Lolita Chandler - Understanding the History of DEI-CNifhwjJMtU-192k-1644343330911.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe

Hello and welcome to DEI After Five. I am absolutely thrilled to have this conversation today. And so today the theme for it is really Sankofa, right? We need to know where we've come from in order t to know where we're going. And so as I was thinking about this theme, the perfect person to have this conversation with was Lolita Chandler. Now, to many of you, she is Lolita Chandler. To me, she is Aunt Lolly. We are going to talk about all kinds of things, and I'm just thrilled to have you all join us today.

Sacha Thompson is a respected and certified DEI coach. For the next 30 minutes, we'll get an exclusive look at some of her conversations with others in the field. Welcome to DEIAfter Five.

So to the world, you are Lolita Chandler. But to me, you are Aunt Lolly. So welcome to the show. How are you?

Thank you. I'm great. Sacha my favorite person. We have a new generation society, I guess.

Yes. So I wanted to have this conversation with you and just to let everyone know when COVID started, you and I just really started having some conversations around diversity and inclusion. You have been doing this work for a long time. And in addition to that, our family has been doing a lot of research on our heritage and roots and just understanding. And so our theme for I guess 2020 has been sankofa. And I wanted the theme for this to be sankofa because it really is about where has DEI been? Where do we kind of start? And it's coming from where are we now and where are we going? Right. And we can't know where we're going without looking back and taking a step back. And so when I was thinking about this show, it just made so much sense to have you as a part of this conversation. And so I just wanted to hear from you and hear about kind of your journey in diversity, equity and inclusion. It wasn't even called diversity equity and inclusion of your journey in that and kind of where you see things shifting right now.

Well, thanks for inviting me, Sacha. I'm an old warrior in this space. When I first started, I guess diversity was really affirmative action. I started at that point. And there are a lot of diversity professionals who got a lot of pushback talking about diversity because people said, well, you're just talking about diversity because you don't want to deal with the real issues around affirmative action. So you were in that space. But I started teaching at Cornell University in the diversity management program. And the first classes were just about understanding what diversity is, using Marilyn Lodon's wheel to talk about the different dimensions of who we are as individuals and then broadening that circle, talk about the diversity that defines who we are. Which reminds me of some of the new language that's emerged around intersectionality. But at that time, we weren't talking about intersectionality. We were just talking about these little boxes that describe all the different pieces of who we are. Then as it moved forward, we were talking then about women's issues in the workplace. And then it evolved where people started getting more understanding about diversity, talking about inclusion. And so that was the conversation for a while. And I really saw an opportunity to talk about some things that were emerging as issues in the external world and also in organizations. So I developed a class called Emerging Trends to talk about the impact of globalization. Flexible work. Work is not just where you go nowadays, is what you do. So I really went through that journey until I got to the point where the word equity was all in the conversation. And what's interesting, I think what drove me from the very beginning doing this work was the equity piece of it, that lens. But at that time, no one could embrace equity. We just wanted to make sure that we understood diversity. And unfortunately, it became code for black, urban, et cetera. So there's a lot of stuff that needed to be clarified and still does in many ways. So I got to the point where I thought, well, I've done this. I have had enough scars along the way because this is change work, and it is not easy. It's not easy. That's why I say I'm an old warrior, because when issues come up now, I sort of smile like, been there, done that, bought that back, and we're still fighting it.

There's so much, as always, I want to unpack what you just said, because I think the first thing is when you talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and through your career, how you started unpeeling some of those layers, I'm just like, in 2021 now, we're still doing that. There's still so many people that are at the very beginning where it's like, okay, what is the definition of diversity? Yes, right. We're talking 30 years ago, and we're still having the same conversation. So it's a little disheartening to me.

It's a little frustrating. Painful.

Frustrating. Yeah. So to watch this.

And I think we had gotten stuck in inclusion for a long time. And one of the things that I kept pushing the envelope around is this notion of inclusion moving away from maybe some of the statements like 'bringing your authentic self to work". And I thought, well, what does that mean, bringing your authentic self to work? Why is it your responsibility? What about the organization's responsibility to look at the structures and the policies that don't allow you to be who you are in the workplace? So I'm so glad that equity has now evolved in the conversation. But again, we have to make sure we understand what equity is and the relationship to inclusion, because your conversation with me, we've had these conversations that really revolved around that formula that you've got diversity. But to get to inclusion, diversity becomes I mean, equity becomes the bridge to be able to get to inclusion. So we're still trying to get the conceptual clarity around diversity.

Yeah. And it's interesting because as I do this work, that's one of the first questions that I ask. How is your organization defining diversity? And many of them, they're like, oh, we just want you to come and do a workshop. And I'm just like, it means nothing if there is no, like you said, conceptual framework in which you're doing this work. Right. If there's no common language or understanding of what this even means.

