My Top Ten Learnings from 2022

10. People of color pay an additional workplace tax that many don’t talk about. Over the years, like many persons of color, I have shared heartfelt stories with friends about having to run faster and jump higher than my privileged counterparts to achieve similar results. Unfortunately, this is a common refrain in marginalized communities that comes with a heavy emotional burden. Earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this notion has good research behind it.?

According to?survey research ?by catalyst.org,??61 percent of professionals from marginalized racial and ethnic groups in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the UK, and the US?feel constantly threatened by bias within their work teams which impacts their ability to flourish in the workplace. The reaction to this round-the-clock pressure causes these team members stay in a defensive posture “to protect themselves from intentional and unintentional experiences of bias, for example by bracing for insults, avoiding certain situations and places, and changing the way they look to protect against being stereotyped by others.” This is what some scholars refer to as the?emotional tax ?– “the combination of being on guard against bias because of race, ethnicity, and gender and the associated effects on well-being and ability to thrive at work.”

The research also points out that retention, engagement, problem- solving, and inclusion actually increase exponentially when these employees are not constantly on guard. So, organizations should be pleased to know that this emotional tax can be mitigated. The study cited team climate for psychological safety and team racial and ethnic diversity as the two critical factors to decrease the defensive posture of employees. I am proud that these are significant areas of investment at SSM Health where I serve as Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

9.?I am learning to move beyond my zone of excellence into my zone of genius.?Earlier this year I met a fantastic executive coach,?Karen Cappello.?Karen has that special quality that we all love in exceptional leaders. She makes you feel appreciated; she listens intently and lets you know that she understands; and then with graceful tenacity, she challenges you to be better than you thought you could be. Well, one day after a conversation about her executive coaching training program, she encouraged me to move beyond my zone of excellence and into my zone of genius.?

She went on to share a book,?The Big Leap ,?by Gay Hendricks. Karen explained that my zone of excellence represents those honed skills and competencies that I have performed well over the years in support of others – family, friends and employers. But that she was sensing something inside of me that was dying to get out that needed to be shared with the world in a more profound way.??She called it my zone of?genius, those natural gifts and strengths that come so effortless to me. They tend to be innate abilities fueled by perpetual inspiration that produce unique contributions above and beyond what you can accomplish in your zone of excellence.?

I immediately knew exactly what it was. It’s the reason that my former students, work colleagues, and lifelong friends stick to me like magnets long after our daily interactions have come and gone.??It’s my insatiable appetite to simply pour into people to help them find joy and success. It is a gift and passion that works very well for me as a servant leader of teams that know my greatest desire is to see them and the communities we serve flourish.?It is the intersection of coaching, mentoring, modeling,?teaching, and developing others. It is undoubtedly where you will find me in retirement one day!

8. Professional apprenticeships are a worthy alternative to college.??My youngest son, Roderick Judah Nunn, Jr., is the smartest person in our household, although he really hasn’t had enough life experiences to prove it yet. Before beginning his junior year of college at Mizzou he decided he wanted to take a gap year to reassess his future which has been assuredly shaped by the pandemic that robbed him of many important social milestones during both his senior year of high school and his freshman year of college.?

While he managed to acheive good grades during his first two years of college, he became emotionally frustrated with his experience. I realized that his frustrations were passionate pleas for help. “How will these lecture halls help me? Why are we borrowing money when I have other choices to make a good living? Why do I have to be like everyone else?” Unlike his older brother who successfully navigated a traditional college path and his doing quite well for himself, Judah is destined for something else.?

Because of his gap year, he is discovering his true passions and learning what he is good at. He is trending toward digital marketing based on some brief successes he enjoyed as a social media influencer on his favorite topic, NBA basketball. He is also working in a call center environment and honing his customer relations skills. We are now applying to some popular professional apprenticeship programs that allow new career entrants to begin as digital marketing trainees with a good paying salary while simultaneously being mentored by a professional and attending free employer-sponsored training. This meets all of his requirements for a relevant, economical, real-world experience. So, we are very hopeful that this?alternative path ?is one that Judah will find fulfilling.

