Navigating DEI in 2025 With Sommer Green [PODCAST]

Sommer: What I think that the D. I. argument has become is an ability for people to turn it into a political statement to take a side and then now they’re walking that into the workplace. And I, that’s the shift I’m seeing. It’s actually that now it feels like because it’s topical because it’s now water cooler conversation.
It’s actually lost all of the meaning around the fact that it’s actually just something that we do as an organisation.

Phil: Welcome to the inclusion at work podcast. Uh, this week we are very lucky to be joined by Summer Green. Uh, Summer is a CX, so customer experience professional and a DEI chair with lots and lots of experience in this area. And just for a bit of context, Summer and I were actually destined to be on a DEI panel together, but unfortunately in the very, uh, shortly before the event was due to kick off, Summer was lucky enough or unlucky enough to contract COVID, so, uh, couldn’t make it.
But we had such great conversations leading up to the panel that I really wanted to get somewhere on the podcast for a chat, and now seemed like a very opportune time to do so. So, uh, for a bit of context and for people listening in the future, uh, we’re having this conversation in early February 2025, and With a lot of the social and political changes in the world at this time, uh, the conversation around DEI has shifted in, um, some surprising, um, some slightly undesirable or very undesirable and, uh, and some interesting ways.
And I think a lot of people are trying to make sense of that right now. And I couldn’t think of anyone better to have on the podcast to help us unpack this than Summer. So Summer, welcome to the Inclusion at Work podcast.

Sommer: Thank you so much for having me. And yes, that was a very unlucky situation having to cancel the panel.
But yeah, it was great to have a chat with you and it’s fantastic to be here.

Phil: Lovely. So, first of all, before we get into the particulars and start unpacking DEI from an organisational perspective, which is obviously the lens that we primarily look at things through on this podcast, I wanted to check in as, you know, we’re all, we all work in this space and start with you, Summer.
Um, How are you feeling personally about the current situation?

Sommer: Yeah, look, it’s a tough time. I think it would be hard not to feel pretty stressed and quite disrupted in terms of how quickly things have changed. I think the commentary that we’re starting to hear from other countries, especially out of the U.S., has really disrupted our day to day experiences as queer people. And, um, I, I’m. proudly part of the queer community. And, um, I have a trans partner. So when we’re talking about the impacts of the language being used and the, uh, the executive orders being signed by the US and the impact on our actual everyday life, um, it’s pretty, it’s pretty hectic.
And I think that it has a really big ripple effect on how, um, we take those impacts into the workplace. So challenging, I would say.

Phil: Yeah, absolutely

Kerry: said with a surprisingly big smile there summer.

Sommer: My go to is a smile.

Phil: Kerry, how about you?

Kerry: So I think it’s a really hard question to answer because there’s so many mixed feelings.
I think it was very easy to think of this as a US challenge at the start and to almost want to ignore it because that’s the easiest thing to do is compartmentalize. Um, but of course we can’t do that. And impacts everyone around us and it does impact our Australian organisations as well i think the first time it felt the most real from an organisational perspective to me was an email we got from NASA who were on the inclusion panel of where they basically said it’s with heavy hearts that we have to stop all of our diversity and inclusion work after the executive order and that’s wild we see organisations like meta suddenly getting rid of all of their representation targets and a huge amount of work that’s gone in there and.
That’s obviously real from an organisation perspective, but the sort of heart breaking, I think, summer when we’ve talked before, you’ve used that word sadness in terms of the implications on people day to day to say that actually you being represented in our organisation no longer matters in the same way.
It’s just it’s heart breaking and there are so many different emotions there that I think what we always try to do as leaders for good is think about well, what are the implications there and what can we do? What is in our control and what change can we make?

Phil: I think from my perspective, and I think this is the wonderful thing about having you in this conversation as well, Summer, because, you know, I’m a middle aged straight white man, um, and I’m, I guess, less personally affected by this in the same way that a lot of people are, and that’s not to say I’m not, obviously, with the work we do, but I guess it’s easier.
I have to lean into that, and I have to lean into that from a from a kind of feeling and emotion perspective because my natural go to is to sort of look at, Okay, what’s the situation and what’s to be done? And if I think about that, the opportunity here, I think comes up now. Now, not discounting any of the, you know, the situation and the impact it’s having on everyone.
But I think if we look at If we look at the situation from a okay, so what action might we take and how we how might we think about things differently? Hopefully, the end result of this is a stronger community is better work in this area and is ultimately more impact. But that might be me. Plus half following the situation, but we’ll, we’ll see about getting that.

Sommer: Look, I think it’s actually a fair point. That’s a conversation I’ve had recently, which is that performative DEI will be quickly eliminated. It has to go because it’s the unmeasurable outcomes of maybe perhaps talking about things, but not actually changing the behaviour within organisations. And certainly I think that’s the first thing that will, will disappear.
And I don’t necessarily think that that’s a bad thing, I think where we get into a sticky situation where it gets really complicated is we’ve kind of bottled the words down to just an abbreviation and the fact of the matter is we’re actually talking about diverse workplaces and inclusive spaces and equity for all and then we kind of Throw this word around DEI and all of that gets eliminated.
All of the humanity of it gets eliminated. And I think what’s going to be quite interesting and what we will start to see is that people, hopefully in Australia, particularly around this space, will actually look around and go, no, not us. This, that’s not what we want. We don’t want to eliminate the humanity from our organisations.
And so I think that there’s opportunity to put more weight behind the actual words again. and start from scratch around what does it mean? Actually, what does it mean for our organisation to be diverse, inclusive and equitable for all?

