The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work by Stacey A. Gordon

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work by Stacey A. Gordon Reworkwork.com Sponsor: Restream Studio: Get $10 Credit at https://restream.io/join/chrisvoss Let the CEO of Rework Work help you understand diversity, equity, and inclusion concepts to actively remove bias from the workplace Dismantling unhealthy workplaces involves much more than talking about it, and more than charts, graphs, and statistics―it requires action. Although it’s increasingly common for businesses of all shapes and sizes to appreciate the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, many are often unaware of bias in the cultures they’ve created. Others might know there’s a problem, but don’t know how to properly address it. UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias At Work helps you understand concepts of workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion, shows you how to identify bias, and provides you with the tools for actively removing barriers and ensuring equity throughout your organization. Written by Stacey Gordon―CEO of Rework Work, a company on a mission to reduce bias in global talent acquisition and management―this real-world handbook offers step-by-step guidance on creating workplace cultures where employees feel they belong. UNBIAS teaches you to: Identify and address bias in the workplace Understand what you can do to be more inclusive Handle potentially uncomfortable conversations Discuss race in an authentic and meaningful way Use workplace-proven tools that make concepts of diversity and equity actionable Help your employee resource groups without giving them extra work Place accountability on organizational policies that allow biased behavior UNBIAS is a must-have resource for all employers, managers, and HR professionals seeking to create and sustain healthy, inclusive, and equitable workplace environments. About Stacey A Gordon Stacey Gordon focuses on reworking how companies work, including how they recruit, hire and engage women and professionals of color. Frustrated with hearing that companies don't have the resources or are unable to identify skilled diverse professionals, Stacey combined her diversity & inclusion knowledge with her recruiting expertise to create education workshops, leadership development and provide other resources to help companies with their 'pipeline' problem. Stacey is the creator of the number one resume course at LinkedIn learning which is well on its way to accumulating 1 million views. Her unconscious bias course has been translated into several languages and has been featured by LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Virgin America (now Alaska Airlines). As a consultant and career strategist, Stacey has written career and diversity related articles and provided content for SHRM, Fast Company, Skillsoft, Forbes, NPR Radio, BBC Radio, Essence Magazine, and Monster.com, to name a few. She earned her MBA from Pepperdine University Business School and her SHRM-SCP certification as well as the inclusive Workplace Culture Credential.

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. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to go to thecvpn.com and subscribe to all of our nine podcasts over there. You can also see us on youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss and see the live version or the video version of this broadcast. You can also go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can go to facebook.com forward slash the Chris Voss show and LinkedIn and also on Instagram forward slash Chris Voss, theris voss show and linkedin and also on instagram forward slash chris voss the chris voss show there's plenty of groups over there on both those platforms the linkedin and facebook you can follow there as well and today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor restream

restream studio is a web-based live broadcasting solution you can live stream a zoom meeting or webinar to up to 30 plus social channels and platforms at the same time. We're actually using it to do our live broadcasting. You can get $10 credit towards their services using our affiliate link at restream.io forward slash join forward slash Chris Voss. So I was on LinkedIn about a month ago and we've had a few inclusion officers on. And last year we talked about a lot of social justice stuff. We talked about a lot of different

issues of Black Lives Matter and all the different things. There were several issues last year, if you're around, we needed to address and we had brilliant authors on to talk to us about it. And I saw this great, I saw this great course that was on LinkedIn and it was by a gal named Stacey A. Gordon. And she gave this course. It was brilliant, professionally done. I was really impressed. And I was like, I want to have her on the show to talk about inclusion and educating people on unconscious bias and different things like that. Turns out she has a forthcoming book coming out on March 30th, 2021 called Unbiased, Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work. So I invited her to come on the show and let me give you a rundown on who she is. She is the chief executive officer of her team at

reworkwork.com. She's a diversity inclusion and career strategist who works to reduce bias in recruiting and barriers to hiring. She's leading at the intersection of recruiting, career development, diversity, workplace culture. Stacey's delivered keynote speeches globally and developed educational content that has engaged professionals in both person and virtual environment. She focuses on reworking how companies work. This includes how they recruit, hire, and engage women and professionals of color. Welcome to the show, Stacey. How are you? Thank you. Thank you. I am wonderful, actually. I'm excited to be able to participate and talk to you today and reach the

audience that need this information. Yeah, the more we go. So give us your plugs or people can look you up on the interwebs and order your forthcoming book. Yeah, it's really easy to find me, Stacey A. Gordon. If you Google it pops up, but the website is reworkwork.com. And I always have to say rework E work, work.com. We're not affiliated with WeWork. That kind of broke my brain when I first saw that. I was like, WeWork, WeWork. Yes. Yes.

It's WeWork, work.com. And I'll tell you the easy way to remember it is that we talk about reworking what doesn't work about work. So there you go. That's how that came up. So what motivated you want to write your book on bias? Really the dumpster fire here. That was 2020. Was there something bad that went on last year?