7. There is no substitute for compassionate curiosity. In the October edition of Talent Development magazine, Beverly Kaye, co-author of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em and Liji Thomas, Chief Diversity Officer at the?Metropolitan Water District of Southern California?published an article that spoke to my soul. The article,?Viewing Engagement Through a DEI Lens , raises several important questions to help talent leaders close the gap between talent engagement and inclusion. Citing data from the?Saratoga Institute, the authors share that 50 percent of work-life satisfaction is driven by manager-subordinate relationship. They go on to cite “caring curiosity” as the most important lever to strengthen this relationship. The define caring curiosity as “both the art and science of asking questions with genuine concern for the individual and with the intent of getting at the root cause of a problem or situation.” The authors think of this as a person-centered approach to diagnosing organizational problems in a holistic fashion accounting for just about everything that might impact an employee’s well-being, including mental, physical, emotional, career and financial health.??This reminds?me?of a powerful quote from Dr. Martin Luther King that also rings true in organizational life:

?“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.” -Martin Luther King

Can you imagine an organization where every leader leaned into this compassionate curiosity on a daily basis? Their antennas would always be up scanning for employee distress signals. They would be perpetually curious about employee perspectives, preferences and lived experiences showing unconditional positive regard for every team member. More importantly, they would be skilled at asking the right questions and acting on feedback. From a DEI perspective, our environments would become more inclusive. From and engagement perspective, our employee experiences would certainly improve.

6. My personal dimensions of diversity intersect in powerful ways.?One of the first things I did as the new DEI leader as at SSM Health was enroll in a class from our learning catalog called Breaking Ice, a theatrical performance by the Pillsbury Theatre House that uses drama, music and poetry to give powerful voice to common systemic inequities, unconscious bias and misperceptions that show up in the workplace. An integral part of this performance is the depiction of “I Am From” statements where?performers passionately share their individual identities rooted in complex dimensions of diversity that commonly shape our perceptions and worldview.?

These individual dimensions of diversity continue to impact the way I show up as a friend, father, leader, colleague and learner every day. For example, later in life I learned that I tend to see and hear most social interactions as a complex jazz performance with consonance, dissonance, structure, improvisation, and a lot of swing. This is an important part of my DNA that is helpful?for others to understand me just a bit better.

I found this learning to be particularly cogent as I taught a new doctoral course on the community college students this past fall. Part of the curriculum was rooted in the notion that colleges need to ensure that their approach to assessment and evaluation seeks to understand students as complex human beings with intersecting identities and experiences that shape the way they show up on campus.?

5. The mental health of young people continues to decline.?I have been fascinated by the research coming out of the?Human Flourishing Program ?at Harvard. The program has been in place for six years now, but I am starting to hear my friends and colleagues reference it more in their work. The research is organized into six interdisciplinary areas that comprise the?science of health, well-being, and the factors that support them. Last summer, Dr.?Tyler J. VanderWeele, shared concerning?new research ?on lower levels of well-being among young people in the United States. Specifically, “...young people are not doing as well as they once were. They report being less happy and less healthy; having less meaning, greater struggles with character, and poorer relationships; and less financially stable compared to their older counterparts.”??

The researchers also hypothesize on what might be driving this phenomenon, including: 1) social effects of the pandemic on younger individuals who perhaps could not tap into mature relationships and communities to help navigate pandemic conditions; 2) economic factors such as inflation, college debt and housing costs; 3) the decreased participation in religious and philosophical communities that have helped supply frameworks of meaning for younger individuals; 4) political polarization fueled by the lack of civility and a decreasing sense of common good; and 5) the negative impact of social media engagement and technology among younger people.

4. Friendship is truly essential to the soul.?This past August, I lost my best friend, Jax Nunn, our three-and-a-half-year-old boxer, to a short-term bout with?cardiomyopathy?that seemingly came out out of nowhere and really broke our hearts. The notion of a dog as man’s best friend really hit close to home. Jax made us laugh. He brought joy and excitement every day. He seemed to know when we needed his affection. He kept us active and loved us unconditionally. My time with Jax was a great reminder of something near and dear to me. My fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, derives its name from the Greek phrase meaning?“friendship is essential to the soul.” Rest in Heaven, Jax.