Kerry: And we’ve had this conversation a lot recently, and I don’t think I’ve got a firm perspective on it, but whether that acronym is now helpful or it’s a hindrance.
And I actually think it’s going to be different in different organisations based on where organisations are. But we know that already so many people just. Turn off or jump to the negative when they hear DEI is that then a useful term or are we better to think about words that represent what we actually mean in our organisation or is that like baby out with the bathwater and actually we shouldn’t be pandering and we should be going harder on the terms DEI and just doing a better job of explaining and linking it through to outcomes so we’ve been debating that so I don’t know if you’ve got a.

Sommer: Yeah, I think more than ever, I have a perspective and it is the fact that it needs to be expanded out and the actual specifics of what we’re talking about need to actually be put on the table. There’s a little technique that I use whenever I’m dealing with somebody who perhaps says something that I think is inappropriate, especially in the context of jokes.
So, for example, if someone was to make a joke that is quite inappropriate from, you know, a diversity perspective or just, you know, is maybe a bit misogynistic, for example, I obviously won’t laugh and I’ll notice the, the moment where the person is like, Oh, you know, it was a joke. And I often say back, can you explain to me what was funny about the joke?
Cause I missed it. And having to have somebody go, well, what’s funny is that she’s a woman, haha, is actually immediately reveals the fact that there is, uh, ingrained misogyny in what somebody is actually saying, whether they realized it or not at the time. And I think DEI is the same. I think we’ve washed it down to just be representative of a, of a HR initiative or perhaps a bit of wokeness.
And again, woke’s another word that’s fallen into that same space. You know, work really means to be awake and to be aware, and DEI used to mean to be inclusive, but it now is actually once again falling into that space of being the stick and not the carrot, and I think that that’s where we have to get back to, and I think that by expanding words out to their core meaning, uh, we can get there again.

Phil: I couldn’t agree more and I always think back to the phrase, do we want to be right? Or do we want to be effective in these situations? And I think Kerry’s point about it’s going to look different in different organisations. If it is a big hurdle in a particular organisation to get over the word DEI.
Are we going to let that get in the way of the project of and I love that you touched on this summer and certainly this is hand in hand with our thinking. What are the underlying things that we’re trying to achieve? We’re trying to achieve where an organisation where everyone feels safe, well and happy to be there, where everybody has a fair opportunity to thrive and succeed inside of the organisation.
where we have a bunch of different voices sharing their opinions and their backgrounds and, and I don’t think those are things that many people are going to argue with. So, you know, getting to that point, another great quote, I loved your, your story there about, you know, can you please explain the joke to me?
One way of helping to unpack when somebody says. I, I, oh, I don’t like DEI. That’s a bunch of work. Nonsenses, again, to get to, to the specifics, what do you think, I believe that you don’t, about this thing? You know, what do you think we actually disagree on? Most of the time you’re probably not going to find a lot there.
Um, which is, yeah, which is interesting. I wonder

Kerry: if there’s actually a stage before that, before saying, what do we disagree on? Which is, what does DE, I mean to you. Mm-hmm. ’cause I think, I think that’s the challenge point. And I mean, we’ve found this for ages, right? When we go into organisations, especially when we work with operational or field stuff.
D. I. to them is like head office initiative, people team, like, if we have the words D. I. on an invite. Operational staff come in and it’s, you can just see it in the room. The second you walk in, they do not want to be there. They’re a hundred percent no from the get go. And we have to spend a big chunk of time at the start, getting people on board, explaining what it really is.
Whereas if we frame things differently about the impact and the benefit to them, of course, the what’s in it for me and stay away from those terms, we’ve had much better success. So I think, yeah, it’s back to Phil, what you said, but it’s, what is the outcome we want to achieve? And how do we do it in the way that’s going to resonate most with the people that we’re, we’re speaking to.

Sommer: it’s, it’s incredibly relevant as well now, because I think that there is a culture that is going to sort of exist within organisations behind closed doors, which is this, uh, allowance of, of perhaps some language that maybe last year wouldn’t have been used and microaggressions popping up and misinformation playing a part more than ever.
And the safety piece, I think, disappears because of that for people within the organisation. And so I think that. Right now it’s about Bringing humanity to everything and the, so what for the person, but also creating that link that we’re talking about me and I, and I talk about that with people often, you know, when I’m speaking about anything, I’m talking about me, I’m talking about your friends, summer, your colleagues, summer.
Your sister, Summer. I’m talking about me as a human being and the, and the work that I have to do to advocate for my own rights in the world. And when you start to get into that, people, people find it very hard to then be flippant about the work we’re trying to do.

Phil: I love it, it’s so important that, because just using DEI or Woke or again one of these catch all terms that I don’t like, it dehumanizes it, it depersonalizes it.
People are talking about a concept, they’re not talking about their friend Summer. Um, and I think. If people looked at things through those two different lenses, they would have a very different experience and a very different conversation. It’d probably happen off the back of it.

Kerry: And I think a big part of it as well, of course, is us all and DEI professionals and leaders taking responsibility for the fact that DEI’s Been done badly and people have had really bad experiences of it so I don’t think people are bad that they’re jumping to a set of preconceptions around DEI if you’ve had that unconscious bias training where you walk out filled with judgment and shame of course you’re going to have those negative perceptions I think we’ve actually got even more work now to do based on what has been some poor experiences that people have faced and I think what you’re saying there about humanizing it probably is at the centre of

Phil: And elevating the work, as you say, Kerry, the, you know, the, the lowest common denominator of, of.
You know, the ineffective shame, blame and judgment style workshop, which we know just doesn’t work again. It’s the difference between being right and being effective. You can go in front of a crowd and say a bunch of things and be factually correct about them. But if you’ve not changed anybody’s mind and you’ve not left people with some things that they can do, then what was the point of the hour?
And that is the low hanging fruit that people can point to when they, you know, people who might be opposed to, you know, or at least think they’re opposed to the project of DEI and organisations, they can point to the low hanging fruit of the less than effective workshops. I just wanted to bring us back and sort of focus in on so obviously the majority of this conversation we’re talking about the inside of organisational life and you know that’s that spills out into quote/un-quotes the real world as well because of course our life inside organisations is not real but to really kind of pin down what are some of the challenges faced by organisations.
you know at their heart maybe still want to continue to do this work and still want the those outcomes that we that we talked to before. What are the challenges from a leadership perspective? Challenges from an individual perspective inside of the organisation? Some I might throw to you first and then we can open it up but yeah what are what are some of those?