There's a lot of things going bad. Exactly. There was a lot that happened in 2020. If you think back to, so the frustration I'll say is George Floyd got murdered and it was like people suddenly woke up and I thought, what was different? Why was this particular senseless killing different right there have been many since there were many before and I don't know I really I've thought long and hard about this I've looked at what was going on but I think some of it had to do with the fact that we are are still but at the time we're in the middle of a deep pandemic and people were stuck at home. And so there was a lot of focus.

People couldn't just go about their day and ignore it like they normally did. I think that might be part of it. In writing the book, it came up because so many people had questions. They wanted to know, what do we do? How do we do something? And people were jumping into doing things without really having an understanding of what they were doing, why they were doing it. And I really wanted to be able to help create some positive direction rather than having

people make a bad situation worse with good intentions. Yeah, it was a seminal moment. Before George Floyd, a lot of white people, especially in the last years of Obama, weren't really on board with Black Lives Matter. And there's so many, like you say, heinous things that have gone on at the hands of police. And yet that was the video that flipped the switch. And I think, I can't remember who said it on my show, but it was one of the great authors that we had on, I believe that, or it was somebody I picked up off the news. But we basically saw a live lynching on TV.

That's what we really saw. There's a lot of different things that we experienced where someone gets shot or you don't see what's happening in a scrum of police officers. That thing was pretty blatant, and it was really hard to watch because it was, what was it, six to eight minutes or nine minutes of excruciating someone begging for the life that's not it's not cool in any format and i think you're right because people were home people had to watch it they couldn't just tune it out in their day the horror of it just was it was horrifying to watch a human being experiencing that and maybe some of the stacks of all the white supremacy and

racist things that we've dealt with under Trump for the last five years, just finally reached that breaking point too. Maybe that was some of it. Yeah. There definitely isn't just a lot of things that happened, but something that made me just really want to put something in writing that would help because the book is called Unbiased. And I totally get that. Can we totally become unbiased? No. But should we be striving towards that? Hell yeah.

And so that's the thought process behind it is that we want to get to a place in what I like to call unconscious inclusion. We're always talking about unconscious bias, but I want us to get to a place of unconscious inclusion to where including others is done as easily as breathing, where we don't have to put in the effort. We don't have to stop ourselves from making bad decisions. And we are just automatically making good ones.

So I'm like, if we can automatically make bad ones, we can automatically make good ones. We just have to change our behavior. Nice. And it's really important to like, I learned to, I actually had done early on a kind of an unconscious bias test when I, when Donald Trump was first elected and I started reading about white nationalists and I was, all my friends were getting attacked. My LGBTQ friends, my friends from other communities of race were getting attacked. My LGBTQ friends, my friends from other communities of race were getting attacked. I had one of my friends from Yemen, or not Yemen, but one of my friends who was a Ku, not Kuwaiti, but, oh, was the, was she Kuwait?

What was, what's the place that we saved in during the first Bush administration? It was Kuwait, wasn't it? I think so. We saved them from being invaded by Iraq. I'm aging myself right now. know i know and i was like and then politics and geography yeah so she was so she was attacked and called the n-word even though she was from a country that we saved from from the iraqi dictator and and thrown out of a uber cab by a palestinian which made which just you're trying

to square the thing you're just like what but i guess he really liked trump so i i had to sit down and i had i did a uh a thing that i did and i said you know what looking at all the codes that were coming out culture white nationalists all the understanding what the rebranding white nationalism is with kkk and so i did a thing where i would go to the store or anytime I left my home, I would start looking at faces and listening to what my decision-making would be in assuming about those faces. And it's interesting because we all do that because from a sort of caveman aspect, we had to look at things back in the day where like fight or flight,

is it going to kill me? Or are we going to be friends? Especially when it came to T-Rex's last time I've seen that one movie a few times in its versions. So Jurassic Park. So I, I did that and it was really interesting, the conversation that I was having, cause I would be like, okay, so that fish, you made this choice. You made this assumption of what that person is or their danger to you or what you perceive as their danger to you. Why are you making that choice? And is that choice accurate? And I started reflecting on that. And I didn't realize what I was doing at the time. I was testing my unconscious bias and trying to see what was going on. So you've written this book. It'll be out March 30th. And give us some

of the details about the book. What's the general overview of it? Yeah, the general overview is looking at where do we need to start? When everything happened, everyone wanted to do something, which is a great and noble place to start. We want to get into action. We want to do something right away. But what we're realizing is that if you really haven't spent any time, and most people had not spent time really thinking about what are some of the issues that we actually need to be acting upon, then what is it that you're going to do? And so we were getting a lot of the same thing. It's okay, we're going to create a DEI council, we're going to hire a chief diversity officer, we're going to maybe create some ERG groups,

employee resource groups, and we're going to do unconscious bias education. And those are all noble things to do, but without a strategy for why you're doing it and what you expect the outcome to be, it's pointless. So then that's where you get to this place where right now, a lot of people are saying diversity training doesn't work. And it's so funny because people think they're going to troll me on the internet. They'll tag me and stuff and say, oh, you know, what do you think about this article that says that diversity training doesn't work? And I'm like, they're right. What do you want me to say about it? Diversity training doesn't work unless. If you're at a place where you have to have an extreme viewpoint on something in order to get your point across, it's probably not the right viewpoint. And so if you say diversity training doesn't work,

