Show Notes

The Business Case for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in NFP associations.

 

In this episode of the Service Game podcast, host Julie Krieger engages in a deep discussion with Sarah Abbott, a seasoned leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). They explore the importance of integrating DE&I into nonprofit organisations and outline practical steps for implementation. Sarah shares examples from her extensive experience in various sectors, including manufacturing, education, finance, and IT, and highlights the benefits of fostering an inclusive and respectful work environment. The conversation emphasises real-world strategies for small and large organisations alike, shedding light on innovative approaches to creating a sense of belonging and equity in the workplace. Julie and Sarah also touch upon challenges like skepticism towards DE&I initiatives and provide actionable advice on how to overcome them. This episode is a must-listen for nonprofit leaders aiming to drive meaningful change within their teams and broader communities.

 

00:00 Introduction to Today's Episode

00:13 Meet Sarah Abbott: DE&I Leader

01:23 Host Introduction and Podcast Overview

02:19 Starting the Conversation on DE&I

02:40 Understanding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

04:48 The Business Case for DE&I

07:45 Challenges and Strategies for associations

08:46 Belonging in the Workplace

10:49 Implementing DE&I Policies

29:33 Addressing Skepticism and Cynicism

37:15 Acknowledgement of Country

41:30 Conclusion and Resources

 

Links:

Acknowledgement of country: https://cid.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/rap-plain-english-acknowledgement-of-country-guide-v2.pdf

 

www.onsomble.com.au

 

 

Show transcript

Hello. Hello. Today's episode features my second guest speaker, a conversation on diversity, equity, and inclusion and the business case for enmeshing it in your not for profit. I am delighted to introduce Sarah Abbott. Sarah is a seasoned diversity, equity, and inclusion leader working in this field across the manufacturing industry.

 

Education, finance and IT sectors in Australia and in the USA for over 20 years. She has previously held roles with Microsoft, Commonwealth Bank and University of Sydney. And she is currently the global head of diversity, equity and inclusion at International Drinks producer Lion, where Sarah heads the DE& I portfolio with a specific focus on inclusion and belonging. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Business, a Master's in Commerce, and a Master's in Adult Education. She's a passionate advocate for those who are not in the majority, always looking for opportunities to remove barriers and create equity at work. Sarah is a recognized leader in this space, a recipient of a variety of sector awards, And a sought after speaker and presenter.

 

She is also my very dear friend, and I am so delighted to bring this conversation to you. Enjoy.

 

Welcome to the Service Game podcast. Brought to you by Onsomblee. I'm your host, Julie Krieger. For the past 14 years, I've been helping associations to grow and thrive, establishing systems, writing policies and procedures, implementing membership and sponsorship strateg. Setting up operations, undertaking complete governance restructures, developing strategies, and advising CEOs, presidents, and boards.

 

I am driven to support the hardworking people who give their time, heart, and soul in the service of their members and in the pursuit of the greater good.  Join me as we delve deep into this innovative, creative, values based, and mission driven thing you. I call the service game.  Let's get going with today's episode.

 

Hello, hello, Sarah Abbott, welcome to the Service Game podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks, Julie. I'm really excited about the conversation we're about to have. Me too, because I think it's a topic that should be covered more often in the association space, and typically isn't. So let's kick off today we're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, and I want to start with the basics.

 

What is it? In layman's terms for the average person, how can they understand it?

 

Yeah, so diversity, equity and inclusion are three separate topics, but they're actually interrelated. And when you bring them all together,  It's about people feeling valued and respected and given fair opportunities for their ability to thrive, regardless of their background or their identity or the circumstances that brought them to where they are today.

 

So if you break it down, diversity is around diversity. Difference. So diversity means difference and that could be so many different things. It could be race, it could be socio economic, whether you have a degree, whether you have a disability, your sexual orientation, age, gender, there's so much that can go into making a person who they are and how they got to where they are right now.

 

And now equity is a little bit different. And that's about not treating everyone the same to get the same opportunity. It's about looking at each individual and thinking, what path did they take to get to where they are today? Did they have to take the stairs when everyone else took the escalator?

 

And how can we make that fairer for them? How can we recognize that there isn't fairness in in their opportunity and how can we change that? And then inclusion is it's bringing it all together and it's how do people feel in their environment regardless of their diversity and the equity that brought them to that space in time.