Sommer: Yeah I think that the challenges at the moment are very real for A trickle down effect from the U. S. from companies that are dealing with either things like U. S. contracts, U. S. global brands, anyone that has, you know, a big company that is, is impacted by, uh, directly by the impacts of what happens over in the, in the U.
S. I think we’ve got a real issue at the moment around. People don’t know what to do. They’re confused. I’m confused. You know, I live and breathe this experience as a human being every day, but also in an organisation and I am a leader of people. I run our CX division, which means I’m looking at customers all the time and our customers are internal and external.
They’re our partners. And then, of course, being across our DEI chair and, and making sure that we’re actually doing this work internally. And I’ve sat back and had to go, well, gosh, what do I do? What, what can I do right now to ensure that I’m making. Noise and making sure that we’re keeping the volume up on this, um, not getting scared and, and stepping away from it because we’re not exactly sure what our counterparts might be doing in other countries.
Um, but also really having to think about if, if we take a position and if we make some noise. And if we continue to drive visibility within our spaces, how do we also create safety? And we speak about this one, particularly in the queer community around visibility without protection is a trap for those that you’re actually creating visibility for.
And we saw that very largely with The Bud Light campaign, and they had a trans person, Dylan, who was part of that campaign. And they got all behind it. It was a great marketing piece of activity. But when the chips were down and the situation got tough, and there was a lot of kickback from people who didn’t believe that a trans person should be representing the brand, they absolutely left the trans community out in the rain and, and just went.
You guys deal with it and essentially wound it all back, but the damage was already done and I think that we’ve got to think about that in the workplace too, is that if we’re going to create events, we’re going to talk about visibility, if we’re going to bring things to the forefront that we know are divisive, they shouldn’t be, but they are at the moment, especially, um, if we’re going to put that on the table and actually say, look at, look at everybody who’s, you know, coming along to these events, essentially.
You’ve got a risk of putting targets on people’s backs, and I think that it’s a really. Complex time to be a leader in this space and we have to take a step back and go, if we’re going to actually say to everybody, come along to a Mardi Gras event where you can all be yourselves, you’re out of the closet, you’re free at work, you’re free to be who you are, then we better be making sure that they feel that way.
The minute that party is over, because otherwise we’ve got a real problem. And, um, and I actually think that is, that is the biggest thing weighing down upon people who are working in this space at the moment,

Phil: carry any thoughts from you on, um, on Some of the additional challenges inside of organisations at the moment.

Kerry: I think the first thing that’s in my mind is just that the research that we’ve seen so far as of January says that organisations aren’t actually significantly cutting budgets. So overall budgets are stable with some organisations increasing budget. So I think the first thing is around that danger of misinformation.
And obviously the sexy story is that every single organisation is stopping DI and of course some high profile organisations have, but that isn’t necessarily reflective of. The entire world so being aware of that i think is the most important thing for me but then having said that every organisation is asking us the same question which is what do we do and it’s summer’s point that she made at the start there it’s that that lack of clear path forward and the ambiguity of the state that we’re in.
Right now and i think the vast majority of people in organisations of course want everyone to feel safe and healthy and happy and all of those things that we listed out in terms of the outcomes we look to achieve by DEI but what do you do in the face of so much divisiveness and what is the role of organisations within that and i think again.
People that we’re speaking to there’s a real desire to do something but how do we make sure that we’re not putting too much pressure on people and that we are giving people things they can do within their sphere of control so we’re not. Not every single organisation or every single person in organisation is gonna go out there and shout from the rooftops about how important this is some people just don’t have the capacity capability whatever it is desire to do that and that’s ok so what can i do.
In my sphere of control to try and help make change and I think trying to break that down for people is really important and not letting this be another judgment shame type approach, not letting it be the two sides right and wrong, DEI’s good, DEI’s bad, you have to stand on one side of the fence, a whole load more stress and pressure, but how can we help organisations and help people figure out what they can do to make some kind of shift and some kind of change.

Phil: For me, one of the things some of you mentioned this at the start, which is people who might think they’re opposed to the project of DEI. And I use that language deliberately as well, because I think once we drill down into it, I don’t think many people actually are. I think a lot of people are pushing back on and, you know, this might be being overly charitable to some, but I genuinely believe it of most is they’re pushing back against The less desirable version of things that they that they don’t want, or maybe some of the clunky ways it’s implemented, but I think some people who are, you know, think they’re opposed to the work of D.
I feel emboldened to push back against and behave in certain ways inside of the organisation. I think that’s going to take many, many different forms. It’s going to take. Questioning of programs questioning of initiatives all the way down to people feeling more emboldened to make a make the sexist joke or make the racist comment etc that they maybe weren’t able to do before and I think.
Managing that as an organisation is a tricky business because, you know, having those conversations and we talk about this in the context of, you know, direct conversations when we when we go in and do work with organisations, you know, the example you shared before summer of not like it laughing at the joke, asking the question and engaging in a dialogue about it is something that a lot of people find very, very challenging.
So how do we equip people with The decision making and at the sort of initiative setting level to articulate well, what the project is, what they’re trying to do and have that discussion all the way through to everybody in the organisation being, uh, feeling like they’re able to call out the sexist joke, for example, and I think.
That’s a period of flux that I think will be, um, challenging for organisations to, to deal with amongst the, you know, amongst the, uh, the many other things that you, that you mentioned before.

