stream of consciousness or wherever we are with that, we want to go from one mile to a 100 miles an hour right away.
And I think that's what I'm hearing anyway, that some people I want to learn, I want to know, but man, I can't go as fast as they want us to go. So I just wanted to make that comment. And also, with an HR background, talking about being colorblind, I totally get what you're saying because I tried to do this at a firm without asking anybody. Started taking names, addresses, everything off of resumes, and the partners were like, "Who is this?" And I'm like, "You got them right there. What do you mean who is this?" So I tried that. It didn't go over too well at this one firm I worked, so I wanted to mention that.
But what gets me is that if you're removing the name, the geography, what about clubs people joined? Because what about the bringing your whole self to work? So you can't bring your whole self when you're trying to get the job. You can only bring your whole self after you're at the job. You understand what I'm saying? So I know that some people join things they're interested in, what means a lot to them. So if you're going to take the person's name off, you now have to take maybe what school they went to, what kind of activities they're into because of their background. And I don't know, to me, that's sad. It's like you're not just removing the color, you're removing the person. It's just a comment.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you so much, Francine.
Francine:
You're welcome.
David Sarnoff (DB):
I'm going to let everybody respond, and in the time we have left coming up on the hour, if you want to also share a closing thought. So David Robert, start with you.
David Robert:
Francine, I wanted to respond to your first statement because I think it's really compelling to think about. So I think that sentiment, that the change is happening too fast, it's actually pretty widely shared. I've heard that from people in my personal life and client work and stuff. But I have another perspective to consider. And I'll speak on behalf of marginalized communities, those of us who have been in historically marginalized communities have been waiting a long, long, long time. And so for us, the change can't happen fast enough. So it's definitely a different perspective to consider. So wanted to respond to that.
So yeah, so my final thought, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier is, and it builds upon what Michael Burchell shared earlier as well is be brave. Be brave. As whether you are a team leader, a supervisor, a manager, an executive, a business owner, be brave. Have the conversations. Don't be afraid of getting tripped up, because if you model that and you're showing courage about having conversations that might be uncomfortable or you might think might raise some issue in the organization, then others will feel comfortable having those conversations as well.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, David. Joy, minute for final thoughts.
Joy Stephens:
Yes, I want to build on what David Robert's saying. Be brave and be curious. I think I agree. I understand that we went from maybe worrying about a couple of different things to there's 17 things now and what all these letters mean, and I don't get it and I don't know. And it's a lot to understand and it is. But if you remain curious, then the tone, the impact, the intent with which you ask a question, maybe make a mistake or make a comment that might be received the wrong way, the intent is there, and it's seen. You're just trying to learn and being willing to accept, I got this wrong. Help me learn. I want to do it better next time. I went through this with some teachers I was working with, and they were talking about the many varied names in their class, and one teacher said, she gets names...
She lives in South Florida. And so the names run the whole spectrum. And she tells her kids, "Every year, I'm going to try my best to get your names. If I get it wrong, let me know and keep correcting me until I get it right." And so if you can extrapolate that, these are the little marginalized individuals, she's given them the agency to correct her to make her better. And she is not sitting on any excuses of, oh, this is too hard. Oh, I can't do it. Keep correcting me until I get it right. That's the curiosity. That's the desire, the intent to be better.
And so even though there's this tidal wave of identity from different people coming at you in your firm, in your practice, in your company, whatever, be curious about, okay, help me understand what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, help me understand more about you. There is research and books and documentaries that you can read to learn more about each group, but also if you get it wrong, okay, correct me when I get it wrong. That's what a leader can do to show that they want to be inclusive. Help me be inclusive. I messed this up. I didn't mean to. The intent is always known. I'm being genuine when I say I would like to learn more. And that can change the tone of an entire building.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you.
Joy Stephens:
And do that.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Joy. Michael Burchell and then we'll have Dr. Fritz wrap us up.
Michael Burchell:
Fritz to bring us home. Okay, so very quickly, I think to the degree that we can actually feel comfortable and develop our own capacity, all the leaders that are on this call around DEIB work, that's super critical because this is the moment where we're being tested, our organizations are being tested, and so it's important for us to be very focused on our values. This is our values, this is how we live our values. And so that's where the reframing comes from. Listen, Mr. Mrs., whoever, the reason why we do this is because we're trying to make sure that all of our employees feel like they're valued and they matter and they're included here.
Oh yes, Mr. and Mrs., I appreciate what you're saying. However, we want to make sure that we're actually attending to the actual needs of our clients and our customers, and so we're going to do X, Y, and Z. So we clear about couching and organizing your stuff around your values and your values are really about DEI values. So being very thoughtful about how you reframe, but using the moment to actually build our capacity and help reframe the argument and engage our people. So I'll stop there.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you, Michael, and Dr. Fritz, final thoughts.
Fritz Galette:
Final thoughts, I'm encouraging people to stay awake and stay conscious and stay curious, stay involved and so with saying in Star Wars, "No such thing as try, just do." We have to continue to do this work and do it together. Trying to work to include each other in the process. There is no other way, we need to keep at it. So use every opportunity that you can to connect and engage one another and keep on trying and doing and doing and doing around that. And we keep at it because we have technologies already in dialogue that are already available that we can use to do that.
David Sarnoff (DB):
Thank you so much, Dr. Fritz. What a great dialogue. Thank you so much to our panel, David Robert, Joy Stephens, Dr. Michael Burchell, Dr. Fritz Galette. Please visit us at loebleadership.com. Email us directly with questions or comments. Please connect with us on LinkedIn and we look forward to seeing you at our next Real Talk session right on time. Thank you so much.