Creating a More Inclusive Workplace: An Interview with Khalil Smith

During an emotional and challenging time that is part of a longer, heart-wrenching history of systemic racism, I feel not only sadness and outrage but also the agency of my privilege and the urgency for massive change. This means constant learning, deeper listening, making room for important conversations, being bolder in anti-racist action and working harder for solutions. There will be times when I get it wrong, but those are opportunities to learn, grow and get back to the hard work at hand.

Another important dimension of broader change is striving for more inclusive workplaces. For the last few years, I’ve been focusing on learning how to do that better. Along that journey I’ve been drawn to the writing of Khalil Smith of the NeuroLeadership Institute, and I’ve quoted him regularly in this blog. Khalil studies diversity and inclusion through the lens of neuroscience, and at this time when many of us are searching for ways to come together and feel more connected at work, he was kind enough to agree to answer my questions on the very timely topic of inclusion and building a stronger culture of belonging.

I think of belonging as our natural desire to be deeply united and part of something greater than ourselves. It feels like that longing is likely more acute than ever given deep racial injustices roiling our country and the often isolating circumstances in which we find ourselves right now. Would you agree with that?

I’d agree with that 100%, Katya. We’re in a perfect storm for us all to operate in our most comfortable ways of working, and we have to push against the natural biases that make it feel right to create a safe space with just a few trusted partners, to the exclusion of everyone else. Being intentional about creating belonging for others, and seeking it for ourselves, is critically important right now. It’s equally important into the near future to build a better normal. To your point, the desire to be part of something bigger is certainly a reality for many, and we need to be intentionally and deliberately inclusive to help each other accomplish that.

One thing I’ve learned about belonging is it is not about fitting in. It means being our authentic selves, which means being comfortable being different and finding a sense of connectedness from this place of knowing ourselves. This requires courage in how we show up ourselves and how we build toward a culture of inclusion. That can mean we sometimes must have tough conversations. What does the research show about the best way to deal with a situation in which we are being made to feel an outsider? 

Sometimes we're actually getting upset or we're blowing up or we're engaging in call-out culture instead of actually trying to reach a productive next step. What we're saying is, You made me feel bad. You need to stop making me feel bad and okay, we're good here, right? And that's not helpful. 

It's helpful to understand that on the other side of that conversation is another human being who, regardless of what they've got going on, has their own emotions and dimensions and work. And nine times out of 10, they're not intentionally doing something wrong. And so their intent is not matching the impact on me and I need to recognize and help them understand the difference between those two things.

As much as possible, it's about understanding why I'm having a reaction to it and then approaching a conversation in a really deliberate and careful way. Again, the other side of that is there needs to be someone who's receptive to hearing it, and there also needs to be awareness of the power dynamics that come into play. But I've spoken to just as many managers that say, "How do I have that conversation with a direct report?" So it's not only that a direct report struggles with talking to their manager, their manager struggles with talking to other managers. I struggle with talking to other employees. My manager struggles with talking to me. 

And so everything that we can do to just be really deliberate about understanding what's going on, understanding what we want to do about it, and then having a conversation that is really focused on moving the ball forward as opposed to just expressing our frustration can be really helpful and can help actually engender more of a dynamic between those two people.

That sounds good. But how do you find the courage and do it in a way that promotes a mutual sense of belonging instead of finding ourselves even further isolated?

I think there are a couple of different things. Are we actually trying to advocate for a particular point of view or are we approaching the conversation in a way that is very open? Is it a conversation? Is it a dialogue? Is it a, "Hey, can I give you some feedback? This is what I'm experiencing. Can you help me understand how you're experiencing this or how it's coming together?"

The other question to ask is the questions of what’s right versus easy. When we think about speaking up about something we're seeing in the business, sometimes we can say, "Well, I'm just not going to speak up because that's too challenging and I don't know how they'll react." But if we flip that to, Is it the right thing to do?" Is it a valuable thing to do? Is it potentially saving costs? Is it enhancing the customer experience? Is it making this a better place to work?” These are all things that can help get us psyched up to say, "Actually I should speak up" because it's the right thing to do because there's a benefit here, not just because it has this kind of initial thing for me.

So really marrying those two - first advocacy versus inquiry. Again, how would I know that at the end of the meeting where you said, "That was a great idea, Jeff," and it actually was my idea, you likely didn't do that on purpose. So how do I raise that in a way where I'm helping you to understand what happened and asking the question and really initiating the dialogue. And then for some of the more egregious things, how am I applying that lens of not just is it easy, but is it right? And if it's the right thing to do, then it will naturally kind of lift me up a little bit. And it kind of triggers different things cognitively where I'm like, if this is the right thing to do and I do care about the organization and I do care about the team, then I'm more willing to push beyond some of that discomfort to actually say the thing that needs to be sad.

One of the things I've learned from you is there is such a thing as over inclusivity, like in meetings. You can take this so far that you just get bogged down and frankly it can get frustrating or you can get analysis paralysis. So how do you take the best of inclusivity without landing yourself in over inclusivity, on Zoom call with so many people it’s counter-productive?

Yeah, it's a great question and I don't know that there is, I wish there was like math for it or some really deliberate way to lay it out. I think part of it is just the recognition, because we've spent so much time dealing with under inclusion and saying, well these particular groups or these particular folks have felt like they haven't been included, and so we want to include. And the challenge is when we're not specific around the language or specific around what inclusion looks like, then we get people that just wind up doing more of what they've already been doing, which is to kind of blast everyone or invite everyone or make sure everyone speaks up in every single meeting. And so the goal is exactly what you're describing, which is this idea of optimal inclusion.

One of the ways to do that is to move from serial processing to parallel processing.

What is that?

What we mean by that is, imagine in a meeting the challenge and the reason that some of those meetings bog down when you add another three people to it is because everyone needs to go around individually and say their piece. And then we go back around and it's almost, we're operating in a very serial way where it's one after the other after the other versus using technology or using some other mechanism so that multiple people can provide their point of view at the same time. And that's a principle in design thinking. Whether it's using post-its to say, okay everyone, we've got a challenge, we want to put this thing out there. We're all going to jot down three to five ideas on a post-it and then we're going to put them up on the board and then we're going to figure out what to do with it.

Or Google documents. We do the same thing in our organization where it's like, okay, we're all going to go into a Google doc, we'll add in our thoughts and then we'll be able to pull them apart. And it just becomes a way for us to parallel-process as opposed to kind of this serial one after the other.

But I think one of the more critical pieces is just to recognize that over inclusion is a thing and that the goal is not to bring everyone into every conversation. And the reason that some of that happens is when people don't feel like their point of view is otherwise represented. Because for most of us, we look at our calendars and we're like, "I actually don't want to be in more meetings. I don't want to be included in more things." But if I feel like I bring a unique point of view that no one else has or that no one else is able to represent, and then I feel like I almost have to be in that meeting.

So that is one thing of how do we make sure that we're inviting the right people, bringing the right people in. But on the individual side, it's to say how unique is my point of view in this particular meeting? Because yes, if you drill it all the way down, no one sees the world exactly as Khalil does, but there are absolutely people in my organization that I say actually such and such has this. They know my point of view on it. They will represent it. I don't need to be there. And so by removing my voice, I am able to focus on other things. I'm opened up to be able to put my energy in the places where I can be the most productive and I still know that I'll have an opportunity to weigh in if it's the right thing to do.

Oh, that's great advice. It's been wonderful to connect, and it's great to continue our conversation.

I always love connecting with you and the work that you all are doing. I’m happy to continue to support it in any way that I can.