Kerry: I think the term project DEI is a really interesting one. And I know you use language quite deliberately Phil, so I suspect you have used it deliberately.
I guess my worry about that, if we’re thinking about it in terms of a challenge, is it starts to feel separate. And I know we do have to have focus and determination and roles to make it work. But I wonder how, especially given everything that’s going on, how we do embed it more so it’s not separate and feel you often use the term that I love sneaking the vegetables in with the source because really, if we go back to the outcomes here and when we approach, for example, leadership development, leadership development, all of the inclusive leadership stuff is in there because to be a great leader is to be an inclusive leader.
Same, same. So I wonder if there’s a way of thinking here, which is about somehow this not feeling as separate because we are talking about it. And I guess the nature of the conversation is that we’re having to talk about it in a slightly separate way. So I guess I wonder if there’s any way that we can or anything we can do starts to happen.
Think about this more in a broader organisational context rather than something that sits separately or given the state of where we’re at, do we need to be thinking of it as something separate that needs that distinct focus? I don’t, again, I don’t have a good answer, but love to hear your thoughts.

Sommer: Yeah, I think that it is going to be different for different organisations, certainly.
I think separating it out is actually part of where, of how we’ve got here actually, because I think about it in the context of, you know, the anti trans movement. Trans people have always been here, and it hasn’t been an issue, and then it became an issue, and it became a political football, and, and as such, because of that, people felt they needed to take a side, and as soon as things become political like that, we end up with divisiveness, it’s just natural, it’s, people think that, you know, and, and because we’ve again stripped out people’s actual humanity, it’s very hard for people to understand that when you take a side, you’re actually free.
Standing up against a lot of people that you probably know, and they don’t even put the two and two together. And I think that DEI has actually ended up like that in organisations as well. It’s the for and against, and probably prior to the events of this year, we started to see more and more the idea that it just was.
It just was, and it’s part of being in a business and it’s a, it’s just the way of the world now, you know, in a corporate environment, you’ve got to be a bit more inclusive. You’ve got to consider what you say, maybe on the weekend at your barbecue, you can say what you want, but actually, when you come into the doors of this environment, you need to behave, you know, in a more inclusive way with better language around the people that you’re working with.
And I think that that really got to a point where I was quite an accepted. Environmental shift that you would make what I think that the day I argument has become is an ability for people to turn it into a political statement to take aside and then now they’re walking that into the workplace and I that’s the shift I’m saying it’s actually that now it feels like because it’s topical.
Because it’s now water cooler conversation, it’s actually lost all of the meaning around the fact that it’s actually just something that we do as an organisation. And I think that that’s going to be the area where we all have to do some resetting and some. Leadership work around how do you continue call out behaviour in a way that doesn’t feel shame filled.
I think that that’s a really important piece and also tapping into the fact that maybe we have to change some language for the, for the meantime, and I’m not adverse to that. I’m not adverse to actually saying maybe it’s not called the DEI committee, which feels very formal. And very much like we will be like slapping you over the wrist, maybe we’ve got to call it something else.
And we do that for a bit to reset the expectations around what we stand for. I think the more rigid we become, the, the more intense the divide will become between the two things.

Phil: Couple of really important things you said there. I think that I think the reality people do overlook is that organisational life is often very different for people.
It is the melting pot that a lot of people encounter a, you know, a diverse swath of humanity that they just maybe don’t in their personal life, especially as we get older. Our friendship groups tend to get smaller and we tend to get more insular. And it is in the workplace that we encounter people from um, Many different backgrounds for us.
So it’s understandable that, um, you know, again, where that kind of way of thinking came from. And I think, you know, in principle, that’s largely correct. The sides ism is again, I think where things are problematic, like taking a stand on the side again, it’s so you just break down. You know, take one of the words just inclusion or equity or diversity within each of those is 500 things that we could talk about.
So there’s not one thing. And, you know, I think I think it’s always the problem with taking aside saying, you know, I’m a fan of this political party or I’m a fan of this. Well, everything they do all the things under that, because I think that’s not helpful. And, and something that just struck me as well that we see during when things become part of the zeitgeist in a, in a, in a conversation that, uh, all of a sudden, everyone becomes an expert to, we saw this with, we saw this with COVID and you see a lot more certainty, you know, you see a lot of people.
With no qualifications as an immunologist or a virologist having a lot of strong opinions about the transmission of disease, and I think similar in the DEI space as well. And, you know, it’s natural for human beings to, you know, to form perspectives, but this is where I think the concept of humility comes back down onto the table in terms of one of the things we’d caution.
Ways of thinking and kind of how to in great conversations around this is just all of us, you know, including the three of us on this call, obviously don’t know everything. There’s, you know, many, many things and being able to sit down and listen and have a have a, you know, have a have a conversation rather than take a stance, I think is really, really important.
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Sommer: There is a lot in this space right now that feels really loaded and I was thinking about this just for my, my personal, um, the way I was going to handle things moving forward this year. And, and it’s really challenging cause I don’t think anybody who hasn’t directly experienced it can quite understand what it is like to hear.
Your actual being discussed like this in, in the media all the time, and then the commentary and the, the horrible place that social media can be, I mean, LinkedIn even, and I’m just there to like, I have to check if I can hire someone and it’s like, my gosh, what the stuff that is on there. And I don’t think anyone quite realizes unless they’ve lived it, what it feels like to read that sort of thing and hear that sort of thing every single day.
And then you’re reading that. And you’re walking back into the workplace and you’re trying to lead diverse teams and you’re trying to be an inclusive employer and you’re making, you know, really big decisions around this sort of thing every day you’re leading a team and. You can’t take that same level of emotion into that environment, and you’ve got to take a step back and take a deep breath and be able to actually go, well, what’s going to be meaningful and how can I get the, the, um, progress that we want and how do we make sure that people do feel safe?
And my initial reaction is to want to scream at these people, you know, my initial reaction is to what I do online, which is go, hey, ouch. Like, you don’t mean these things. I don’t believe you actually mean these things. And, and I don’t think you actually want to hurt people the way I think that you are.
And so it’s really hard to switch that off when you walk into a corporate environment. And then not only is it hard to switch it off, but it’s hard to not want to give up. Yep. It’s hard to not say, well, actually I’m living this every day. So you guys sort it out. And that’s why I think allyship is going to be really, really important, um, this year, particularly.
And then that visible leadership as well. We, we need to see people saying, actually, the people who are living this every single day, can’t be the ones also fighting for their own rights in the workplace. It’s not, it’s not actually safe for us or fair. It’s, it’s too, too hard. You are absolutely exhausted.
And I think we’ve got to be really, really careful of what we ask of people. In DEI throughout the rest of the year, we’ve got to be really careful and one of the things I’ll say particularly is if you’re going to put out statements, you know, this time of year is a great example. If you’re going to put Mardi Gras statements out, happy Mardi Gras from your organisations, things like that, do not make your DEI team handle the comments.
Have your media team ready for that and have prebuilt responses and have a view because what we always see happens is a, is a, um, an ad goes up or a post something so well meaning and then the comments fill with awful things and the company panics and then they just take it down or worse they just leave the comments there or they just delete them, but the damage is kind of done and I think that right now that’s the That’s the space that organisations get trapped in is, well, I won’t do anything because it’s too hard right now.
So we don’t want that to happen. We want people to do it, but just moderate and be careful about what you’re actually putting out there in the world right now.

