The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Sejal Thakkar, Esq. TrainXtra, Chief Civility Officer

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

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You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming to another great podcast we certainly appreciate you tuning in and thank you for being here be sure to go see the video version of this at youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss.

Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss and go see all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, see them all. They're all out there. Just go find them and all that good stuff. So we have a very interesting guest on today with us on the show. Sejal Thakkar. She dubs herself the Chief

Civility Officer. Sejal is not your average employment law attorney. Her more than 15 years of experience advising clients, human resources, personnel, and legal counsel regarding sound, standard employment practices uncovered a need and a personal passion for bringing more proactive, relevant, and impactful workplace training programs to your clients and their teams. Her highly experiential customized workshops tailored to executives, managers, and individual contributors bring the courtroom to the training room in an interactive and engaging environment that favors human stories over compliance checklists. Welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you, Chris. This is so exciting. I'm so humbled to be here. Thank you again. We're humbled and excited to have you as well. This is awesome. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs.

Sure. So I'm only on LinkedIn, so you can find me on LinkedIn. And the other place you can see what I'm up to is my website, which is trainextra.com with no E in the extra. There you go. So what is a chief civility officer? Chris, as you said, I've been an employment law attorney since about 2003. And the cases I primarily worked on dealt with harassment and discrimination in the workplace. So I saw a lot of incivility in the cases that I worked on. And by the time that I got involved as an attorney, it was too late for me to really help. At that point, once the lawsuits filed, there are really no winners. So about three years ago, I decided, you know what, I want to really work with organizations proactively to help them raise awareness, to educate their supervisors and their employees.

So when they are dealing with incivility in the workplace, they know what to do rather than let it kind of fester and turn into conflict and turn into a lawsuit. There you go. I've been referred to you by a friend, and I know you did a TED Talk. And was that one of the things that led you down this road to study this in your career and help corporations? So we have to give a shout out to Summer Watson, who actually introduced me to you. But yeah, so the TED Talk was really about to talk about the pain, paradox and power of bias. And it's an area that I'm very passionate about for several different reasons. One, because I've experienced bias from a very early age. I'm Indian. My parents were immigrants

from India. They moved to Chicago in 1974. And so growing up in a predominantly Italian neighborhood, I dealt with a lot of discrimination and harassment growing up. So I've been on the receiving side of that. So I've always had this social justice side of me and wanting to really help marginalized groups, be a voice for them to really figure out how we can get towards justice and equality. And so going to law school was always something I knew I was going to do early on. My dad would always joke I knew I was going to do early on. My dad would always joke about how I was going to be a lawyer because I asked why all the time. So he was right.

And so I did become a lawyer and employment law just landed in my lap because I wish I could do justice everywhere. But the employment area, being in the workplace, I can really make a difference. So bias is one of those areas that I'm just so passionate about because especially this last year, Chris, the word bias has become so demonized, like it's this really bad thing. It's to judge people, to shame people. And so I'm on a mission to really help educate people about what bias is, why it's normal, and what we can all do about understanding what our own bias is and putting into place strategies to help us so that we can navigate through our own

bias. And so that TEDx talk that I did really is my way of raising awareness on this really important topic. So let's dig into that. Give us a spin on this because we have several people on. We've talked about inclusivity and inclusion officers and stuff. But let's talk about that principle you mentioned where bias isn't always a bad thing or let's get into that. Yeah. And it isn't. And bias is normal, right? So our brain processes so much information that's constantly coming at us. Our brain needs to be efficient. We think about if you had to think about every single thing you do, how many times your heart beats, how many times you breathe, how many times you do anything, we'd be overwhelmed.

The scientists have said that our brain processes close to 11 million pieces of information every second, right? Out of that 11 million, only 50 is consciously processed. So the rest of that information, so here we are thinking we're making conscious, deliberate choices, when reality is we're on autopilot most of the time. So the way that our brain is so efficient is because it engages in the complicated pattern recognition system without us even realizing it. So bias is actually, it's neither negative or positive. We all have a brain. I think most of us do. So you're like shaking your head. I'm thinking of some people I see in politics on TV. Okay. Okay. So there are some exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, and so it's really about normalizing what

bias is, how it works. And look, we've all gone through different lived experiences, right? Different religions, different cultures, different backgrounds, different educations. And so it's about understanding because of what you've gone through in your life, the way that you might react to a person who might be different than you, or a situation is going to be different than the person next to you. So bias is normal. And once you understand what your own biases, and so here's what motivated me, because when I started training on this topic, what I started doing was I started replacing the word bias in my trainings with the word belief.

