Chief Change Officer - Greg Morley: Turning DEI Drama into Workplace Wins – Part Two

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Greg Morley isn’t your average HR guy. He’s the former DEI and HR head at Moët Hennessy, Disney, and Hasbro—and the brains behind Bond, the book on belonging your workplace desperately needs. In Part 2 of this two-part series, Greg breaks down the complexities of implementing DEI in global organizations. He shares how rewiring systems—not just setting quotas—creates real inclusion. From tackling unconscious bias to aligning leadership with grassroots energy, Greg highlights the power of authentic cultural shifts. He also contrasts Eastern and Western DEI strategies, showing how understanding local values can foster belonging.  Key Highlights of Our Interview: The Crisis of Workplace Loneliness “Workplace loneliness isn’t just a personal issue—it’s a challenge organizations must tackle to foster belonging and inclusion.” The Employee-Employer Power Flip “The workplace dynamic has shifted—it’s now a buyer’s market for employees who demand recognition, safety, and belonging.” Redefining Diversity “Diversity isn’t just what you see—it’s also life experiences, generational perspectives, languages, and abilities, visible or hidden. Most of our diversity at work is invisible. Who someone marries, whether they have kids, or cognitive differences often go unnoticed—but they matter.” Start With Yourself “Change begins within. Reflecting on personal experiences of inclusion or exclusion can help leaders empathize and create a more welcoming environment for others.” East Meets West “In the East, inclusion feels more organic, driven by community and connection. In the West, it’s often about achieving measurable outcomes and hitting diversity targets.” _________________________ Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Greg Morley Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2.5+ Millions Downloads 80+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Great. Let's start with you giving us a bit of an introduction to this book, as well as a brief background on yourself for those who might be tuning in for the first time. This will help the listeners understand where you are coming from before we get into the book's content, the lessons, and the teachings you want to share.

Thank you for having me back. Really pleased that you and I met each other more than a year ago, and I'm really proud of you and the work you're doing and what you're bringing to the conversation about humanity. So thank you for that. Today, what we're going to talk about is the book that I've written called

Bond, Inclusion and the Keys to Belonging and Connection. A little bit about me. So I've spent most of my life in HR as an HR business leader and, and a good part of the latter part of my career in inclusion and belonging and diversity. I did write this new book, which I hope is a guide to inclusion and belonging in the workplace. I've had the experience and great good fortune of leading diversity initiatives in the US, Europe, and Asia at major multinationals, such as General Electric, Disney, Hasbro, and most recently, my experience with LVMH Mo at Ennessy. And I wrote the book to share what I believe are really life-changing lessons I've learned

for how leaders and teams can be more inclusive and embrace company diversity to be even more successful in the companies in which they're working. First things first, starting with belonging. What do you mean by belonging in the workplace? And why is that important? Sure, it's a great question. And let me maybe start by why I wrote the book. What inspired me to write the book as a way of addressing

the belonging, inclusion, and connection terms of the book, what inspired me to write the book as a way of addressing sort of the belonging, inclusion and connection terms of the book. Over the decades of experience I had, both in and in HR roles, but also in roles such as marketing, sales and communications and distribution, what I saw was there is an essence of crisis of loneliness at work for some people. What I saw was there is an essence of crisis of loneliness at work for some people. And there's a very important role that organizations play in fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion. And the fostering of that culture of belonging and inclusion is not just a nice thing to do and everybody feels good at work and we go and we have parties and we're happy and

we have lunch together. There is data that reinforces that when an organization is diverse, inclusive, and has leaders who lead in an inclusive manner, on many measurable aspects, those companies do better. They do better in terms of innovation. They do better in terms of innovation. They do better in terms of avoiding risk. Uh, they do much better in terms of getting profitable products to market. And they do much better in terms of what would be obvious, which is keeping good people and attracting good people. So there is a business imperative to being good at these things.