 

Right. So  the comments you've made there about equity remind me of that meme that you often see of people standing at a fence. And the difference between equality versus equity. And so equity I'm guessing then is more around leveling the playing field and making sure that everybody's got the same opportunity given their own circumstances.

 

Absolutely perfect. You can do my job, Julie. 

 

I doubt that, Sarah.

 

Why do companies need to think about it? And,  thinking of associations in particular, a lot   which are quite small  and their boards really will be taking responsibility for this area of their business operation. Why do they need to be worried about it?

 

Yeah. There's been some really interesting studies done out of Harvard where You give two rooms an idea or a problem to solve and in one room, you have a group of people that know each other really well. They've worked together for years. They've even grown up in the same area. They've got the same, you know, schooling background.

 

They feel very comfortable with each other. They, they look the same, you know, they could be all white And then you have a room of people who don't really know each other that well, they've come from very different backgrounds and they might be socio economically different they might have different ancestry.

 

And then you give them the same problem. And what they've noticed time and time again, is the first group  get to their solution really quickly. There's not a lot of challenging. They all know each other. They think about it. They go, yep, yep. This is what we need to do. Perfect. Well done. That's great. High five.

 

The second group take a lot longer to get to their solution. There's a lot of, slowing down and explaining and thinking through and getting your point of view across. And the conversation does go off on different tangents way more. And the result is always completely different to room one. And what they've found is that result is always more innovative and more exciting.

 

And, a lot more leading edge than the group that just went, yep, oh, we know, we've got it, well done mates, high five, we're good to go. Yeah, right. And so if we are continuing to surround ourselves by people who look like us and think like us and feel like us, we're always going to get the same outcome.

 

We're never going to challenge each other. We're never going to have those slow down, robust conversations where you have to articulate yourself really clearly because you don't need to. And then as a result, you're going to miss out on what you need to do to thrive as an organisation.

 

We'll come to this a little bit later, but  Sometimes, and I've noticed it a lot in associations,  staying the same is almost a decision that's being made at a board level on purpose.

 

And so I can understand why the thought of having to challenge Where people are at today and the way they've been used to doing things and used to thinking might ruffle a few feathers. So I, do have a couple of comments planned for a bit later to talk about that. So we'll, we might just circle back to that in a little bit.

 

But just thinking about, again, the association space, often businesses are very small. Is there such a thing as a company that is too small to have to worry about this? 

 

Yeah, I was thinking about this and I actually think there's even more reason to worry about it when you're too small. So large organisations organically bring in diversity, just because of the sheer numbers of the people in their organisation.

 

By default, they're going to be recruiting people who are different.  Smaller companies don't have that opportunity of numbers to get that diversity. So they, they need to actively proactively do something about it if they're going to want to look around the room and see difference. So for me, I think it is a more of a priority for smaller organisations knowing that they won't have that organic difference in the room.

 

Good point.  I've noticed that there's an increasing trend regarding organisations having a focus as well on belonging.  How does that relate? What is that exactly? And what does that look like in the workplace?

 

So belonging is a feeling. We all know when  we don't belong. We can all look back on a time in our lives or a job that we had or a team that we worked in, that we didn't feel like we were part of that team.

 

And that could be for so many different reasons but it stings and you never are able to give your full capability and really lean in when you feel like you're on the outer, and it doesn't feel great. And so belonging refers to that really deep sense of being valued and respected, and being part of a community.

 

And this is the gold in DE and I, the, where we're all wanting to head to, that regardless of who you are, your background, you feel like you belong just like everyone else within that team. And that's the team that's going to thrive. Once they get that right, they'll be off and they'll be flying.

 

Is it hard to achieve? I think a lot of it gets down to the leader themselves and leadership capability in knowing how to build a team, where they build that sense of belonging, and it really does stem from a strong platform of respect and the way that the team interacts with each other. And everyone looks to a leader to understand what the behaviours are that are okay and accepted within that team.

 

And if the leader is able to demonstrate those value based behaviours and draw a line on what is not okay, that will go a long way towards building that sense of belonging within that team. 

 

Yeah, that's interesting. I spoke about values in a recent episode  and made that exact comment that it, has to come from the top and it's the leadership that really sets the tone the personality, if you like, of the company, where do organisations start if they've, they're just starting out on their journey.

 

In the DE& I space, what do they need to be thinking about? 