yeah, of course you can throw that out there. But the point is you got to look at what are they doing? There's no one size fits all diversity training. So that's the question we have to ask is what is being done? So the book is written to really start to ask those questions. What is it that you're doing? Why are we doing it? What's the point? Otherwise, just don't bother, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I would imagine, and inclusivity and unconscious bias goes beyond just racial relations and trying to fix biases and prejudice in that manner. One of the things I remember from your course on LinkedIn was, I think, the training about the nurse that goes into an elevator and what assumptions you might make of her. Yeah, that's exactly the thing is that we make these assumptions

every day. And we think the biggest myth is that we think because we aren't overtly discriminating against somebody that we're doing okay, that we're not being biased. And say bias and discrimination are two very different ends of a long spectrum. So just because we aren't overtly discriminating doesn't mean that, oh, then good, I'm done. And I can just go about my life. And that's really what we've been doing all the time is just saying, I'm not overtly doing anything. I'm not a racist. I'm not a sexist. I'm not homophobic. These are the things we say, but so what? I'm not either, but I'm still biased in certain situations, right? Yeah. That was the thing I had to sit down and do with the Trump thing when Trump was elected. And I started reading the codes and I would be like, okay, so I need to make sure whatever maybe racist stuff I have in my racist closet, I realized those code words were like, I'm like, I need to make sure these code words aren't in my language, like our culture.

All the dog whistles that Trump and his minions would use. And I'm like, I need to make sure that this vocabulary is not in the Chris Voss vocabulary. And I need to understand what's going on and understand the situation. And for the last five years, I've been yelling and screaming and trying to educate people as much as I can. And for me in the future, we do this. And yeah, it was interesting. I think one of the examples, hopefully I don't butcher it.

I'll make the short version of it. But if you see someone wearing what appears to be a nursing outfit in an elevator, you may assume that she's a nurse because you're sexually assuming that nurses can't be doctors. And if you say something to her, you might offend her because she's like a doctor. Right. Exactly. If you use the example of, I always talk about how we are socialized to think. And if you think about, it's now an old school cartoon, but Doc McStuffins, right? Anyone who's got kids, their kids have probably watched Doc McStuffins. And it's about this kid who, like her mom is a doctor. And so for many years, like even now, when you say the word surgeon, you think surgeon,

what do you think? You think man, that's just what comes to mind. But for people who maybe their mom is a surgeon, or for people who have surgeons in their family who are women, man doesn't come to mind because they've been socialized from their experience that, you know what, women can be surgeons too. So that's that understanding that we have just, we have one set of expectations and it's starting to, like what you were doing earlier, as you said, Chris, looking at when do those expectations that I have get flipped on their head? When is it that I walk into, and I've used this example, you walk into a room and you're expecting someone from IT to come

and help you, and a woman walks up, your mind for a second goes, that's strange, right? It registers. That's different. Those are the things we have to start realizing. It's like when you go to the doctor's office and the nurse walks in and they're male and you go, oh wait, you're the nurse, not the doctor? These are those things. I remember reading an article about a kindergarten teacher in France who got fired. But he was a kindergarten teacher and he had lots of tattoos. And my thought was, wait, they hired this man as a kindergarten teacher?

I have those problems with tattooed people. I still have to go. Check yourself, Chris. But the story was about him being fired. But I just remember looking at it and thinking, wow, the fact that they hired him in the first place, like that's progression. Yeah. The other thing, too, you talked about the social training that we have with that unconscious bias that we pick up. I've been reading the book Cast by Isabel Wilkerson, Cast, the Origins of Our Discontent. Wow, I highly recommend it. I'm in the part where she's talking about, I think I'm about three quarters of the way through it,

she's talking about a lot of the unconscious bias we have and the expectations we have. Well, that group of people, that community does this or different things like that. And you see it in the different memes, especially from the right wing, where you see the, all the different bias or racially biased things that they take and do. And so it gave me a deep understanding that I knew, but just the more I learned, I, one question I wanted to ask you, to my understanding, you never can get fully rid of your unconscious bias. Can you still can harbor like little things that you haven't cleared out? Definitely. It's not about trying to get rid of unconscious bias. It's really about trying to make more conscious decisions. So when you're making decisions, because that's where those things will

pop up. Again, I always like to use the examples of interviewing because everyone has been interviewed or has interviewed someone. We've all been in that role at some point. And you have those biases that will pop up. There are so many different things that you think about. Like from the interviewer perspective, you look at someone's resume, you look at their name, and you immediately make assumptions, right? Look at where they live, you make assumptions. You look at their age, right, based upon when they went to school and when they graduated. You make all kinds of assumptions about these people before you've even had the opportunity to meet them. And that's why so many resumes get dumped before they even get a chance to come in the door. So we're not trying to get rid of bias. But what we are trying to do is say, hey, let's be conscious and see that, yeah, we do make these types of decisions. Let's make sure that we're making decisions that are based in facts. Let's make sure we're making decisions that are based on standards that are being equally applied across the board to everyone. Let's make sure that we're using measurements that we can go back and double