Because that's what biases are. There are hidden beliefs that we have because of some automatic assumptions that we're making without even realizing it. The problem is, Chris, is when you make these assumptions about people and you don't realize it, it can be actually be very harmful. So we hear about this word microaggressions. And now we hear about that word a lot these days, microaggressions. Microaggressions come from your unconscious or implicit bias. So if you're not aware of what your implicit biases are, you might, without even realizing it, say something to somebody, make a facial feature or gesture, change the tone of your voice, maybe not make eye contact with somebody without even realizing it. And

you're sending off the wrong messages, harmful messages to somebody, right? So the more that you do to understand what your own biases are, then you can put strategies in place to make sure that you're not being harmful to those around you. So what are some good strategies that people can take and employ? Yeah. So to understand what your own biases are, right? There is an online tool that you can use. It's called the Implicit Association Test. It's a test. It was online.

It's free. We love free. It was put together by Harvard University, Virginia, University of Washington. A bunch of these psychologists got together and they put this online tool together. And it's broken out into different categories, but you can go into any one of the categories and it asks you a series of questions. Once you finish answering those questions, it'll give you areas of potential bias. Again, not a bad thing. It just to show you that, wait a second, based on what you've gone through in your life,

you have a tendency to lean in this direction. And that is so helpful because once you know what your tendencies are, you can make sure that you're mindful of them. So that implicit association test is a really great tool that everybody can start using. Another tool that you can use is super simple. The thing with our unconscious bias is that they're unconscious to us, but they're actually, it comes out in our actions and our words to everybody around us. So as somebody that'll be honest with you, even brutally honest with you, someone that

cares about you, that is there when you're making decisions, not the person that's going to tell you what you want to hear, but they'll really be honest with you about what you, you know, just say, am I being biased in the decisions that I make? And just be ready for the answer you'll get. Because a lot of times it comes out, like, for example, one of my girlfriends just pointed out to me, one of my own biases, again, it's not a bad thing. We all have them. It's normal. And so when I grew up, my parents owned their own businesses. And so customer service was drilled into my head, customer service. So when I go to a restaurant, and again, my girlfriend pointed this out to me, which she said, and this was before COVID when we were still going out for dinners and so forth.

She would say, Sejal, what's so funny about you? Whenever we go to a restaurant, if the first waiter or waitress, if they smile at you, you automatically assume that the food's going to be good. Because of their smile or because of their friendly customer service, my brain automatically assumes that the food's going to be good. And we all know that just because somebody smiles at you, that doesn't mean the food is going to be good. But that's just a hard hard wiring up here that I am aware of now. And so these little things, though, that we do think about it, if the person didn't smile at me, because let's say they were in a rush, or there was something going on, I might automatically assume that I'm not going to go to this restaurant anymore without taking that extra step to say, wait a second, don't just make that judgment. Don't make that assumption. Give it a chance

because really the difference between our unconscious bias and our conscious beliefs is a matter of speed. It happens in the speed of a light, just in the blink of an eye. And so if you can recognize that and you put into some place, some strategies to slow down your thinking, because one of the things that I learned, and this is why I do a lot of speaking on this area, is a lot of our unconscious biases are actually the exact opposite of what our current beliefs are because of something that happened years ago. So for example, in that talk, I talk about how I was bullied and harassed growing up in that town. Now, if I saw somebody who,

the kids that were bullying me were Italian. So let's say now I'm a hiring manager and an Italian person comes in for an interview. I might have that automatic reaction because I was bullied and that happened years ago. That has nothing to do with this person standing here in front of me. But if I'm not aware that, wow, this could actually happen and I might make a decision to not hire this person, I can go on discriminating or not

giving people an opportunity because of that unconscious bias. Now I'm out there advocating for equal rights. So that's contrary to what I'm out there teaching, but that's how these biases work. They get lodged up here from something that's happened to us, and we need to be conscious of that before we act on it. That's pretty interesting. I used to have a bully named Bob, and I never hired Bobs. So I don't know.

No, I'm just kidding. I don't do microaggressions. I stick with macroaggressions. I think they're funner. I think they're funner to give people a full macro. I mean, why go micro when you can go macro? Really? You can just give them the full aggression.