And what encouraged me to write the book was I saw all of these sort of good and bad practices over my career both within the companies I was working with and With others but that I have become associated with and that's why I got to the point of okay There's something to be talked about and I think finally what was a driving factor for me was I about. And I think finally what was a driving factor for me was I believe in my core that these things I just talked about are important to individuals and to businesses. And what I saw was we were in the world of diversity, equity and inclusion getting too far away from what I believed was the important part of diversity, equity, and inclusion was diverse work forces, working well together and creating great business outcomes

and great outcomes for individuals. And so that's how I got to the point of writing the book. I agree with you 100% when it comes to belonging versus loneliness. Early in my career, I was immersed in big organizations, and it was all about work and climbing the corporate ladder. Belonging was belonging was seen as more of a soft feeling, something you didn't really think about much. You worked hard, made your boss happy, and got along. Maybe you would get promoted, faster and better. Some would call it luck, others would call it politics. That's just a normal corporate lie.

But when you talk about belonging in the workplace, especially now that you've absorbed it and you've been involved in different cultures, I'm curious, why is it so difficult to develop a true and sustainable sense of belonging for employees? And how can we nurture that sense given all the complexities of corporate life? There are many aspects to this, but let me focus on a couple of them. The first is that the world is changing in terms of the work and especially since COVID. And I just read an article this morning which highlighted this. The arrangement or the agreement that employees and employers have has flipped.

It's a buyer's market in a way now for employees to go in workplaces where they believe they're going to be recognized, they're going to be rewarded, they're going to be heard, and they're going to feel like they belong. Now, that's happening in a time when individuals are more and more isolated because of things like social media. And social media has this double edged way of impacting people, which is it makes us much more connected, but much less connected. And when we talk about belonging in the workforce, what we're talking about is an individual coming to work and feeling like they can do their best work there, that they're going to be recognized for what

they do, that the workplace is a safe place. Many people don't have safe places outside of work, and it's a responsibility of employers to create a place that's a safe place to work. And why is all of this important? It's important because we want people on our teams and ourselves to do the incremental effort. We all get hired and we get a job description and it says all the things that have to happen. The reality of jobs is, you know, people do some things on the job description and some things off the job description. And many times a career like the one you were talking about, events where you work hard, you put in a lot of effort and you get ahead

and you get promoted comes from the fact that somebody's doing something beyond their job, the incremental effort. So belonging is important because it creates this connection somebody has with their role, with their company, with their boss, with their peers, which allows them to feel encouraged to do the incremental effort. And that's how companies win when employees are fully engaged and doing the incremental effort. are fully engaged and doing the incremental effort. As you were sharing, it reminded me of an incident from about 20 years ago, when I worked at an international financial institution. At that time, I was a store At that time, I was a store employee. I received a lot of positive feedback from clients.

I was sent to the headquarters for special training, first of its kind, and my boss rewarded me for all the hard work I put in. My clients recognized it, and I was working incredibly hard, 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. I genuinely enjoyed the work. In your terms, I felt a strong sense of belonging to the role, to the company, and to my clients. The pay wasn't anything special, even under industry standards.

But I was so motivated and invested in the world. Then something changed. Then something changed. My boss left, and her replacement had a completely different style and approach. I wouldn't place blame entirely on this new person, but we didn't get along the way I had with my previous boss. The entire culture and team dynamics shifted. The vibe, the chemistry, the sentiment. Everything fell off. That's when I lost my sense of belonging. I kept working hard, and professionally, to serve my clients.

But there was an internal conflict with my new supervisor. This eroded the connection I had felt to my work. The result, I quit the job, and it came as a surprise to everyone. Clients, colleagues, even those at headquarters, they couldn't understand it because I had been such a hard worker, talented analyst. For them, it was a real loss.

For me, the damage was deeper. That's when I experienced my first episode of mental illness, what we would call now burnout, and that burnout spiraled into depression. I'm sharing this now because it ties back to what you said about the sense of belonging or the lack of it. When that sense is lost, especially in a role where I had thrived and found purpose, the consequences were the fear for both my career and my health. It was a perfect example of how critical belonging really is. people go through those kinds of episodes. And oftentimes the loneliness occurs because we don't believe other people have had that experience or are going through those things either in the past or

people that we work with. So it's very powerful that you share a story like that, that's personal, and that can give encouragement to others. There are, you, you made this mention about you were working hard and you were loving what you were doing and you were getting recognized, but you weren't necessarily feeling like you were being well-paid.