Kerry: I think we think about this a lot when it comes to the work we do inside organisations that really the people that need to make changes. Aren’t people from underrepresented groups like people get it they’re experiencing it the people we need to work with are the people that haven’t had any experience of that and as you said it’s almost impossible to understand if you haven’t had that experience like we can’t blame people for not being able to fully understand but they’re the people that we have to work with similar example international women’s day every year almost or every talk is primarily women that comes along

Phil: yeah

Kerry: or we’re doing panels of women again additional loads so I mean, we’ve done this for many years, but it’s always actually, how do we frame this so it’s not a women’s problem?
So women that need to be fixed, how do we get men along as well? And we’re all part of the solution, it cannot just be ERGs or employee working groups that are working on this and trying to fix things.

Phil: That comes to, you mentioned it, um, in their summer, again, this sounds a bit as if like, okay, we need to take responsibility for it.
But We ultimately all are, all are responsible for our own state and it’s, and, and, you know, I say this with complete empathy that this is hard, especially if you’re one of the people, you know, directly affected by this, but. Again, going back to the wonderful place that is LinkedIn and seeing some of the commentary and some of the responses.
There’s a lot of anger and there’s a lot of, you know, from, you know, from D. I. professionals from people from underrepresented groups and it’s absolutely understandable. And, uh. It’s also probably not what’s going to be helpful going forward, so I’m couching this as much as I humanly can because I do empathize with it and there’s no blame coming, you know, coming from here, but ultimately is especially inside of organisational life.
Making effective change, we’ve gotta be able to take that moment. We’ve gotta be able to manage our state, and we’ve gotta be able to act as effectively as possible. Um, because those emotion driven, emotionally driven responses often lead to places which are ultimately undesirable for, for everybody. And, and it’s a, it’s a tricky line to walk and it’s a lot to ask as well.
And I do, I do appreciate this all as I say it, but, um, it, nonetheless, I, I, I believe it, believe it to be true.

Sommer: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s really important. And I, I actually think it’s about how do we make space for both experiences in, um, in particularly within the organisation around being able to communicate people’s disappointment.
So, You know, I think especially where there are maybe global companies that aren’t being, that they’re not taking the stance perhaps that people thought they would. I think that’s been a really big shock for people. The companies they thought maybe they would never back down in this space and having the opportunity for people to go.
Yeah, like I thought that that wouldn’t have happened. I feel quite shocked by it, quite sad about it. Um, I think that that’s really important that we. Keep the conversation happening in a way that is very much surprised, but also like, there’s, there’s a point where the us and them is going to be important for us in Australia right now.
And I think that we need to keep it up. We need to have the conversations. And one of the things, you know, I try to do is, is when people say, oh, like, how are you? It’s like, yeah, yeah, I’m good. Struggling, struggling with the news of. Such and such. And just casually bringing it up as a, it’s tough out there.
It’s tough out there every single day for us right now. And it’s not accusatory on the person having the conversation with you. It’s actually just a statement of how I am as a person right now. And I’ve noticed that the people then tend to engage, and they go, Oh yeah, isn’t it like, Oh, it’s a bit yuck. Or, um, you know, yeah, like it’s, it’s all a bit much blah, blah, blah.
And it’s interesting because it’s such a gentle way to actually say to someone like, we’re not going to do it, we’re not doing this, um, we’re not going to go down the same path, and I think that having those sort of really gentle conversations that are I That are centred in the uncomfortable emotions, which are sadness, frustration, disappointment, and hurt, like that’s what we’re feeling and I think that being able to actually have that conversation with our colleagues is what actually will carry us through these tougher days.
Uh, I think we’re in the really, really worst part of it right now because it’s all. It’s all sensationalized. It’s loud. It’s aggressive. Um, and the best thing to fight aggression is to go small and, and specific and just work, work away at it gently with people and actually teach them, um, through that, I think.