So this is pretty interesting. Microaggressions are just as harmful as macroaggressions. Are they? Are they? Darn it. I figured I'd just go all in. So that's basically my thing. But there's, like I said, we've talked about inclusion throughout the year.

And of course, a lot of this is surrounded George Floyd and the trial. I think we're going to see be wrapping up here soon. And I went on a journey years ago when someone was elected recently, five years ago, four years ago. And I was studying if I had different biases or different prejudices or if I was fully cleaned out of whatever because I started hearing the code words that the white nationals were using. And I'm like, well, I've used the word culture sometimes. Am I doing things bad? And so I started walking around and doing a facial recognition test.

I think a lot of my aunts has heard this multiple times, but I started walking around. And when I would see faces, especially just for example, go in the store, regardless of the face, I'd look at the face and I try and make, I try and listen to what, okay, so what did you just assume about this person? What assumptions did you make based upon this person, how they walk, how they gait, how they're coming towards you, what aspects of their face, whether just whoever they were. And it was really interesting to hear the discussions that I was having in my head, where it'd be like that Harley Davidson guy looks pretty scary and he's probably done some prison time. And you like, listen to it. You're like, you don't

know that Harley Davidson dude. You don't know if he's carrying a weapon or maybe he beats up people on weekends. Like you have a whole thing. Cause you knew some Harley Davidson people who did and they sold drugs. And you don't know anything about that dude right there. Why are you making those choices? You're just a little bit judgy, aren't you, buddy? And, yeah, it was interesting to listen to the different conversations I'd have when I walked around the store. And it tuned me in to some of the assumptions and judgments I was making.

And I hopefully, I don't know, hopefully none of those people got microaggressions from the, I did go stare at them for about five minutes face to face and just glare it out, but hopefully they didn't take that the wrong way. I don't know. I may be, probably got punched in the face that day. What do you think about that? Is that a good way to maybe look at things or what's a good way for people to learn more? They can take that test, but is there a way they can go deeper? Yeah, I think it's just exactly what you're doing. It's about recognizing that your view of the world is filtered through what you've gone through. And a lot of times we all do it. It's normal. Research shows that when you see somebody for the first time, you automatically make assumptions without even

realizing it. The first things you notice about them are their race, their age, and their gender. And I would add to that probably whether they're able-bodied or not. So without even noticing it, you don't know anything about that person. You're going to automatically see those things about that person. And then unconsciously, you're going to associate those with other characteristics like wealth, social status, education. And this is all going on without you even realizing it. And so doing exactly what you were doing is recognizing that, whoa, I don't really know that person, but here I am assuming that they're this or that

because of the bike they ride or whatever. Just noticing that and then realizing that we all make those spontaneous judgments that sometimes will give people advantages that they may not have earned. And other times it can give people disadvantages that they may not have earned. So stopping yourself short of reacting to those automatic judgments and asking yourself, why? Why am I doing that? Why am I leaning in this direction? Is it because I've gone through something?

Maybe I need to figure out what that's all about but really asking yourselves and taking time to analyze those situations and and then taking action and so one of the things I talk about in my talk is we all grew up with this sort of golden rule you know treat others in the way that you want to be treated and I think it's better if we follow the platinum rule, which is treat others in the way that they want to be treated. But the way that we can do that, and the only way you could do that is by making time to get to know that person. And so again, you're staying away from those automatic judgments, and you're building in time to get to know that person and say, okay, now that I've spent time talking to Chris and I had this wonderful conversation with him rather than

relying on my automatic judgments, now I can act towards him in a certain way. But also just simple techniques, asking for feedback rather than making assumptions. And we all do it. And this last year has been really important in this journey for a lot of people, because now we're doing a lot of virtual calls, and everybody's Zooming all the time. You can see people's facial reactions and body languages and gestures. You're more hyper focused on it than if you were standing next to each other. I'm just seeing you. So just pay attention to people's reactions, right? Pay attention to, are they making eye contact or were they smiling? And then all of a sudden they stopped smiling.

And a lot of it is just as you observe people and you spend more time noticing how they're reacting, you can take that information and make sure that, does this line up with my current belief or is this because of something I went through years ago? And then, like I said, it's mind blowing when you start doing this work and you start realizing that a lot of your unconscious beliefs are exactly the opposite of what you currently believe. Well, that's why some people are confused about what their beliefs are. They operate in a way that seems racially charged and prejudiced, but, or they think they don't, but then it comes out and you're just like, dude, you're acting like a racist. And they're like, no, I'm not.