 

For me, every organisation is different and you need to start where your organisation is at. There's no point looking across the fence and seeing where another organisation is at and thinking, well, that's where we need to be.  It's an incremental step forward, year on year, from where you currently are.

 

So, don't beat yourself up thinking,  we're all white, we're all men and we won't be able to do this. It's what you can do in small steps, year on year. And I break it down into different groups. So I think about,  how do we bring in difference? and that different way of thought and thinking through life experiences or demographic changes,  and how do we build that inclusion so that difference is able to thrive, and then that piece of belonging where you get that really humming team.

 

So I would start with where are we at now? What do we look like? So even on a piece of paper, what are our statistics around demographics? And then Where do we need to get to? What is a small step for us? What are the policies that we have in place that build that sense of belonging for these individuals and that sense of inclusion?

 

Have we got those right in place? And what is our listening strategy? And listening strategies are so important. How do we understand what the lived experience is for different people within our organisation? How are they experiencing our organisation versus someone else? How    That can be through annual employee surveys. Which give you a high level of understanding of how people think and feel. But even better is to actually have discussions, we call them closed door group sessions where we ask people confidentially what their lived experience is of the organisation and that's where we really get the gold.

 

We really understand how some cohorts might be experiencing our organisation different to others and what do we need to do about that.

 

And do you do that by cohort? Yes, absolutely. And do people self identify as part of a cohort? Like how do you group people together?

 

I look in a number of different ways. So I might look at women in sales or women in supply chain or men who have just returned from parental leave or people who are culturally diverse in our corporate office or in IT. So they're very specific groups where I might feel that there is an issue or I've noticed some red flags come up. And I think what is actually happening in that area?

 

And that's where I might think a deeper dive needs to be done so that we can understand what's underneath the statistics that we're seeing.

 

And you mentioned that in those environments, you get the nuggets of gold.  Are people willing to share openly in front of other people? 

 

You have to build a really strong sense of confidentiality and trust, and so I spend a lot of time speaking about that at the beginning of the session.

 

I take notes and I explain that I never put anyone's names to what I'm hearing.  That might be the name of someone that has Demonstrated poor behavior that they'll be talking about, or themselves, the person talking about that behavior. There are no names recorded, and then I build it into high level themes.

 

So that if I'm reporting to the board on what I've heard, they only get a themed based response. Now people need to trust me that that's what I'm doing, but once you demonstrate that over time, that there hasn't been any leakages of circumstances from these sessions, people know that they can speak freely.

 

Some people don't always feel comfortable in that session, and what I find is I often get a phone call from one or two people outside of it who say, look, I wasn't comfortable to speak, but I do want you to know about this.

 

Wow, that must be very powerful.  Yes, there's things you hear that are so powerful for the leadership team that they can't unhear them. And once you  understand that certain behaviours are happening within your own organisation, you can't undo that knowledge and action. It's the strongest way to create change. 

 

That's fabulous. In a smaller organisation, would that play out  in, personal performance reviews?  Is that the moment for it? I'd keep it separate to  performance reviews, yes, because that's really concentrated on your performance in your role.

 

So this is more about what is it like for you at this organisation and how you're experiencing it. And what have you noticed? And what's coming up for you? And where have you seen behavior that  hasn't meant you've been able to thrive and hasn't meant you've been able to belong? And what does that look like?

 

And is there value in outsourcing that process? where, for example, you've got an executive officer and a board and that's it? 

 

Definitely. I think that would be the best approach. If you bring in someone to have that ability to hold that confidential space and build the trust, they will manage that information in its highest regard, but confidentially.

 

I think in that circumstance, an external person would probably be more appropriate. 

 

Yeah, I think you might get more honesty, albeit if it is only a  single person organisation, it's going to be fairly obvious who the comments have come from.  

 

 If you were to  package up D, E and I into a box with a bow on it and give it as a gift to an association, what would be inside it? 

 

In the box would be a guide on the basics around  what your organisation can aspire to. And that can be the basics on policy. On reporting  and on understanding how to measure demographic data.  And how to think about attracting talent to your organisation that might be diverse.  And then as you mature and you evolve and you start to build an understanding, you might be thinking then about what does inclusion look like?

 

How do we hold an inclusive team meeting? How do we Understand when there are pockets that aren't inclusive,  what are the implementations we can do to support them? And then it can move the next step through to belonging. And that toolkit could talk about the different ways that organisations can build belonging through employee resource groups through building, a stronger understanding about what respect looks like at a team level and how to hold those respect conversations.