Kerry: And that’s, as you said earlier, bringing the humanity back into it. It’s not lying and being like, yeah, I’m sweet. Um, it’s the humanity of how you’re feeling, but in a way that enables people, like you’ve said, to engage rather than the more aggressive that would just. Make it very hard for someone to then have a two-way conversation around it.

Phil: I think that’s where the empathy comes from in terms of people who don’t have an experience of something and acknowledging that it’s hard and that person isn’t just going to naturally see it. You know, you don’t experience it. I can trot through my day and. And unless I’m open to it and aware of it and see it and seek it out, I’m not going to experience any real measure of discrimination against me.
And of course, that’s a place of just luck and privilege. But I think, as you said, Summer, just being open to sharing and going, you know what, it sucks right now, I’m not okay. That’s the opening for people who don’t experience it to have that insight into, oh, Again, sucks for my friend, Summer, and, and this isn’t okay, uh, and, and okay, what can I do about it?
And I think that is a, that is a way into the conversation that could be incredibly powerful.

Sommer: I really agree, and I think that this is where I talk about The shocking thing that the thing that actually cuts us to the core, and I always talk about this around Mardi Gras time because people often the classic line comes up of, you know, we don’t have straight pride.
Why do you still have pride? You’ve got your rights. Um, we hear that sort of murmuring start to. To, to happen and I, and I think, you know, I expect we’ll see a lot of it this year, though I expect from, from a Sydney perspective, um, the tone right now feels very protest like, so I’m excited to see how that will actually play out in, in this city.
But what I, what I often say to people is how quickly our rights got taken away. You cannot fathom the experience of waking up the next day and your rights, your human rights are gone.

Phil: Just

Sommer: disappear, they just go away, and the fact of the matter is, is that we live with this feeling of gracious acceptance.
It’s like this kind of, yeah, yeah, we’ll accept you. It’s fine. Like, it’s, it’s part of the climate right now. You’re accepted because it’s, it’s the right thing to do. And as soon as the dial shifts. It’s like, nah, we’re taking it all away. And I think that that’s really, um, powerful when we’re talking about rights being taken away and how quickly it’s happening to sort of disrupt people’s complacency around it being just a political thing.
And particularly when we talk about things like they’re talking about marriage equality being, um, you know, revoked in, in States in the U. S. We’re talking about people who got married that tomorrow would not be recognized as a married couple. And those sorts of things that people can really understand, I think, are powerful in terms of communicating why it matters and just moving a bit away from the DEI specific language.
I think we just got to; we got to strip it right back to what it actually is.

Kerry: And I think what you’ve got me thinking about there is It’s a lot of work we do around emotional intelligence and empathy, and it is really hard for people to understand, but you can teach a lot of that stuff and you can teach being in other people’s shoes.
And I think, again, the sort of vegetables in with the sauce. Maybe it’s more empathy and emotional intelligence work with people in organisations, which helps with the humanity, and all of these are perfect examples within that. Um, but you don’t have that instant resistance, I guess, to some of the sort of DEI language.
And I guess where my brain got, why I got to that point was back to it can’t just be. People from underrepresented groups opportunity to constantly have to share how they’re feeling and why it just it can’t be that in an organisational context. What can organisations do? And I think this is where I’ve got to with this, like I’ve got little quotation marks here, but humanity training, like helping us understand more about why polarized views can be dangerous about how we step into other shoes.
Like, I think that’s part of organisational role is to help, help with that.

Sommer: I think that that, if I thought about one thing an organisation could do around that space right now is actually to bring to life that the conversation around people’s rights is not a casual kitchen conversation that you, uh, you should be taking sides on.
And I think that that’s a, that’s an interesting position that we could be really. Honing in on, which is actually, you do not know who you’re talking about or who is hearing you when you’re saying these sorts of things in this very flippant language that people use. It’s directly impacting a huge proportion of people who are overhearing these conversations.
And so, I think that it’s a really interesting piece. We need to start to think about how do we position that and, and again, moving away from maybe traditional DEI language and talking specifically about instances and occurrences that could be. Could be done differently.
I had an experience recently, I was sitting in a, in a restaurant and I, an entire table of people sitting beside me and I was sitting alone there, and they were all talking about the fact that DI or the fact that Trump was gonna put an end to DEI and, and you know, that’s great and I don’t mind if you’re queer or gay, but just, you know, don’t rub it in my face.
They’re all having very, very loudly having this conversation. And I walked up to the table. Because that’s the kind of person that I am. And I said, Oh, hey, I, I’m, I’m a gay person and I’m having like dinner here and I don’t really actually want to hear your conversation. So just wondering if you could change the topic, if you wouldn’t mind changing the topic or I’ll move.
But I’m just letting you know that like, your, what you’re talking about is hurting me and it’s impacting my feelings. So, uh, I just know, I just need to know where the land and they gave me some sass back and I was like, no worries. Okay. I’ll move. And it was one of those moments where, I didn’t want to argue with them.
I didn’t want to have a fight with them about it. I actually just wanted to say that was yuck. Like that, that wasn’t very nice for me. And I am sure I am, I guarantee those people went away that night and individually had an experience where they thought about that moment and went, That wasn’t fun and it would have been a bit embarrassing and, you know, I may not have changed anything about the way they go about things in the world, but it was a disruptor.
It was a moment that said, no, this is not what we do. And so I think that we’ve got to work out as organisations, how we do that, how we, how we put little interrupters into these conversations and make sure we’re going. No, we’re not having that. We’re not having those sorts of conversations.