And you're just like, no, man, you're closet. You're in the closet with the racism, man. I can tell. So that probably maybe explains that. Partly. And I think a lot of it is too, is because people don't know it. So they're not aware of it. And so this is why I think it's, I'm not a fan of the whole cancel culture thing. I'm not a fan of that. Because if the

person truly doesn't know about their unconscious bias, because they haven't been exposed to those worldviews, or they haven't been exposed to this person who's different than them, that we don't want to judge them, we don't want to shame them. We want to take the time to educate that person, right? Now it's a matter of who does the educating. It's not going to be the person who's on the brunt on the receiving side of those microaggressions. It's not their risk or the macroaggressions like you put. It's not their job to educate everybody else. It's really the bystanders. It's people watching that are observing what's going on. It's their responsibility to say, hey, by the way, I noticed you interrupted Sejal 10 times and I would really like to hear her opinion. So let's give her an opportunity to talk, right? So it's really, it's about how do we do

that? And one of the reasons why I'm doing the work I'm doing, Chris, is because as an attorney, what I noticed was more people just didn't know how to respond in those situations. It was way less people who were actually there trying to harm other people or discriminate against them. It was more people just not knowing or somebody making an offhanded joke. And now everyone's laughing along with it because it's happened 20 other times and now it's normal versus saying we're not going to tolerate that anymore in our workplace. We need to redefine what the culture looks like to take into account the diversity, the beautiful diversity we have in our workplace now. How do we resolve that in, I've had to fire people for sexual harassment and you have like, to the rules that we used to have in Utah, when I used to have

to apply them, you give people two chances. One is a warning. The second is a fire because the third, if you keep a third around, it looks like you're, you're supporting it. Or at least that's what, you know, the state told us. And a lot of people, sometimes they see stuff on TV or in a movie. My sister had a lot of those problems with her MS and probably not being totally square upstairs, but she would see TV and sexual jokes on TV and sexual innuendo on TV or movies. And she would sometimes take them into workplace and then get in some, a little bit of trouble because she, she would see that as, well, I was in the movie. It should be okay with everybody. Then there's places where that's not appropriate. How do we get through to some of those people? Because I hated firing people over that. It was

necessary. And usually they always deserved it. But a lot of times, like you said, they would be lost. And I'd have to tell a guy, look, you can't go up to a woman just because even though you work with her in an office, you talk to her every day, slide your arm around her hand under her ribs and hug her. That's out of bounds. That's the no touchy zone. There's a lot of bad things going on there. How do we help those people without, I don't know, there's just no way. You just have to write people up and then fire them. I think, and here's where I, that's why I take, I go the civility angle. So the way that I define incivility is a range, it's a spectrum of behaviors. So it starts off as

somebody being rude, unprofessional, right? Making an offhanded comment, a flirtatious comment. And if that behavior is not, if we don't put that person on notice when it first starts to happen, they're going to continue engaging in that behavior. And pretty soon it's going to continue where it might turn into abusive conduct bullying, right? It might turn into pervasive, severe conduct that's happening all the time. And pretty soon we're in the illegal sexual harassment or discrimination category. So the goal is we want to empower everybody at work to start disrupting that cycle early on. So when that rude or unprofessional behavior happens,

people in the organization need to know and be empowered to say, by the way, that's not the kind of culture we want here. So please don't make that comment. Now, if we do it in the right way, in the respectful way, that person's on notice. And so if they really didn't intend to do that, they're going to change their behavior. If that behavior continues, now the organization needs

to get involved and follow their whatever policy they have, whether it's progressive discipline or follow their employee handbook and properly discipline that person. And this applies at all levels of the organization, whether you're a CEO or you're your frontline supervisor, everybody needs to be held to the same standards. A lot of times it's the people at the top that are doing this behavior and they're getting away with it. And now everybody else sees what's going on. And they're like, if Mr. CEO can do it, then, you know, we can all do it. And then they're there. Now you're walking into a toxic work environment, right? There you go. So is it best to have some sort of, I'm talking about this in my current book and then I'm writing the man on the white horse

sort of thing. The person who sets the tone for the organization and what the importance of that, is it just, I don't know, somehow important to teach an organization to self-police itself where if Bob in the office comes up to me and tells me a dirty joke in front of some other women or people, and I need, I just need to go, Hey, Hey Bob, that's like not appropriate in here, man. So knock it off or next time HR for you, buddy. Or do we just need to go right to, Hey, I got a guy for you here, HR. Bob's going to come see you down the hall. How does that work? How do you apply it?