 

So there would be a tiered system depending on where you're at and what's relevant for you and you can grab it and lean in and take what is important for you because every organisation is so different and everyone needs something slightly different. 

 

Exactly. And I'm guessing that this, what you're talking about now could translate not just within the team and the board, but also potentially to the membership of the organisation, which in many cases can be very large.

 

We can be talking thousands of people.  Who aren't necessarily actively engaged in the organisation day by day, but they're paying their dues every year to be part of something. And I guess it's incumbent on the board and the organisation itself to make sure that they feel included in that and they feel like they belong in that space.

 

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a formal organisation as we would traditionally think of it . So a membership base would be exactly the same. In each state. can't see that they feel seen and that they are part of this membership base, they're probably going to go somewhere else. And if everyone else looks and thinks and feels differently to them, and they don't feel that their voice is getting heard, they might not think that that membership is for them, and they might think it's for a different subset, and then you're going to lose members as a result.

 

So it's thinking differently about what an organisation is. But the rules sort of apply the same.

 

Yeah, there are so many aspects to diversity in particular, but the whole DEI picture, as you mentioned at the outset, how do you tackle that and,  how much emphasis does an organisation like an association need to put on diversity?

 

all the various possibilities that exist within that to implement policies and strategies. You know, I'm just thinking about things like parental leave policies. I'm thinking about, anti discrimination, anti bullying. It might be about menopause leave, or it might be about all sorts of things.

 

What's the minimum standard?

 

 Obviously, there's the legal requirements    there's a lot of positive duty of care now in relation to sexual assault, sexual harassment, bullying that means organisations need to prove that they are proactively not allowing it,  as opposed to the old laws which say, once it's happened, what are you doing about it?

 

So there's been a real shift in ownership on organisations to build in guardrails so it doesn't happen, and they'll be judged on that. So there are some minimums around legal requirements.  And then on top of that, it's hard to know where to lean into. Parental leave is an obvious one. It's the most expensive one.

 

But when you're wanting to attract talent and attract difference you'll need to start to be competitive in this space or other organisations or associations will take that talent and you'll miss out. And some of the policies are so easy to implement and so small and really don't cost much money.

 

That  don't be afraid to be a little bit quirky, like building in, swapping out Australia Day for another day if it doesn't align with that individual's values to recognise that day formally. Costs you nothing. It's a paragraph in a policy. Just do it. Or swapping out public holidays for cultural and religious reasons.

 

For people who don't want to celebrate Easter, but want to celebrate Ramadan. Very easy to do. Doesn't cost you anything. It's a paragraph in a policy. Menopause leave. You know, recognizing the effects that menopause, menstruation have on women. And. And adding that in is such a value add, it is simple to do.

 

So don't be afraid of being bold when it comes to policies. A lot of very small organisations have that ability to be more flexible. They don't have the red tape that the larger organisations have, and they can do these things quite easily. And it can be a differentiator. And people can look across and go, that company is really cool.

 

Do you know they do these amazing things that you've done really easily? You've added in grandparents day where you get one day extra a year, and suddenly everyone thinks you're fabulous. So I wouldn't, shy away from being bold. It's not hard. And get creative and get fun, you know, bring your pet to work day or, have  leave for pets, things like that.

 

People are doing it really well these days. Yeah. 

 

Yeah, that's good. That's good advice. And really lovely practical examples of what it can look like in the real world. It is good to know that they don't necessarily need to cost a lot of money because I can definitely hear already chairs of boards and treasurers saying, yeah, well, that's all well and good for multinational companies, but you know, we don't have that budget. and to that point, a lot of organisations are thinking,  how do we afford this?  Other than those sorts of examples that you've just given, is the process of implementing these sorts of policies prohibitive in the broader sense?  Does it need to take up a lot of board time?

 

Does it need to take up a lot of maybe the executive officer's time  to set it all out, to spend the time writing the policies? 

 

Sometimes it's useful to bring in an external person who can support you to get it done quickly. If it's a space that you haven't been in a lot, you can feel a little bit nervous, but you don't need to. Policies are just Putting in writing some guardrails and rules around how your team members are going to be able to  be supported in a work environment. 

 

Should companies tell people about what they're doing in this space, beyond obviously the communication of the policies themselves or whatever else they have in place structurally.