At some points in our career, maybe all along our career, people will feel like they're not being well-paid, but the payment that you are getting in terms of satisfaction, encouragement, self-worth, and the longer-term development in your career far outpaced what you believe maybe you should have been earning. And there are two critical people in the organization. It's us and our manager. And one of the reasons that I believe it's often difficult for managers to create a sense of belonging and you experienced it with a manager who knew you, knew how to motivate you, knew what it was important to you, knew how to encourage you. And then you changed to a manager

who didn't know you as well, didn't know how to encourage you. Didn't know how to recognize you. And ultimately you left the organization and it probably quite fragile state. Um, was that second manager, my guess is didn't spend the time to get to know you and understand what was important to you and make you feel that regardless of who you were working for, you were still important and you were still valuable even at your low salary that you felt. So I think that part is maybe the advice I would give coming out of your very heartfelt sharing is that managers need to get to know the people that work for them. And in a way that you can understand what's important to them, what's important to them in

their life, what they need to be successful in their jobs. And those are the conversations that oftentimes we're not training managers to have, but they're just human conversations. They're just born out of curiosity. And I think that those things are much more important than we give. We give time for. We've touched upon belonging. Let's move forward to talk a bit about inclusion. How would you define DEI?

Or what does DEI mean to you? So when we define DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion, most people think of diversity, equity, and inclusion as relating to things like gender and skin color, perhaps because they're the most visible forms of diversity. What I would say is also critically important, and I've seen this in my experiences, it's just as important to understand what experience, both life and career experience,

somebody brings to their job. What generation they come from, what languages they speak or understand. Who do they have any disabilities? Do they have any exceptional abilities? Those are all things that are important in determining how you build a diverse workforce. The reality is most of the diverse elements that we bring to work are unseen. Now, who I'm married to is unseen.

Do I have children or not is unseen. Do I have a cognitive ability or disability is unseen in most places. So this is why we have to get to know the people that work for us. And when we talk about then why is that inclusion, why is the word inclusion important or the concept inclusion is, it's to me I always imagined the image of an orchestra. So in an orchestra there are many different instruments and they all have their own role and at some point they come together in a piece to create a beautiful piece of music and experience a feeling.

And it's the job of the manager, the leader, to understand which pieces they need to bring to different projects, different work streams, different situations, to create a beautiful piece of music, which can only be done in an orchestra by an incredibly diverse field of instruments, which is also what we see at work. Outcomes at work are better from an innovation perspective, from a profitability perspective, from a risk and compliance perspective, when you have diverse teams. And going back to this diversity of all the different elements

which are seen in Unseed. So the manager is the conductor? Yes. So the manager is the conductor, but also think about the conductor as a rotating role. If you're project managing, then you could be the conductor, but also think about the conductor as a rotating role. If you're project managing, then you could be the conductor. If you're running a business or employee resource group,

you could be the conductor. It's just a matter of appreciating the differences in the workforce, trying to get the best out of the people so that they feel included. And then what is included mean? It means that when I'm at work and I'm doing work, I feel like my voice is heard. I feel like I'm respected.

I feel like I am in a safe place. I feel like I'm recognized for the work that I do. And all of those things get back that point about Incremental effort which is when those things happen then people will do more work harder and feel a real connection to the organization and ultimately a Responsibility for the success of the organization and for the person's colleagues All these ideas sound great, but when it comes to implementation,

things get much harder. Like many great concepts, as when they are put into action within big corporations or even small teams,, is the execution that often derails the original intention. From my experience, how can those listening, whether they are managers, CEOs, or others in leadership roles, actively implement good ideas? I know this might be a big question, but I'd love to hear more about your perspective from

an execution standpoint. Are there certain things a CEO or a leader should focus on to set the stage for success, so that when they delegate the tasks to others, the implementation stays true to the original vision? Yeah, great question. And my belief is that it's easier than it seems, and it's easier than we make it out to be. If you're trying to change the culture of an organization, it takes time. And to say, change a cultured organization takes three to five years, really, to change one.