Great question. And it really has to be everybody needs to be a part of the solution. And everybody needs to know how to respectfully and professionally intervene in those situations. We don't want to punt everything to HR. We don't want to punt everything to the lawyers to get involved. We should be able to, if there's psychological safety within the organization, and let's say we're in a meeting together and you make a comment to me that rubs me the wrong way. Doesn't matter what you intended, right?

Because your intention might be to be funny. You might be cracking a joke, but for whatever reason, it made me feel uncomfortable. So intention is really not important. It's about the impact. So now it impacts me and somebody else over here sees what's going on. They see that Sejal's offended by it, or maybe I stopped smiling, or I got uncomfortable. I got up and walked away. That person needs to have the skills to be able to say, Hey, Chris, I observed that you said this. And it's really just focused in on the behavior. It's not about judging you. It's not about shaming you. It's really just letting you know, I noticed this behavior. Now it's your responsibility to

apologize and change your behavior. It's not about getting defensive. It's not about saying I didn't intend to. And you might because we're human. And sometimes when somebody tells us we've done something that might be perceived as being offensive, we get defensive, right? But ultimately, if we create the right environment, this is supposed to be a learning opportunity for everybody, right? Including you and that other bystander. If that happens, then we don't need to get HR involved. We don't need to get the lawyers involved. What we really want is to have people learn how to communicate. A lot of these could be resolved. Just a one-on-one simple conversation.

It's when we get HR involved, when we get the lawyers involved. Now, there are some things we have to, like sexual harassment. Somebody gropes somebody else. There's no reason for us to talk. HR needs it. There are certain behaviors that have to be properly defined as these are the ones where we have to get HR just legally, we need to do this. But microaggressions, rude, insensitive comments, these kinds of things can be handled one-on-one with the employees if they're properly trained and empowered.

Yeah. So proper training is important. Empowerment, learning about these things, understanding about these things. Because like you say, the golden rule or the platinum rule, everybody wants to get along. Everybody usually wants to help each other. Every now and then somebody just says the stupidest thing. I remember when one of my pseudo step-sons was going through his growing up phase, like 11 or 12 and stuff, and figuring out his ego. And every now and then he'd say something that was just like completely, he'd be talking back and he'd say something really aggressive. And you just like, look at him. Did you just really say what came out of your mouth? And he

ended up just looking at his face. Did that really come out of my mouth? I didn't, I don't know where that was. And this is really interesting because I do think there are people that they're trying to be good people and they're trying to have integrity or they think they're having integrity and they don't realize, like I said, I sat down with some of the things that I saw four years ago and said, I really want to make sure I clean house and make sure that there's no code words that I'm using that these groups are using. I'd never really given some of them the thought, but they were being used as dog whistles. And I was like, I need to make sure I clean these out of my vocabulary and understand what they mean and why they're being used as dog whistles. And I was like, I need to make sure I clean these out of my vocabulary and understand what they mean and why they're being used. And I went on a whole journey to

find out what I'd never heard of white nationalism up until that point. I'm like, what, what's going on? I remember the KKK, but what's this new thing? And it seems equally as bad, which it is because it's just a rebranding. What have we covered so far in our chat? I just would really stress that it's bystanders that observe this behavior happening that are the ones that need to speak up and get involved. That's super important. So all of the training that I do with organizations has a heavy component of bystander intervention, whether it's at work or you're not at work. People see this stuff going on and they don't do anything about it. And that just continues to perpetuate the harm and the behavior. And if we focus in on work, if I see this happening at work and I don't make the time to resolve a

disagreement or to speak up, it's going to continue. And when one person in the culture suffers, everybody suffers. So I will tell you as an attorney what I've seen. And the reason why I said I don't want to get involved when we get to that point, we got to do it proactively is that you really need to focus in on creating a culture of psychological safety. And the only way you could do that is if everybody feels empowered as a bystander to speak up or to do something about it, how to address it. Because we all have different personalities. Like I don't have a problem saying it to somebody's face that, hey, you know, that's not the culture, but not everybody does. So we have to be recognizing that we're all going to handle the situation differently, but we have to give people the tools to help them say, these are your options.