3. Coming full circle with the social determinants of health.?It’s been just over eight years since I was invited to participate in a community forum sponsored by Washington University and Focus St. Louis in response to the?For the Sake of All ?research. One of the more groundbreaking discoveries from the research was a resounding 18-year gap in life expectancy between those born in zip codes on different sides of town.?At the time, I was responsible for several high-profile workforce development initiatives and asked to share insights on how higher education should respond to the contention that education and unemployment have strong links to health disparities.?

In June of 2022, I came full circle with the social determinants of health framework as the new DEI leader at SSM Health. Several studies now confirm that 20 percent of a person’s health is determined by clinical care while 80 percent is determined by the conditions?in which people are?born, grow, live, work and age.?Things like socioeconomic factors (education, employment, income, family and social support, community safety), physical environments (housing, transit, air and water quality) and daily health behaviors (tobacco use, diet exercise, alcohol and drug use, sexual activity) impact a wide range of health and quality of life outcomes.?

I am very proud to work for an organization that is leveraging many of its assets to address this important work. For example, as an anchor institution within the?Health Anchor Network , SSM Health is working to be more intentional with our approach to impact hiring, purchasing and community investing, all to?advance racial equity, remove barriers to economic opportunity and create a more inclusive regional community.?

2. The Workforce-Workplace-Marketplace framework. As a perpetual learner, I have always been disciplined about the care and feeding of the many mental models I use to help make sense of the complex environments I interact with daily. In other words, I am intentional about unlearning and relearning where necessary to integrate new information and experiences into my mental schemas to help me stay sharp and current.?

Back in June, Janet Smith Hill , the Chief Human Resources Officer at SSM Health, who has been a great mentor and sponsor for me this past year, introduced me to the Workplace-Workforce -Marketplace framework for diversity, equity, and inclusion. From a learning perspective, the framework really integrated well with existing knowledge structures emanating from lived experiences and over two decades leading in talent development.?

The workforce pillar refers to the importance of attracting and retaining top talent that represents the various dimensions of diversity that we encounter in the communities we serve. The workplace pillar refers to the development of an inclusive culture that allows our talent to flourish in environments that welcome and value authentic participation. The marketplace pillar refers to the clinical excellence we seek to provide in all our services to patients and their families in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways. It also represents the way we show up in the community to support important causes including those that help mitigate health disparities.

1. Atomic habits really do work individually and organizationally. One of my greatest challenges of adulthood has been my inability to lock-in in good meal planning and exercise habits to support my overall health. Over the years, I’ve tried so many fad diets and different programs to no avail as I’ve lost lots of weight only to gain it right back at a clip of about two pounds a month. This year something clicked. And it was just a bit different from the many times before.?

As I was reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I realized that I was living in a way that required heroic willpower everyday, an unsustainable proposition. Clear says that,?“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”?Obviously, there is a big difference in having a personal weight loss goal and having one’s life structured in a way to make our healthy choices obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying.??For example, as soon as I awake, just before my shower, I make the right portion of oatmeal, fresh fruit, nuts and my choice of protein. The measuring cup and food scale are sitting in the pantry right next to the container of Quaker Oats which then starts the routine of healthy eating each morning. Clear calls this habit stacking – attaching a new behavior on top of an existing one. The same is true for my exerbotic fitness session every Monday and Thursday at 6:40 pm just after a quick power nap.?

This type of system building is also true in organizations that have adopted lean process improvements to maximize value for customers and employees through the identification, removal and optimization of wasteful activities. There are numerous documented examples in?healthcare ?such as “improving patient satisfaction, scheduling appointments, decreasing overtime work, processing paperwork, and increasing clinic revenues.” All of these examples required careful attention to the elimination of steps and processes that did not produce desired results.?The new processes and steps repeated over and over each day add up to incredible results. Clear calls this the system of compound growth. If you improve by 1 percent each day for entire year, you become 37 times better by the end of the year. For me that has resulted in significant decrease to my Body Mass Index and I am just getting started!