Phil: That brings us neatly onto what are some of the things organisations might do.
I mean, we’ve touched on some of them. I think, Kerry, your, um, your point about leaning more into empathy and kind of that as a, I guess, a lever for, you know, for change, for more conversations. But what are some of the other things that organisations might think about doing differently, staying the course with going forward?

Kerry: I think the main thing for me, and we have touched on it, but it’s just this is an opportunity for us to think about it all differently. So I don’t think the just keep doing the same stuff we’ve already been doing is right for many organisations, partly because the narrative is everywhere. People in your organisations will have heard it.
Even if we are going to keep doing the same thing, I think we need to acknowledge what’s going on in the broader landscape and make our position on it as organisations very clear. Um, so I think it’s about thinking differently and making sure we’re actually, we’re doing the most effective thing that’s going to make change for the people that we, that we want to.
Help and support and a big part of that is being really clear on the outcomes and yeah is the right time i don’t know if your organisation but what is it that we’re actually trying to do how does this link to individuals and into our business strategy i want it to be in everything that we do rather than this standalone piece of activity.

Sommer: Yeah. I agree with all of that. Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that I’m a huge advocate for is building some form of measure into people’s KPIs around this space around inclusive work environments, and that might be something like just an employee survey. It might be something where we’re actually tracking and going as a, as a leader, your team feels that there is inclusion and belonging in the work environment.
And I think having that as part of people’s KPIs is super important because they’re driven to create that. And it’s measurable and people love measurable. I think we’ve got to be careful right now. I’m seeing a lot of organisations talk about it still makes good business sense for DEI, um, it’s, it’s still better for our bottom line.
So we’re going to keep doing it. I think we’ve got to be really careful right now around that language, because once again, it’s dehumanizing. And it also talks to the fact that, well, if it didn’t, would you take it away? And I think that there’s a real issue there at the moment where people are leaning on that as a way to.
To pursue it as opposed to just saying, we believe that having a diverse and inclusive workforce allows us to create a better environment for our employees. And that’s it. That’s full stop. But that’s what we want. And I think that, um, that’s going to be an interesting shift for companies who have really relied on the fact that they do it because of the bottom line.
And then I think checking in. With any of your employee groups and your D. I. leads any of those people who are doing the legwork every day, like hyper care for those people. It is going to be a bit tough and a bit messy and there’s going to be some backlash. There will absolutely be pushback. Even if you don’t see it directly as a leader, it will be happening on the ground.
It always does. So I think that it’s around, um, really, really conscious leadership in this space around Yeah. Being aware that there’s going to be some mental health issues. There’s going to be some work that needs to be done. And how do we, how do we care for people?

Phil: The business case thing, I think is interesting because you’re seeing that on the flip side of, I’m going to have to look this up and put it in the show notes, which organisation it was because I don’t want to, I don’t want to speak out of school here.
It was either Microsoft or Google, the, um. got rid of DEI team and canned a bunch of initiatives. And one of the things they explicitly talked to, I think it was Google was, um, we do a lot of government contracts in the, in the US and this is our affecting our ability to have good government contracts. So that is an organisation making an explicit claim on the other side of things.
If we keep doing this thing, this is bad for business and I think this sort of roundabout way as a consumer, you get other organisations like apple that just go. No, we’re going to carry on doing this because this is what we do. I think there’s a, there’s also a consumerist angle as well as an individual, but also as an organisation who you choose to partner with, who you choose to support, who you choose to use as vendors thinking about that in terms of.
How they’re behaving and how they’re acting in this, but going back to the what can organisations do? I think using this is an opportunity to include the resistors in the design process. So I think Kerry’s point is front and centre. Acknowledge that there’s a dialogue about this and use that as an opportunity to have that dialogue.
I think and some are, um. Preaching to the converted here is a is far more of a CX expert than I’ll ever, I’ll ever pretend to be in my, in my, in my dabbling. But, you know, the. The concept of designing with not for is one that’s always been, um, sort of front and centre in the in the work of the eye.
But it’s often or actually very often exclusively meant the communities and the underrepresented groups that we’re designing for. And obviously that that shouldn’t change. But in terms of the with not for, um, A lot of the initiatives and programs are designed to be consumed by everybody and designed to impact everybody in the organisation.
They’re designed. The workshop is not again designed to change the mind of somebody who’s part of an underrepresented group. They’re designed to educate and give people tools. So making sure to just include. And when I say resistors, that’s people who are not necessarily actively opposed, but just are either ambivalent towards or unresponsive towards or just don’t really know about this whole D.
I. Business, you know, for a number of air quotes there. So use it as an excuse to really, I think, go a bit harder on the design process of these things and think about how they’re going to land for people. And I think. That’s one of the ways that we’re going to avoid the ineffectual naming, shaming, blaming kind of interventions and programs and workshops that may have happened in the past.
So I think broadening the design philosophy around what we’re doing in organisations is another consideration there.

Kerry: And I think what just strikes me as we’re talking about these things is, it’s not simple, it’s not easy, it’s complex, and it always has been, and now it’s got even more complicated, and we already know that everyone’s headspace and time is limited, loads of organisations don’t have anyone in a DEI role, people leaders are trying to do this on top of their existing jobs, so we know that this isn’t easy, and again, I don’t have a good answer for that, but we all of course believe it’s incredibly important, but I think being kind to ourselves about what we can realistically do and the change that we’re trying to drive, I think, is also really important.
I know a lot of people that work in this space that are beating themselves up at the moment because they can’t do enough. And I feel like that is the worst case scenario that we then all start to feel bad about not being able to do enough. So focusing on the changes that we can make, it’s going to be incremental change.
We’re probably not going to be able to do as much as we want. The. Leaning into that a bit, I guess.