And that's with everybody working in alignment and understanding. To change the culture of a team, like you experienced, can happen almost overnight, for better or for worse, and understanding. To change the culture of a team, like you experienced, can happen almost overnight, for better or for worse, depending on the leader. In the book, in my book Bond, I identified five different keys to inclusion,

which we called them. And I'll just highlight a couple of them because you talk about, example, CEOs. So just highlight a couple of them because you talk about, example, CEOs. So there are a couple of things that I picked out from my own experience and in the interviews I did with others, which I think are critical. The first one is that leadership matters. So inclusion starts with the CEO or the most senior person in the organization So inclusion starts with the CEO or the most senior person in the organization or a manager.

Assume that your own team is a company, the manager is the CEO. It's not a, inclusion is not a matter for HR. Inclusion is a matter for the organization. And when employees see leaders practicing inclusive behaviors, calling on people in meetings, making sure that people have a voice, recognizing good work, sharing their own stories as you've shared your own story. These are all the things that make a difference. And just the physical presence of a senior leader

in moments that are important to the organization as it relates to inclusion are important. And I'll give you a specific story that happened when I was in Hong Kong the last time. So I was doing a talk about the book and the lessons of the book at a pretty large organization. And I was told that the senior management don't normally come to these kinds of events. So, which is unfortunate because they, you know, they matter. Right before the talk started, the senior management team, the CEO and the senior managers all came into the room. And I took the opportunity during that talk to them and encourage them to be there and be present.

Because what I saw when they walked into the room was a room full of 100 plus people really brighten up and lighten up. And so that's what I say when leadership matters. Just being there makes a big difference. I think there's maybe one or two other things that are particularly important. It's important that we start with ourselves. So there are many things in an organization

that we can and cannot change. And the more senior you are, maybe you have more impact over a larger group and the more junior you are, your impact is narrower. But we can all start with ourself. So we all have stories of feeling included or excluded. And I like to, when I'm talking to groups, I like to ask people to reflect on that.

What's something that they think about when they were included or when they were excluded? How did that make them feel? And I think that's a real source of power for creating a sense of inclusion for yourself and your coworkers and even your customers. So if you start with yourself, you can impact a lot. Then you have to build out from there.

And I think the last thing I would say in the keys of inclusion is it's very important to search for common ground. It may sound counterintuitive to say we build these very diverse teams and then we want to search for common ground. But in fact, we all want to rally around something. It could be the mission of the organization. It could be a project that we're working on. It could be a colleague who's stressed. It could be a project that we're working on. It could be a colleague who's stressed and we're trying to help that colleague.

I had a situation with a very good friend of mine from university. And when marriage equality was being talked about in the U.S. maybe 15 years ago, it was a very important topic to me because as a member of the LGBTQ community and as somebody who was in a long-term relationship, access to marriage was important for us and for myself and my to-be husband.

But for my friend who's straight and has four kids and he didn't see the, he wasn't interested in marriage equality, which at first took me very much by surprise. And we had a discussion about it and I said why is this important it's important I believe to everyone because it has to do with people being able to love and build relationships and family and support structure with people that they love. And so we came to this point of common ground because that was important to him too.