check because that's when you know that you're then making decisions that are fair and that apply equally, right? I've lived through some extraordinary times. I grew up in an era, I'm 53, I suppose it's going to become obvious here in a second, but I grew up in a time where the man was the breadwinner, the wife worked in the kitchen, and that was the thing. You went to work for a company for 40 years, and you got a gold watch at the end to guarantee retirement, and you had the two cars, the picket fence, and all that BS from the Levittown era of post-World War II. And then we went through the transition where Wall Street rose in the 80s. The Ivan Bioskis of greed is good became the thing. And Wall Street started being dissolved along with the middle class.

And we had to see the transition of women going to work. You know, the Me Too movement was an eye-opener because I don't deal with women privately that way. And DMs or anything else I do. I don't treat women that way. And so at first, when I saw the Me Too era thing, I was like, what's the, what is the big deal here? But then you started hearing stories and of course, things with the people in the media being exposed and things like that. And you're like, holy crap, there are a lot of bad players going on. And between racial things that I grew up with watching from all the way to watching Nixon on TV and the race riots. I was, I think I was born in the year that Martin Luther King and Bobby

were killed if I recall rightly. And so I lived through all those experiences and I've had to change my paradigms, my, my conscious biases, my unconscious bias. And it sometimes has been hard because to me, they're really cultural differences. And I'm like, holy shit, another cultural difference. Wow. There's a whole lot of, we had to go through as we evolve as a society. And it's really interesting to me how some of us are progressive towards that movement and going, well, we need to accept all human beings as human beings, or some people are still dragging their biases from a hundred years ago. Yeah. I think that the perfect example of that now is when you think about LGBTQ in the workplace and we're talking about pronouns. So this is a

big thing at HR. I know if you're in HR, you're shaking your head because you're just tired of, do we put it into our emails? Do we talk about it? Do we need a policy on it? How do we address it? We don't know. And you have a number of individuals who are reluctant. They're like, this is ridiculous. There's only two pronouns. There's he and she, and that's it. And I shouldn't have to deal with this. And so to everyone who has that thought process, again, look, we're not trying to change your belief, right? If you believe that God made man and woman and that's all there is, you're allowed to have that belief. But what you're not allowed to do is come into the workplace and disrespect others who might have a different belief. And treat people like humans, right?

Right. Exactly. That's where we have to talk about behavior. How do we behave? We're not trying to change your beliefs. It's not my job to change what you believe, but I do need to change the way that you interact with others and make them feel about themselves and about the work that they do. And there's lots of people who say the workplace is,

we shouldn't be talking about this in the workplace. The workplace is definitely where we should be talking about it because the workplace is a manufactured place. Like you get to make the rules. You get to write the policy. You get to dictate how work works. So if we're going to do it anywhere, that's the place to do it. I think we had our, we had my first them, their, I think I'm missing a pronoun, them, their, they, them, their, I think is the pronouns. Do I have that right? So we had our first author

who was in that field and asked to be talked to in those pronouns. It was a little hard show to do because I was having to get used to it, but we edited some of my feelings and she was really kind. Lindo Bacon, PhD, she wrote the book Radical Belonging that we had on the show. And it's really just about making everyone feel inclusive and comfortable work. For companies, you hire people, you're trying to get the best you can out of them. You're trying to create great environments where everybody works together. Regardless of what community someone's in, whether it's sex or race or some sort of other LGBTQ, whatever the case may be, everyone should be at the table to be able to contribute. Everyone should be able to feel like they can share freely. And of course, that just advances society and advances the company as well. So it's in the company's interest to do this. And to me, one thing that's interesting about all the discussions I've always had is this

mindset of a lot of people that fight progress that operate from a point of scarcity. And they believe that if I raise you up to my level, I come down a few notches in the cast. If I have to lift people that are maybe homeless or people that are struggling, if I have to lift that community up, then it hurts me because it takes away from me. When really that isn't true, as far as I'm concerned, a rising tide lifts all boats. And usually that's true even in an economy. Yeah, definitely. It's not pie, right? That's what we always say.

We're not dividing pie. There's always more. The perfect example is, okay, if you have children, for those people who have children or nieces or nephews, if you've got one or two, when you have a third or a fourth, do you go, oh, I can't have any more because I'm not going to be able to love the first two as much as I did. That's not how it works. You just described my childhood, actually.