 

Obviously that needs to be communicated to the people who will be impacted by it, but should they be  publicising,   their, tactics and strategies in this space, or is that seen as virtue signaling or distasteful?

 

I think they should be publicizing it. Everyone's always looking at other organisations and saying, Can you believe they do that over there, and we don't get that here?

 

I think if you're doing something innovative, shout it from the ceiling. You're going to attract new talent and different people that wouldn't have necessarily thought of your organisation before. And they'll think, oh wow, did you know that over there they do this? How cool is that? I might check them out.

 

And it's planting those seeds so that next time the role comes up that is suitable for that candidate. They'll consider you more likely than they would have before. And it's showing you in a completely different light. 

 

And is that,  intrinsically tied to company values.  And  I certainly advocate that those should be not promoted.

 

You know, we don't take out ads about our values, but I think demonstrated in Everything that we communicate and, the way we communicate,   should a company's values  statements include  diversity, equity, and inclusion explicitly? 

 

I think there needs to be a piece around how employees are going to experience life.

 

at that organisation. We think about how much time we go to work if we work full time. It's a lot.  And if you don't feel like you're going to be valued,  you're going to look somewhere else. And people really are voting with their feet when it comes to  sustainability, D and I, and values based organisations.

 

And if you can be overt  in what is important to your organisation, in your statement. You're more likely to have people consider you if it aligns to their values as well. So I think it's important to weave it in. I don't think it needs to be a big overt D and I statement, but I think there needs to be some recognition of how you value each other and the importance that you place on that.

 

Yeah, that's great. One of our key values here at Onsomble is flexibility. so much.  And,  I work hard to make sure that that exists for our clients as well as for the team,  but it's a tricky balance to strike sometimes between, the service that we need to provide and want to provide to the clients  versus what an employee might need in any given period of time.

 

And because we are not a large organisation, sometimes that leaves you with logistical issues.  So  there's a balance to be had around this and writing a policy in such a way that it doesn't expose you to unforeseen costs for one thing,  logistical difficulties or service delivery difficulties.

 

 We like to think of it as a three way win. So we have the customer, we have the organisation, and then we have the individual. And how do we look at those parts to make sure we're winning. And knowing that at the end of the day, we're here for the customer and they are our priority.

 

But overlaying that with the three way win of all three, it is a tricky balance.  You're not always able to get it right and I think  we need to understand that at some times. 

 

Yeah. Yeah. And I guess just be  okay with that and knowing that the intent is right and that people know that the intent is right.

 

Exactly. And I think if  team members know that  you're on their side and that you are trying to help them, but they also need to understand that at some times. that's not going to be able to be accommodated due to a business reason. And when they have faith that you care about them, but in this circumstance, it's not going to be achievable, you're more likely to have that understanding. Like they go, yeah, fair enough. I get it. So it's building that relationship so that there is that give and take that's fair. 

 

Yeah. And that again, tricky to do because it's, I would imagine very difficult to write into a policy. Yeah. It's quite nuanced. Am I right? 

 

And that comes back to leadership capability.  

 

  Some organisations will find this whole area Very new to them   some of the people that are leading these organisations we work with  are not native social media users, for example, and in the same way  they might have evolved in their careers in a slightly different era.

 

And perhaps the paradigm hasn't yet shifted in their  minds and worlds  around this whole concept. I think. In some cases, it's fair to say, there might be a degree of skepticism or cynicism, a bit of eye rolling from time to time in certain areas, or backlash against what might, in a derogatory way, be referred to as wokeism.

 

How do you differentiate wokeism from appropriate D, E, and I activity? And is that, sense of backlash,  Increasing, you know, what can we do about it? 

 

It's a really, really good point, Julie. And yes, it is increasing. We're noticing that people are less likely to be able to meet each other in the middle when it comes to an opinion.

 

That's partly due to our social media algorithms that are really keeping each other apart into bubbles. where we're less likely to come across a differentiated opinion to our own. And when we do, we're losing the art of listening  and the ability to change our mind. It's incredibly disturbing and it's a huge issue.

 

The D and I  is a  term that I steer away from using a lot because I know how divisive it is. So if I was to bring about comms campaign or an initiative, I would never use the words diversity, equity and inclusion.  So I agree. Yep, I really lean into the words belonging and inclusion and respect. And those three words resonate with people and they understand them.