Phil: Yeah, fully agree. The response from a lot of organisations just thinking about that practically should be, well, the breadth of humanity in your organisation’s not changed. The dialogue’s gotten weirder and more complex about this.
We should probably double the amount of people in our DEI team or at least hire one, um, is probably the actual rational, rational response to this, not we should bury our head in the sand. I think that’s actually a, yeah. We talk a lot about responsibility in the work we do it’s an abdication of responsibility to the reality of what is what is the happening in your organisation if you choose to ignore this is an organisation to kind of put a fine point on it again there are you know if you got a large enough organisation there will be statistically speaking diverse representation there and.
If you choose to ignore the increased tough time and the increasingly complex conversations that are happening about this and bury your head in the sand by just saying we don’t do this anymore, that’s an abdication of a responsibility that I think organisations might want to, again, probably haven’t thought about in that context, but it might be useful too.

Sommer: I think we saw that very, very clearly throughout the marriage equality Debate I think that happened in Australia and the, the impact it had on employees where their organisation either didn’t take a clear stance or went the other way and how deeply it affected those employees because they spoke about and I remember the feelings spoke about the fact that you’re, you’re talking casually about this idea that the person that, you know, next sitting next to you at the desk, can’t marry the person that they love.
And it seemed. It just seems so inhumane and the conversation, and again, I talk about this is the point where. You got to be careful of who you’re talking about, what you’re talking about, you don’t know who you’re actually impacting. And I remember that organisations lost so many people over that period of time just because they were so disappointed in the experience.
And, you know, we continue to see the stats say the same thing, that people aren’t coming out in the workplace at the moment. Like it’s increasing, the people in the closet and the workplace is increasing. That is just phenomenal when you think about that from a going backwards perspective. And so I don’t think you have a right as an employer to just not take a position in terms of supporting your people.
It’s we’re talking about people. So, um, yeah, I think it’s very neglectful when people kind of boil it down to a. A dollar figure, or they boil it down to a conversation that’s happening across the zeitgeist. It’s actually your responsibility as a, as a people leader and as a hiring company to remember that literally people are affected every day by the decision you’re making as a company.

Phil: Brings us right back to your point at the start, some of which was representation without adequate protection or without, um, you know, uh, without the, the, the sort of, the backing is, is, um, you know, is a, is a recipe for, for, for problems. We could go for another hour on this. I might start bringing us to the, uh, to the close because I know a couple of us have got a hard stop.
Summer, any final thoughts from you before we close out, close out the conversation?

Sommer: Mostly just thank you for having the conversation. I think the more conversations that we can be having in this space, um. You know, the more we actually start to unpack it together. I think Kerry, your point about people not beating themselves up right now, it’s hard just to be alive right now in the, in the world of, you know, these conversations and just exist where you’re actually seeing these pretty yucky things being spoken about.
So I think it’s super, super important. We’re looking after each other and find the good news stories. It really helps, and share them, um, like, let’s not let one country’s horrible position actually, uh, disrupt all of the great work that people have been doing for a very, very long time. So I think getting caught up in it all is probably really dangerous.
So we just, we just have to keep finding those good news stories and sharing them.

Phil: All right. Well, Summer, thank you so much. That was a wide ranging conversation that we could have kept going for another hour. Um, really appreciate your time. Really appreciate you. Really appreciate your insights. If you dear listener have any thoughts, feelings, feedback you want to join in the conversation, you can always shoot us a note.
Hello, leaders for good dot org. Um, we’d be happy to have a dialogue about this with you, especially if you’re an organisation who’s Struggling with what’s next and how to navigate it post podcast we had a range of conversations with different organisations on this topic and we just wanted to jump in here and highlight one point that we didn’t feel came across as strongly in the conversation as we thought it might we talked a lot about the responsibility of organisations in this space to their people but the commercial reality.
Facing a lot of organisations is something that I don’t think we touched on as much as we might have organisations whose livelihood, their supply chain, their contracts are with maybe government organisations. Perhaps they’re based in the States and for them to publicly engage in DEI activities at the moment is quite frankly, existential for some businesses in terms of their continuing to function as an entity and we just wanted to.
shine a light on the complexity and the really difficult position that a lot of organisations with good intentions find themselves in.

Kerry: Yeah, just as an example of that, there was an organisation I spoke to literally straight after that podcast. It was my, my next meeting and 50 percent of their revenue comes from government contracts and whereas previously, to get the work for government contracts, they had to fill in all of the details around their ESG program, prove that they are delivering from an ESG perspective.
Now they have to fill in a whole load of documents in the reverse, To prove that they’re not doing anything in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. So that puts the organisation in a really challenging position. If they were to publicly support DEI, which they do, they would lose 50 percent of their revenue.
So that commercial reality, I think we just wanted to make sure it was clear that of course, that has to come first. If we can’t employ people, then we can’t do any good. So it is a tricky situation and we didn’t want to minimize the importance of that for a number of people.

Phil: I think it loops back around as a final point to a lot of the things we still talked about in the episode though so focusing on things like empathy in the organisation as a mechanism for having conversations focusing on what are the underlying goals of what we’re actually trying to achieve you know it might fall broadly under a banner that may be called D.
I. somewhere else but actually were. looking to, um, you know, maximize employee wellbeing, engagement, um, and opportunity for everybody. So that being said, uh, thank you for listening and we’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the inclusion at work podcast. If you’d like to help others benefit from the conversation you just heard, the most impactful thing you can do is share it with a friend.
You can also give us a rating or a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And of course, if you’d like to talk to us. to us about accelerating your organisation’s DEI efforts. Or if you’d like to provide feedback on anything you heard today, you can reach us at [email protected].