No, I'm just kidding. But did. That's not how it works. You just described my childhood, actually. No, I'm just kidding. But we realize that's not how that works. You can have one child or you can have 19 children. You're still going to have love for them. And so it's really the same way that it works in the workplace is that we're not trying to divide up power. This isn't a fiefdom. We are looking at how do we all work together and really increase, increase for everyone. Like you said, rising tide lifts all boats. So how do we make sinking with our policies and what we're doing

and our biases. I really love that analogy. I wrote that down. We're not dividing pie. I've got to remember that because I like trying to explain this to people about the vision of scarcity. One of the things I was reading in the biography, Hate Monger of Stephen Miller by Jean Guerrero, who we had on the show, And she was talking about the thing that they, the one report that they like to hide, that immigrants actually spend money in our economy. They actually contribute a net profit, immigrants do, of $86 billion to our economy. Like a lot of people talk about when they come here, they might take some services or schooling like in California, but they actually spend money at local businesses and they put the money back into the economy.

And this is one of the things they actually hide in the Stephen Miller regime or he did that the net profit is 86 billion to the economy that they actually contribute over and above the services they take in and using them as a straw man, like politicians do to get out the, like politicians do, to get out the vote or to increase hate to get out the vote is really a misnomer. And so yeah, rising tide lifts all boats. Definitely. And I think when we think about, going back a little bit, you were talking about the idea that people don't really know how to have these conversations. They don't

know what to say about it. And there's this misconception as well that they have to know all the answers. It's kind of like he was saying, like we had somebody on the podcast who had different pronouns, weren't quite sure how to deal with it, but we got through it. That's what we have to do

is we have to stop like the ego on people where it's I'm only doing this if I'm absolutely going to be able to get it right. And because I'm the leader, I have to do it this way. And I have to know all the answers. We don't expect you to know all the answers. We don't want you to have to get it right all the time.

But all we expect is that you are going to lead the way towards us working together and figuring it out together. And that when you make a mistake, you own up to it and apologize. And we all move on. It's that simple. Yeah. James Baldwin, we learned a lot about James Baldwin this last year. And I was first introduced to him actually. So at 18, I started my first businesses and skipped college. So I didn't get access to him at literary school, but I got introduced to him this year and I was just blown away. And what's interesting is the same things he's talking about

and resolving our issues as a society that we've dragged for now 450 some odd years in America. It's, it's just shocking to me that the same, he could be here today, just repeating the same thing that you said 50, 60, 70 years ago, and it would still be like we're still broken well because we refuse to to address the issues we keep pushing them under the rug and if you've got a a sleeping tiger in a cave or something and you figure as long as we just keep tiptoeing past everything's fine we're all good but as soon as somebody comes by with a little bit of noise they're upset with the person who made some noise and woke the tiger. It's no, we need to be upset that there's a tiger over there.

So that's the issue is that it's not about us. Like we just have to start having the conversations. And we've got to start looking at the things that are important in front of us and realizing that we have to touch on it. Like you said, 70, 80 years, we've been talking about this for so long. And it's because it's one of the quotes that I put in my book, Winston Churchill. I hope you said it because I, but it was like, if you're going through hell, keep going. And the problem with America is we refuse to keep going. We start, we touch a little bit and go, oh my God, it's hot. This is bad. And we stop. And because we haven't made it through to the other side, we are sitting in hell. We are going to be here for so long until we own up to it and say, yeah, we need to

fix this. Let's just get through it. Let's get to the other side. All the great authors that we've had over, we've talked about everything since the beginning of the line of the nation that Ronald Reagan used to love to use. And for some reason, the coffee is bringing it to me this morning. But it's that shining city on the hill line and some of that Puritan thing that's built with religious script that's designed to support white nationalism and to treat other people as less as natives or whatever we did to to the American to the American natives to whether we did to everyone else as white people and

trying to undo this 450 400 years whatever it is of programming the social aspects of Jim Crow and all the different historical things that have shaped that. And a lot of the conversations that we've had in this last year, tearing down the Confederate statues and what they represented. I didn't know a lot of the stuff that had gone into the Jim Crow era because I just hadn't studied history and hadn't invested the time. One of the people- Well, it's not that I got to interrupt you there for a second and say, it's not even that you haven't studied the history.

It's that it is deliberately whitewashed. It's deliberately left out. If you look at the history books that kids are shown in schools, they don't talk about that stuff. It might be like a footnote. They might mention something about it, but they don't really go into what actually happened. So how would you know? So now that's how you get these conspiracy theories because I would have learned about this if it was important. No, it was important and nobody wanted, because it would have caused an issue.

Again, we go back to this. Nobody wants to confront and actually discuss what actually happened. Instead, they'd rather hide it. Yeah, and it's been an interesting journey. And like you say, it was whitewashed. Like one thing that came up from one of our authors, I don't remember if it was Eddie God Jr. With Eddie, we talked about how freeways and whole cities have been built to exclude, to separate us racially. And because of that, we don't really get to know each other. And that causes a lot of problems with that understanding each other and how we are. But someone had told a story where they talked about

how their father wouldn't drive down certain roads because the roads were named after Confederate generals. And the reason they were doing was a subconscious way of redlining to keep people from moving into those areas in different communities or from different communities. And then it was also a saber rattling, if you will. Yeah. And I think I have another consultant who tells this story. She grew up in Chicago and she said, when you think about how bias gets ingrained in us, she when she was driving with her dad, when they were driving through a bad part of Chicago or quote unquote bad part, he would always say when they were in this particular part, that is a trigger for her that says, okay, this place must be dangerous. This place must be different. So now what's different? So then you start looking to see what's different. Oh, it's mostly Black people that are here. So that must be different. So now Black must equal dangerous because why do I need to lock my doors when I'm driving through this neighborhood,

but not another, right? This is how these things get ingrained in us from childhood. Yeah, I actually had a friend call me up on Clubhouse. And for some reason, he decided he wanted to talk privately on Signal. And I was like, we're old friends. Why are we talking on Signal? And he goes, you're going to get on Clubhouse. And I just want to give you a warning. And I was like, what's the warning?