 

Because we've all had times where we haven't belonged or we haven't been respected or we haven't been included.  And it's easier for people to  pause and think, I wonder what it's like for that person. Guy over there, and how is he experiencing this team compared to me? Under those banners, then a diversity hire, which has a really negative connotation.

 

So it's about changing the language and working out what makes that person tick.   Are they willing to think beyond their own experience?  There will be some people that are untouchable, sort of the 10% that you know, you're never gonna be changing but then there's that messy middle. And that's the area that I like to work in. 'cause I've always got the, the strong supporters and they're always gonna be there. But that messy middle are the people who really go. Yeah, well that's great, but it's not for me.  And it's making them realize that it actually is for them, because this area is actually for everyone.

 

There's benefits for everyone.  You're not going to lose out when you bring in diversity, equity and inclusion. You're not going lose, you're going to be gaining. And when people have that shift where they can see that as an organisation,  if they want to be innovative and they want to think differently and they want to come up with different ideas,  having them all sitting around the room, looking and thinking and being the same is not going to bring that.

 

And if you can let the guard down and be willing to open yourself up to difference,  your  organisation is going to be so much better off. But it's in the nuancing of how you deliver the message is to how you're more likely to get that across.

 

Yeah, so  have you got any handy tips that people can maybe implement in their businesses relatively readily around dealing with that level of scepticism or cynicism in this space, particularly where it exists at the decision making level, at that  culture setting level, in our case with a board, for example?

 

I think it's really useful to use real examples. So, you could have a situation where you haven't won in the market, where something hasn't been successful, and you can do a diagnostic and think about, well, what went wrong? Did we challenge each other enough? Did we stretch our ideas? Did we think differently?

 

And it's often in those times when you look around and you think,  we didn't go further than we could have.  It can potentially be because of the people that were in that situation or that challenge that they were trying to solve.  And that's a really good time to pause and think, well, if we'd had a different voice in that conversation, would have we had a different outcome?

 

And when you put a monetary spin on it, and you see the competitive advantage that the organisation could have, if they'd had that different voice that's when they start to think.  Wow. If we don't do something about this, we are going to get left behind. This is beyond our personal beliefs around this topic.

 

We actually need to do it from a commercial point of view.  And so how do you turn it into a competitive advantage? How do you demonstrate that in such a way that  people actually see it and value it?

 

Yeah,  so it depends on the type of organisation, but a lot of organisations are bidding for business from the government, and they'll have mandatory questions within their process in relation to your gender pay gap, in relation to how many women you have in leadership.

 

There'll be a number of different aspects that you'll need to answer, and if you're not able to be competitive in relation to those questions, you won't be able to get that business. Thank you.  When it comes to attracting the best talent for your organisation, if you don't have those policies that will resonate with the best talent, if they're not looking into your organisation and seeing that they think they'll be able to belong there, you won't attract them.

 

And if you want to think differently and innovate differently, and you've got the same people looking and thinking and feeling the same, you're not going to be able to innovate. So  there are so many different aspects that. could keep you stale and stagnant if you don't  be brave enough to dare to change. And you will get left behind.

 

Mm.  Good advice. And very sobering.      I have had experiences in the past, personally, where I've worked in companies that had a very strong philosophy of you're at work, you leave your personal issues, your baggage, whatever, at the door and you pick it up on your way out again in the afternoon. What do you say to that?

 

I think it's rubbish.  There is no way that you can carve  off a side of yourself and leave it at the door.  And if you do, you're not being able to perform to your full potential. If you're having to  hide a part of you, or mute a situation that you might be dealing with,  or not be able to disclose some challenges you're having at home with your leader or a team member or a friend at work.

 

There is no way that you are going to be firing on all cylinders. You're not going to be giving that organisation  everything that they need from you and that discretionary effort that you might want to over and above the standard part of your role.  We are whole human beings that bring all these things in our minds with us everywhere we go, they don't just stop you can't just be at your desk and not think about what's happening at home, it's impossible and organisations who think you can do that and that you can leave all that behind while you're at work, are having themselves on.

 

Very good. Excellent. Well, that's pretty definitive, I'd say.  I like that. I just wanted to ask a semi random question around the acknowledgement of country that most business meetings kick off with. I'm hearing more and more that there's a distaste around that process because it's not actually about the Indigenous people and it's, it's potentially not about  a sign of respect, which I think it's obviously intended to be.