You see something like this that makes you feel unsafe at work. You need to talk to somebody about it, whether it's the person that did it, whether it's the person that is your supervisor or coworker, somebody, here's a neutral person you go to. But there really needs to be a place for people to talk to about these issues without the fear of retaliation. Because the number one claim that's filed with our Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is retaliation. Three out of four people don't even complain. They see harassment happening. But three out of four, Chris, don't say anything about it. Wow.

It's huge. So if the organization isn't learning of 75% of the harassment that's going on, how can they protect their employees? It doesn't work. This is why these lawsuits don't, nobody wins. So we want to flip it. We want to say 75% of the time, let's have you tell us, even if the, let's say it wasn't harassment or discrimination. Let's not just wait until it's illegal. Let's get to the point before where it's just rude or unprofessional. Let's do something about it early on rather than waiting too late until it becomes a toxic environment. That's the only way that we can get to the root cause of the problem and really solve the issue.

That's a good example. I've been in one of the big social media platforms that are popular right now is the Clubhouse app. I don't know if you have you gotten on the Clubhouse app yet? I haven't. It's a pretty interesting thing because it operates pretty much like little rooms of communities. And there's a hallway where you have a list of all the rooms. If you go to South by Southwest or CES or any other big trade show or show, and there's different speakers and little conference rooms. It's like the virtual version of that. And so you can wander around the different rooms if you have access and you can see, and there's speakers on the dais and there's people in the audience.

And usually there's interaction sometimes, or sometimes they're just speaking from the dais. And so it's pretty interesting. I think the reason it's become popular is because we can't go to conferences right now. But it's interesting because there's little microcosms of cells of communities that are in there. And they're talking about whatever their variations of interests are. And people go to them based on their things. But we're an act with people. And there's a lot of different issues because you can't see visually. You can't see when people stop talking and when you might start or interrupt over

the top of them and then there's other issues of bias like uh you mentioned where some a lot of women get talked over and that's a real big thing to try not to talk over people and there's inclusion issues too there's a certain way to deliver what you're talking about introduce your name and then say at the end that you're done speaking so that someone on a, as a TTY or TTL service, if they have the thing that'll do the interpretation for them, the machine will be able to figure it out. But it's interesting because usually there's a lot of self-policing in there because there is no HR department and there's a little bit of cancel culture,

kick you from the room, kick you from the desk. But a lot of times we've had self-policing where we just say, Hey man, that's a little too racist right there. That's not cool. We don't like that, and we don't agree with that. You need to apologize and do the thing. And so it's interesting. And nine times out of ten, the people who are in there are trying to be good

and, whoa, what was so racist about it? And fortunately, in a lot of these forums, we're able to sometimes talk about those things and go, let me explain to you what your issue is there, Bob. And so I think it works pretty well just for me seeing the format of what you've talked about in those rooms doing that. Cause we don't have anybody who can, you can actually report them to the big house, I guess, in a way. And that's exactly it. That's exactly the perfect example. I'm glad you brought that

up, but that's what we want to get to. And then just remember that we don't have to all agree on the same thing. We're not all going to agree on everything. That's okay. But I think when you're at work or you're talking about Clubhouse, we have to understand, and everybody needs to get on the same page, that these are our shared goals. And so we're going to make time to resolve these issues, to try to get to a common goal. We may have to agree to disagree, but when we're at work, at a very minimum, this is what I'm trying to get workplaces to, is that we're going to treat each other with dignity and respect. That's the minimum. It doesn't matter if you are trying to hurt that person or not, but if the person says, this is making me feel disrespected or it's violating my dignity, we need to try to stop. Now Now we're humans. We have to know we're going to

make mistakes. I do. I work in this area and I'm talking about bias and I train people and I'm always learning new biases where I'm like, Oh, like the other day I did a training and I had a group of male and female in the audience. And I I'm from the Midwest, from Chicago. And I grew up with you guys. And I, so I think towards the end, I'm like you guys. And then I'm like, no, I'm not supposed to say that. So we catch ourselves. We're human. I quickly apologize.