And he goes, there's a lot of diversity on clubhouse and i was like yeah and he goes and he's from alabama so i'll let you figure that one out you can use your conscious bias on that one for real but and i'm like a lot of diversity cool that's so do you have point? What are you trying to tell me? And he kept using the word diversity. And I'm like, what are you trying to tell me? He's there's a lot of black people on there. And I'm like, that's probably really good because one of the problems with a lot of social media networks that have been started lately, the white nationalist Trumpers go in there and it just becomes a racist meme, giant racist gab and 4chan hn and parlor and all these other wacko sites and so i'm like i'm glad there's we have a diversity platform that started

because it'll get off on the right foot and it won't be filled with a bunch of trumpers at least not ones that are overt so it's interesting to me that was an example where i was getting this code word and i'm like well well, how are we having this conversation? What is the big fucking deal? It's got diversity. Welcome to America. And there's also this idea, right, that I'm at a point now where I'm calling people out on LinkedIn. And if you are talking about this stuff, you know what?

I want to have a conversation with you. I don't want to go back and forth. I don't. So just so you know, if you're trolling me or whatever, I don't respond on LinkedIn. I refuse because I've actually had other things to do. I have a job. I have a life to run and live. And what I'm doing is just, if I'm seeing a conversation that just doesn't make sense to me, I'm going to just say, I want to talk to you. So here's my number. Let's chat about it. I don't care who you are. I want to have the conversation because I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. That's what I'm trying to get at right now. And I want to have the conversation because I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. That's what I'm trying to get at right now.

And I want others to understand where I'm coming from. I am not in this, I've been called a Marxist and socialist and all kinds of other things. But I think a lot of it comes, we hide behind labels. It's easy for you to ignore me if you slap a label on me. Because then you can lump me in with everybody else that you've ever talked to who maybe that is who they are. But once you put me in that label, it makes it easier for you to ignore me. I don't want you to ignore me. I want you to talk to me.

We're going to have a conversation. So we're going to figure this out. And that's what I'm trying to get at right now, because I'm just I'm sick and tired of the labels. Don't come at me with labels. Labels are like a lazy way. It's a lazy way to deal with the issue, maybe. Very lazy and easy, right? It makes it easy to dismiss because then you can ignore it.

And again, we go back to status quo. You don't have to read a book. You don't have to go, maybe I should figure out why this is an issue. And maybe as in a society, I have something to either contribute or I'm not contributing, or maybe I'm acting in a way that's detrimental in a way I can bring that. I want to encourage my mods on Clubhouse to feel free to bring people up if they have questions and we'll try and answer them. Stacey, what's a good way for people to learn more about what you're doing about you and then maybe some resources. I don't know if the

LinkedIn course is one of those things that you'd also throw out there, or maybe you have some other things in your website or other ways that you work to help educate people that they can grab some of these resources. Definitely. The LinkedIn learning is a great resource right now, especially because it's free. So right now the unconscious Virus course is actually available for free through the end of March. So you can log on to LinkedIn Learning and you can watch it. And not only is my course free, but there's about seven or eight other courses that fall in that whole diversity, inclusion and belonging path. So me, I think Ariana Huffington and Renee Myers from Netflix. There are a couple of different learnings that they

have grouped together and put into a path. And the whole thing is free. Quite a few people have been, I shouldn't say quite a few, thousands of people have been going through it. And I think last time I checked, half a million people have watched the course. I might take advantage while you have the opportunity. It's people have been watching it over lunch, which is great. There you go. There you go. Learn something over lunch. Okay. So Stacey, the question was asked to us from Clubhouse. Sorry for the little thing there. It's the first time we've done this, but he was asking if you're in a workplace that's toxic and they're not handling their inclusion, diversity, there's probably some sort of bias that's going on there in some form or fashion

to communities. What's the best way to exit those communities? Yeah, leave, right? I think that question comes up because people think, should I try to change it? Should I try to help? You can only do so much. So you have to self-preserve, right? And if you're in an environment that is really toxic and it is not your job to change it, sometimes you do have to exit. Now, of course, if you are one of the leaders, if you are the chief diversity officer, if you're in HR and it is your job to make some change and that this is happening, then do your job, right? Do your job and start to address these issues. Too often we talk to executive leaders and they see that there's another executive leader on their team who maybe has some challenges.