 

How, what, what do you know about that? Can you add anything to that, that people can take into their businesses that will ensure that they're,  getting that small thing right?

 

Yeah. It's a really interesting question, Julie, because  Sometimes I get really nervous when people lean in a long way into a part of my world in diversity and I think, ooh, is this going too far?

 

What have we, what have we created? What have we done? And Acknowledgement of Country is a good example of that.  When it first really came to being, probably about  six or seven years ago, It was very new.  People were awkward, uncomfortable, nervous they'd get it wrong. And then we built our capability over time to be more comfortable and, what I saw was some really authentic and genuine ways at approaching  and pausing and reflecting on where we are today and paying respect to the people who have trusted this land for thousands and thousands of years.

 

And the honour that it is for us to be walking in their shoes through this part of the world.  And we have all seen where it's heading to now, where the pendulum keeps going,  where it's just someone reading off a card, I'd like to pay respect to the Eora Nation. And you just think, come on, can't you slow down, make it personal, and make it genuine and actually give people just one minute of a day to think about  Who was here before us, and who's made this country the way it is?

 

And so my tip would be  to give people this  confidence to do it genuinely,  and to think about what it actually means to them personally. And if they don't have the confidence to do that, then don't do it. Don't do an Acknowledgement of Country because if you're reading off a card, you're doing more damage than you would if you didn't do it at all.

 

And don't overuse it. So I would really lean into large meetings that are  really important.  And that you're wanting to pause and give everyone that moment just to stop before you go into the busyness of that occasion. Where it's done  all the time. I think, well, what is the point of why we're doing this?

 

So an overuse.  Has been happening and I think that we need to be very choiceful around when and why we're doing it and how that's delivered. 

 

Yeah. And I've heard just this week I was in a meeting and somebody delivered an acknowledgement of country at the very beginning.  And it was very, very different to any that I've heard before.

 

And it was a beautiful thing that gave all of us a moment to pause and think  and it was just lovely. So I will put a link. to that in the notes for the show which is not to say, put it on a card and read it out at your next meeting,  but it just might be some food for thought around a genuine and lovely and.

 

More meaningful potentially way that it could be handled.  Thank you for that.  I think it's important that we challenge our thinking from time to time and We all get stuck in routine quite readily So it's nice to have that moment to  step back a little bit and really assess Well, why are we doing certain things not just this but a whole host of things?

 

Normally, at this point, I would be saying, well, Sarah, how can people work with you, but The reality is in your role with Lion, they can't,  but is there a site that they can go to a social media platform, for example, where the work that Lion is doing under your leadership in this area  is potentially something they could take inspiration from?

 

Yeah, so  you can always follow me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, which is kind of cringy in a way, but  it's a nice,  opportunities to hear and see what we're doing. I'm always open to chat to people about where they're at in their point in time, and think about what's the obvious next step for them, and recognizing that we're all different.

 

And I've worked in organisations that are really mature, like at CommBank, we were the leading edge, University of Sydney, very different, and Lion, a manufacturing industry, with breweries all over Australia and New Zealand and the U. S., with such diverse teams within the organisation. So even if you're a small organisation or a large one, you're going to have difference within the organisation itself. So happy to connect directly through LinkedIn. The Diversity Council of Australia has an excellent website with really strong resources. I recommend having a look at them. Male Champions of Change is also an excellent resource and they have some amazing free resources available on their website.

 

Does that go beyond the gender issue?  It does actually.  It is concentrated basically on gender, but there are some really useful areas around policy that you can grab and go with.

 

Fabulous. And I know you and I have had a separate conversation around  potential to collaborate and develop some association specific resources in this area.

 

So we will Talk further about that and anyone listening can please watch this space and  don't worry, I'll be shouting about it as and when those things are available for you to, as you say, grab and go and plug and play and all of those other  nice terms.  But meantime, I would like to thank you so much for your generosity of time and in sharing your vast knowledge in this area.

 

I think it's very easy for people to  dismiss this area of activity in business, but I think you've really painted a clear picture of why we shouldn't. And also  congratulations on the work you have done over your career in this space, because it's through the efforts of people like you that change happens.

 

And that change, not just change in the workplace, but change in people's opinions and perceptions. And that changes reality for people. So it's, it's great work and important. And thank you.

 

Thanks, Julie. It's been great to share a little bit of my experience. And I think we can all continue to raise the bar together.

 

Absolutely.   Thanks, Sarah. 

 

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