Whether we called it straight marriage or gay marriage was not the issue. So I think it's critically important to search for common ground as a way to bring people together and create a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace. Yes, you are absolutely right. The visible involvement of leaders is crucial, especially in large organizations. That public display of support from the top sets the tone for the rest of the company. When the CEO or key decision makers visibly

endorse an initiative, it creates a ripple effect. People take cues from their leaders and if the leader is truly committed to a certain direction. It's much easier for the organization to align itself with that. Like you said, in these cases, talk is not cheap at all. It is an important tool to communicate priorities and demonstrate what matters. Execution might align with the people below the leader,

but the leader's voice serves as a signal of endorsement, setting the stage for everyone else to follow suit. The power of a leader's voice goes beyond, I think what we can imagine. I have had many situations in my career where individuals who worked for me or with whom I worked or we worked on projects together would mimic back to me things that I had said to them

that had an impact on them, either an impact on them personally or their career or the work they were doing. And those are things I don't even remember saying. And as leaders in an organization at whatever level, don't underestimate the power of your voice and your presence. And in my six years at Moat Hennessy, working on launching and working on diversity, equity, and inclusion,

the number one key to success of having a great outcome or great outcomes was that for a period of time, the CEO who's a very respected individual in Millet Hennessy and in the LVMH group, would, every time he stood in front of a group, talk about why it's important that we have a diverse and inclusive organization. He didn't have to spend 15 minutes. He could spend two minutes talking about why that was important to the innovation, the evolution, being an attractive company, being an attractive brand or brands to consumers,

knowing consumers, all of these things. People pick up on that. Now, he probably would do that in a talk of 25 or 30 minutes. He'd take a minute or two to talk about diversity and inclusion. It made a huge difference because people picked up on those shoes. They, if he, it's important to the CEO, then it might've been important to me. And that's how the voice of a leader has impact on others. Speaking of using the power of leaders and voices to emphasize the importance of DEI,

to emphasize the importance of DEI. It's true that DEI has become a politically charged topic, especially in light of the upcoming presidential election. There's been an evolution in how DEI is perceived, with some viewing it as part of a border walk movement. How do you address the misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding DEI in this current cultural climate? It's a great question because it's one of the reasons I wrote the book, which I saw this kind of fraying up the core of what what I believed was important, which is in creating inclusive environments. There's a great article which I would encourage anyone to read. And it was published last week by our mutual friend, Todd Sears, who's the CEO of Out and Equal.

And he was addressing the issues that have arisen in recent weeks with large companies backing away from targets and commitments in diversity, equity and inclusion. And he makes a point, makes a number of points, which I think are just absolutely spot on, which is in none of the cases where you've seen large companies back away from commitments in terms of measurement or commitments in terms of public accountability, have they backed away from initiatives that they are doing internally with their employees or even with their marketing initiatives. So what I know about what's happening in the world is that there is a very public stance that some companies are taking. And that's, I think, to align with the views

of probably the majority of their customers. Then there is a back-of-the-house or internal discussion around these topics, which hasn't really changed. So take for example, a company, a large company, extends benefits to nursing mothers. Nowhere are people taking those benefits back? Because they've now become the normal. Companies are extending benefits to domestic partners or spouses maybe where they can't marry in different places around the world.

Companies are not retracting those benefits. What companies are doing, which is to play a safer game, which is to be less high profile during this period of, I think, more intense scrutiny over diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I may be a contrarian in the field, but I would say that diversity, equity, and inclusion should be scrutinized like any other investment in the company. And unless we have a strong case, then there's a, there's a responsibility by a company to push back on it.

Now the political external view is going to be quite intense, I think for the foreseeable future, what we have to do as practitioners and companies and as managers and companies is go back to the core, which is we know inclusive environments have better business outcomes. We know diverse teams create better business outcomes. We know that inclusive leaders drive better business outcomes. And so that's what we need to be focused on. And if for a while companies need to be less public about that than Soviet. My next question is, you've worked extensively across different regions.

You're American, but now you're based in France. You've also had experiences in Hong Kong, Singapore, and China. With that kind of global perspective, I'd like to hear your thoughts on DEI practices. Through your eyes, what are some of the key differences between Eastern and Western approaches to DEI? Are there misconceptions or different ways to address these issues? It seems like a lot of focus, a lot of coverage on DEI tends to come from an American or Western perspective.