You need to take that person aside and have a conversation. And that's where we go back to, what are your goals? What are your values? Because you need to know what your values are. I'm like, is this person aligned with your values? And if not, you need to get in alignment. And if they are, then your values are bad and they need to change. So most likely if you have a, most likely, definitely, if you have a boss or the CEO or whoever, like what I like to call the man on the white horse, and really it should be

the woman on the white horse, if that's the case these days. But the, basically with the person on the white horse, they're probably not going to change if they have some sort of conscious bias, et cetera, et cetera. They can. And that's where we then go into coaching and their consulting work. We spend time with those executive leaders and we help them change. But that's not something that a run of the mill individual contributor employee is going to be able to do.

So if you find yourself in a place where it's toxic to you and there's not anything you can do about it, yeah, get out. But like I said, if you're in a position where you can do something about it, then you should, you've got to stop sitting on the sidelines and just saying, Oh, it's nothing I can do about it because that's full. Definitely. Tony, go ahead and ask your question. This is weird. The first time I've done this. So great question, Stacey, he's given us here and sorry, I can't, I don't have the, there's no way to set the audio where you can hear on the other end, but Tony asked the question, Stacey, he's given us here. And sorry, I don't have the, there's no way to set the audio where you can hear on the other end. But Tony asked the question.

He's gone through some advanced training in college and different things, and he hasn't learned some of the things we've been talking about today. What age group do you think we need to, do we need to start really training and teaching this? Is it in the K through 12 areas? Or when do we really start maybe need to re-engineer our education systems to really try and get at this quicker? It starts before school. There was a, gosh, if you Google this, there was a story about a woman who had a young child, maybe two years old, two and a half. And they used to go to a Waffle House, loved the Waffle House, by the way. And

they would go like a couple of times a week and they'd have the same waitress. So the mom and her daughter are both white, waitress was black. And the waitress would talk to the child and they would hang out and they would chat and she really enjoyed chatting with her. So one day the young girl touches the waitress's face and says, why is your skin black? And the mother just like freaks out oh my god you can't say that why would you talk about that why wouldn't you she's a child she has eyes she can see that her skin color is different and it's a completely valid question answer the question and so the waitress did a really good job of just saying you know what everyone is born differently and people come in different colors and shapes and sizers and that was it. And they moved on. But yet the mom was cringing. Why?

That's the problem. The problem is we don't know how to have those conversations. And so we, in that moment, she's training her child to feel that she's not supposed to talk about it, that there's something bad and that she shouldn't have asked and she shouldn't be discussing this. This has been something we've been talking about through some of the authors on our show is when to really start laying this foundation. A lot of authors said college, but like Tony mentioned, even his advanced college degrees, he didn't pick up this training. And I think a lot of this training is somewhat new, but even then, I think one of the challenges we have, especially in the area of Trump redragging this out of the racial closet, is there are some parents that we need to circumvent their racial bias or whatever bias they have towards the LBG community and other communities, is we need to circumvent that. And so I think at a very early age, we need to start teaching about what racism is, inclusivity, prejudice, and all these different things as

young as we can in the school system, because there are parents that are going to, they're going to have their biases. They're going to teach their kids that way. And I think is, as we know, I'm assuming we all know, racism starts being taught to children very early. And then they grow up to be racist and they see what their parents do and they become what that is. Sadly, my own family, I've seen that example. And to me, yeah, I would agree. It's got to be, thank God we got rid of Betsy DeVos, who wants something different, and her Council of National Policy. But any other thoughts you have on that topic?

Yeah, no, I think that it's also the history books need to be rewritten, right? We need to be looking, and I would say even rather than looking, using history books, there's so much information out there that can be curated. You have to use, it's a whole racket, spending all that money and time and putting these history books together. It's like, who gets to do that? Again, it's like looking at, let's look at actual history. Let's look at what's really happened. And there's so many articles. There's so much information that's out there that could be used.

And I think this whole idea of during the pandemic with kids having to work from home, many teachers pivoted to not using textbooks as much and to assigning online articles that they can get to easily. So this has shown us that we can retool the education system in the way that people work and learn. I think people have to take personal responsibility, too. Like I was watching a Trump voter who claims to have awakened over being in the QAnon cult. And she's had her moment of epiphany where China didn't take over when Biden was elected. There wasn't any sort of demons that flew out of his bum, whatever sort of crazy stuff they have invented.