The minute slipped out of my mouth, I was like, oh, no, I did it. And some of these habits we've been having for a long time. So it's going to take some time and we have to give people the space as well. But again, it's about the effort. Are you trying? If you're just going to say this is the way I am and you're just being sensitive. Now we got to realize as an organization, do we want this kind of person in the culture of our organization? Because if you say yes to that's the message you're sending to everybody that you're okay with somebody saying comments that are being perceived as racist or as being perceived as sexist or against somebody's religion, you're saying it's okay by allowing that to continue. And if you're okay with that, that's fine. But I can tell you that I don't think that's going to work now where we are. People's tolerance levels have gone down significantly. We're not going to put up with racist or sexist behavior at work. And we're

going to get on the Chris Voss show and talk about it it to everybody that's what we're here for that's you're from chicago i may be applying some bias to you by my next question am i reverse biasing my bias question so would you say that chicago having the best pizza and chicagoans thinking they have the best pizza is a bias and it's really new york it has the best pizza is that i don't know the answer to that come on deep dish pizza there's nothing like it i'll tell you so i am biased i admit i'm biased towards chicago style deep dish pizza now that sounds like something i need to talk to hr about if i was a new yorker i'd have to call i don't know who you call for biden chicago's micro aggressing us i don't know i'm not a newer. So clearly, but I have had that deep dish pizza and it is excellent. It is beautiful.

And Chicago people from Chicago are incredibly nice. Sometimes too nice. Maybe that's a bias, but when I, whenever I've been there, I'm just like, Hey, you guys need to back the fuck off me just a little bit. You people are nice. Let me leave me alone on my little self hate of other people. You guys are, I appreciate whatever. No, I'm just kidding. You guys are really nice people. Anything more we want to talk about as we go out? Yeah.

And just the last thing I'll say is, look, it's all about accountability and knowing that this is not a one time. If we're talking about like bias, it's not like you sit down one day, you do the test and you're like, okay, now I know all of my biases and I'm never going to do that again. This is an ongoing, lifelong process. And it's all about just learning about yourself. Normally we say, don't be selfish. In this case, I'm saying, start with yourself.

Just commit to taking that first step to learning about your own biases. Watch my TEDx talk and follow those simple strategies and then educate everybody around you. And if you have kids, if you have children in the house or you have grandkids or you have the earlier we start educating our children about these topics, and it doesn't have to be all heavy. I think people make it so complicated. It doesn't have to be, but the earlier that we can start instilling dignity and respect for all and all of these talking about bias and how that works into our children, the better off it'll be for our future generations. racist. And they're like, oh, I believe the same sort of things, but I feel really emotionally upset about that. Is there a good way to deal with that? Or just recognizing that maybe that you're feeling that emotional challenge means that maybe you should look into that. Yeah. I think that's a great sign when you feel shocked or surprised or angry or emotional and

you just hear that voice inside. It's about observing that. And then sometimes it's, by the way, sometimes you need to get help. Some of these things are deeply ingrained in us that you might not even know what's bringing that issue up. And so it's really about taking that step to say, okay, I'm just not going to react to whatever I'm feeling. I'm not going to using your emotional intelligence to say, I recognize I'm feeling this way right now. Something is bringing this up.

I need to understand what that is and just make that time to analyze it and then get help. Talk to somebody. Have an accountability partner or somebody that you can talk to about the decisions you're making to make sure, am I making the right decisions for me and for the people that I love in my community. Now, after I do research to decide if Bob is a moron, and I realize that Bob really is a moron, if I tell him he's a moron or I keep telling him he's a moron, is that still a microaggression, or am I just trying to help him self-identify? No, probably that's the case.

As long as I'm not being biased. Get help. Get help, Bob. Quit touching people and talking that way, or I'm going to call HR. It's been wonderful to have you on. It's been brilliant and eye-opening. And I've learned some wonderful things and hopefully my audience has as well. Give us your plugs as we go out so that people can find you on the interwebs. Yes. Thank you. Just LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn. I would love if you watch my TEDx talk and share it with everybody so we can try to unite people and build bridges,

which is like the real reason why I did that talk. But thank you so much, Chris, for having me. This was awesome. Thank you. It was very awesome to have you on. And we'll have the TED talk in the link on the video and on the chrisvossshow.com. So be sure to check it there. To my honest, thank you for tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward slash chrisvoss to see the video version of this. Go to goodreads.com forward slash chrisvoss go to let's see facebook instagram linkedin you name it we're everywhere thanks guys for tuning in wear your mask stay safe and we'll see you guys next time