Could you compare both sides, East and West, in terms of how they practice DEI, the challenges they face, and how they tackle these problems? and how they tackle these problems? Great question. And the insight about culture is spot on. The evolution that I went on from Disney to Hasbro to Moet Hennessy was important because at Disney,

it's basically an American multinational company. It has a way of doing things, which is fairly consistent around the world. Hasbro, similar. Moat Hennessy, very different, because as you mentioned, Moat Hennessy is a conglomerate, and it's a conglomerate within a conglomerate, which LVMH is a holding company in a conglomerate.

So of the 26 different companies that exist within Moat Hennessy, and when I talk about companies, it's things like Dom Perignon or Belvedere Vodka or Hennessy Cognac or Ville Cliquot Champagne, Cloudy Bay wine. It's very different products that come from very different places and therefore a very different cultures. What's important about the practice to sing of creating inclusive cultures is you have to understand the culture of the organization before you come up with a solution. And I tell this example in the book where a guy I was working with, a friend of mine from Hong Kong, he did a lot of development work in East Africa, worked for an NGO.

And one of their mantras was don't just do something. I don't just stand there. Do nothing. Now, most of the time you say don't just stand there. Do something right. If there's a fire or there's a refrigerator is open. Don't just stand there. Do something close the door.

But in development work with what their view is, sometimes doing something right away is the worst thing. So we need to have positive intent about how we want to change organizations. But we also need to be observant, we need to understand the culture, we need to understand what's important to the people in the organization. And again, back to your powerful story, we need to understand the culture, we need to understand what's important to the people in the organization. And again, back to your powerful story, we need to understand the stories that exist in the organization. So why is that relevant then when we talk about a kind of East West approach to diversity and inclusion?

So what I found in Asia, because of the more collective environment and collective culture that exists, is that we really do need to start with the stories of people in the organization, rather than starting with the KPI that we want to achieve. So we know that in Asian Eastern culture, family collective culture is much more important than it is maybe in many places in the West. So it's important to understand what are the stories of people in the organization and how do those stories get told

so that the people around those people can create inclusion or create inclusive environments, not because we're doing it because somebody gave us a KPI, we're doing it because it's part of the family. And that, I think, is an important, nuanced approach to the way we develop diversity inclusion strategies in Asia versus the way it would be done in the US or to some extent in Europe. So you have to start with the culture of the organization and the culture which is the dominant culture in which the organization works. So if it's Hong Kong culture, it's Japanese culture

or whether it's Taiwanese culture and then build out from that versus saying we're going to have 50% target on gender and then we can't skate that to the whole organization which is a which is much more of a western way of approaching something. You are bringing back a lot of my own memories from the Well, it may not have been related to DEI. I remember, whenever there was a new policy set by the headquarters in the US, especially from the senior leadership, they would often say, let's do the same thing Asia too. But we will push back and say, Asia doesn't work that way. It's often seen as a monolith. But in reality, Asia is as diverse as Europe, with many countries, cultures, and even differences within a single country. Even when they say, oh, it's just the Chinese market,

they don't realize the vast differences between Chinese communities, whether from Hong Kong, Taiwan, or mainland China. And within mainland China itself, people from the north, south, east, and west all have their own unique cultural dynamics. So a one-size-fits-all DEI policy transcribed from elsewhere just doesn't work in Asia. The diversity within Asia-Pacific requires a more nuanced, localized approach. No. And get back to why is it important. It's important that company cultures are inclusive,

because we know that the outcomes are better. It's important that company cultures are inclusive because we know that the outcomes are better. It's important that company cultures are diverse in the context of the diversity of the workforce and the consumer base where they operate. Because we know that there are better outcomes for the business. How you get there has to be tailored by the individual location and the individual company. tailored by the individual location and the individual company. It's not what I would say is something we have to avoid, is that diversity and inclusion doesn't work in Asia.

That is just positively wrong. It doesn't work in Asia from a Western perspective or in a Western application, but it's as or more important that in Asia or in Africa or in Europe, South America, North America, that inclusion is practiced and is part of the culture. That creates better outcomes for an organization. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media.

I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.