And she awoke and she went, wow. And she admits on CNN, she goes, I just, I've never read any books or anything. I just, she probably spends her time looking at Kim Kardashian on the thing. And that's her education. She like literally said, I'm just not educated and I don't read anything, but I started watching TikTok and got pulled into Q videos. And so I think there's a personal responsibility that we each have to take in devising a better society, a progressive society,

where we try and understand what's going on. And instead of just maybe watching the news, which is not all bad, there's a lot of education there if you're watching the right news. But even then, I think it's important for us to look at news and go, is there unconscious bias there? When you start asking these questions and teaching our children, okay, so what is this? And at a very early age, I think I had a couple more questions and then we're rounding out the hour. So I think Mark asking what what what cracks people's mind open to where they have that awakening and they go oh this is the thing it's a weird empathy empathy wow wow she just put down the thor hammer right there the perfect answer empathy is the answer. So do we need to teach empathy if people are, we have to teach it, but also people, it's one of the things, one of the tools we use in coaching, right? We have to

find that thing that's going to crack somebody and go, Oh, now I understand it. People have to understand it. If they can't understand it, it's why we have to have role models. We have to see it to be it, right? If we don't see it as human beings, I don't know why I'm not a neuroscientist, but if we can't see it, we don't believe it. We don't understand it. We don't want to hear about it. We have to see it in front of us. So when we see the positive of it is the role modeling. It's like when we see we can have a Black female vice president, it's like, yay we see we can have a Black female vice president, it's like, yay, little girls can become a Black female vice president or potentially president. But the

opposite of that is true as well. When we see and can understand what discrimination looks like, when we see and understand what exclusion feels like, when we see and understand what it means to be cast aside and excluded and devalued, then all of a sudden we go, I get it. Now I understand what they're talking about, but we can't feel it. We can't see it. We can't do it until we feel it, right? Until we personalize it and we internalize it. And then we go, ah, that sucks. Wait, that's what you guys have been feeling all this time? And the biggest challenge is teaching empathy. Just an understanding or caring for what someone else is going through. And a lot of people struggle with that.

Yeah. I definitely learned it. I grew up poor. I thought chasing being rich would fix everything. I grew up with all my privilege and my biases and stuff. I was a Republican. I had that attitude. Well, everyone can lift themselves up if they work hard enough. It doesn't matter where you came from. I came from being poor. And I didn't understand that there's a lot of white privilege that goes into my, to my being able to be successful. And so I had that attitude. And of course, 9-11 changed a lot of that. I started doing a lot of

introspective, and I'm like, why does the world hate us? Oh, we're asshole Americans. Oh, cool. So I started on this path, and I eventually became a Democrat and started being more interested in the world. I gotta say, it's not about being Democrat versus Republican. I know plenty of Black Republicans. I know plenty of white Democrats. And just because, again, we got the label, just because you have a label of Democrat doesn't make you any better or any more enlightened or any more along this path, any more open than somebody who has the label of a Trumpist, let's say. So I think that's the other thing is we've got to stop with the labels and look at people who are the people behind the labels because just because you might be a white guy with a shaved head and some tattoos does not make you a skinhead i don't know that about you i don't know that about people and i

think that is the thing that i'm really trying to get across when we talk about unconscious bias we have got to stop labeling people and making assumptions about who people are based upon how they show up. Because if we can do that, that's half the battle. There you go. So that's probably a question we should ask ourselves. What labels are we putting on this person? Yeah.

There you go. So as we go out, Stacey, it's been wonderful to have you. Thanks for working through some of our Clubhouse questions. First time we did this is weird. I think it's great. Yeah. Yeah. I love being able to take questions from the audience. It's great. And they have great input. Let's plug your book one more time. Give some plugs and any final thoughts you might have.

Yeah. I think that at this point we're going to do some plugs. I'll do some shameless plugs, right? Like we really want to impact as many people as possible. So we've got people pre-ordering bulk orders of the book. Follow me on LinkedIn. We've got a newsletter that comes out. It really breaks down these different concepts. It's called Simply Diversity. It's actually easy to find at simplydiversity.com. Subscribe there. Follow me on Clubhouse. I'm Stacey A. Gordon. As I said, reworkwork.com. We're on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. We're on Instagram. So I'm happy to connect. I do go through and respond to all of my LinkedIn

connection requests. It's a lot. So sometimes it takes a while, but yeah. And watch the course, watch the course on, on, on conscious bias on LinkedIn, especially while it's free, save yourself some coins. Yeah, there you go. Free. It's a great course to really teaches you how to do it. And even here on the Chris Voss show, we've had a few inclusion conversations with some inclusion folks and some authors as well. In fact, I've been put through like an inclusion questionnaire, what sort of biases you have, when you become aware of some of your biases, stuff like that. So be sure to check her out, guys. Stacey A. Gordon. She has her book you can preorder.

March 30th, 2021. It's going to be coming out. Unbiased. Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work. Like I say, check out her LinkedIn stuff. Get to know her better. Get to understand what inclusion is if you haven't been exposed to it yet. Diversity training and things along those lines.

There's lots of different resources she's given. You can reach out to her as well. Thank you for spending some time with us, Stacey. We certainly really appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thanks to my audience and my audience in Clubhouse for making this happen for the first time. Really cool there. And go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfast, to see the video version of this. Goodreads.com, 4chesschrfoss, to see everything we're reading and reviewing. Go to LinkedIn and facebook.com, The Chris Foss Show or Chris Foss. You can follow the groups through over there as well. There's like a giant 135,000 group we have on LinkedIn.

And then Instagram at 4chesschrisfoss and The Chris Foss Show. Thanks, everyone, for being here. We certainly appreciate you guys. Wear your mask. Stay safe. And we'll see you next time.