And I think what's important at that stage is for people to have some self awareness about what their lens is for diversity. This is not reasonable to go into an organization where you say the word diversity and some people are thinking through an affirmative action lens. There are some people who are thinking through an inclusion lens, and maybe those who are a lot more mature and have a broader, deeper understanding are looking at it through an equity lens if we are to have some action and some change. So it's always important to help people understand exactly what you've laid out here, that this conversation has evolved. And we have to look at it in the context of the times, because in 1965, it was a different world after the signing of the civil rights movement. So the context of the times created the focus on affirmative action. Then with multicultural marketing, once we began to see the changing demographics and people started talking about multicultural marketing, maybe there are some markets that were missing because we're not thinking broadly about this. And then you also have to look at it through a generational lens. You've got people who may be 60, 70, 80 years old still in the workplace if they are, and many people are, they may be thinking about it because you're so wedded to the affirmative action piece of it. And diversity just being about race as opposed to it being culture, which to me is the perfect portal for us to talk about diversity through that portal in a multicultural world, in a nation that's becoming more and more global and multicultural. So the culture piece becomes important. And we've not really spent a lot of time around that. We talk about the culture of the organization. What about the culture of the individuals who are in the organization? Just because you and I are black people look at us clearly with the melanin in our skin. There's no question about that. But we're very proud of our cultural roots. So against someone else who might look like us, their orientation to things might be different than ours. So these are the kinds of conversations. And I love what you're doing, Sacha, because I think the conversations create light bulb moments and AHA moments, because I think we all know this, that we're connected to each other as brothers and sisters. And if we can get people to realize that everybody wants the same thing from his or her experience at work or in life, whatever, what are those things? And how do they show up across differences? Is there a commonality of what we all want? We talked about inclusion, but everybody wants to be included. But do we ever stop to say who is not included? Do we look at our policies, our systems? I was talking with a friend last night whose son had COVID and the instructions to her from the nurse at the doctor's office was to go home and make sure he's in his own room and do this and do that. And she said to me, I thought, what about people whose children don't have their own room? There may be four or five kids sharing a room or three or four. We don't think about the fact that other people's experiences might be different. So it impacts how we communicate, how people hear what we're saying through their lenses, et cetera. So there's really a need for a lot of conversation around many of these issues. The self awareness piece done work on emotional intelligence, hasn't you?

Yeah, and there needs to be more work on emotional intelligence in this space. You touched on just the cultural lens, and it's something we talk about all the time. And there's this assumption because we have American accents that we appear black, that our experience is the same as the Black American experience. But we often talk about how that Barbadian heritage is such an influence in how we see the world. And so my situation is different than yours, but I think very parallel. And you were born in the US but spent a good portion of your childhood in Barbados, right. And so that shapedgrandparents house how you see the world. And I think for me, though, I was born in Barbados and raised in the US. Again, that shapes how I saw the world going to my grandparents'house or going to see my family. I'm thinking, okay, well, I have to go on a plane and people are like, oh, you're going to Barbados. You're going to be spending time on the beach. I'm like, I'm not spending time on the beach. Like if I'm going to St. Vincent, I'm like, I'm chasing chickens and goats with all the things you do in the country.

Right.

So it's a different perspective. And so just talk about how that has shaped your work or how you see this work.

Well, it's interesting. As you were telling that little story, it reminded me of when I first started my first career, which was in education. I was first a classroom teacher, and all of the kids in the class looked like me. But I could not understand their behavior as students in the classroom, their relationship to me, how they perceive me as their teacher. I just could not understand a lot of things because I grew up in a very disciplined environment in the West Indies. In the West Indies, in Barbados school, there's a certain respect that one has for a teacher because teachers are like, you genuflect at the feet of a teacher in terms of the respect that you give. You're disciplined in class. You sit quietly, you don't talk out of turn. All these things I was not experiencing with the students in my class. And then it dawned on me, even though their skin was like mine, their orientation to adults or education was quite different. So I had to shift what I was doing and ask myself, how can I close this gap in terms of those cultural differences? I had to first understand their lens and their experiences and also share a little bit about myself and make sure that I found curriculum materials that would support them getting broader and diverse understandings of people in the world. So that's where I started thinking about diversity through a cultural lens. My portal was never race, because you and I know growing up in the Caribbean, in a majority culture, you don't know what it's like to feel like other people or other people who are not black or other. So you feel good about yourself, you have a good sense of self. And our grandmother, the grandmother that you and I share, always said race is something you run and win. And so that was something that was instilled in us to be the very best that we can be and not let the notion of race derail us. Because what I find interesting is that we know that race is not real. It's a social construct and make up concept for it. We won't go into why it was it's not real, but we behave as if it's real, and that's where the racism comes in. So I always felt that helping youngsters understand differences through a cultural lens because they were going to grow up in a world that they were going to have to interact with people who are different. And now cultural competence has become one of the things that we're talking about in the diversity space. Another thing that we're looking at in the space of diversity today is where is work or what is work? About ten years ago, when I was a diversity professional, we developed a flexible work arrangement strategy in the environment. And the reason it was difficult, a lot of managers were trained to see people to know that they're working. But as a result of this initiative that we started, we shifted the culture so that people thought of work is not where you go, but what you do. Yeah. If we look at diversity as a change initiative, then we won't be so stuck on just always the peace around race, but stuck on equity, if that makes sense. Equity is not just about race. It's about gender. It's about disability, it's about other things. So it's such a systemic, integrated process. That's what we have to help people understand.

I appreciate the story about the classroom because we've talked about this before. But what clicked with me this time when you tell that story was that you didn't try to get the students to assimilate to your mentality right. Like you took the time to figure out, okay, what is the gap and how can I close that? And I think that's the AHA moment that so many of these organizations and companies need to find. It's like, how do we close that gap and not put the onus on our employees to do the work? How do we figure out what those gaps are and what do we do to start bridging those gaps? And those gaps may be larger or smaller depending on who the people are, but it's not forcing them to assimilate into this is our culture, and you need to fit into this box. And so I appreciate that viewpoint because I think so many organizations get stuck in how do we find a culture fit versus making sure that the culture shifts in order to ensure that everyone fits right?

And one of the things that I also thought of going back to the classroom was I started with vision, with the end in mind. So the vision for me was, what do I want these youngsters to be able to do as adults in life? I want them to be able to communicate well. I want them to have a sense of self and agency. So all of these things allowed me then to say, okay, what are the gaps in terms of how they communicate? So that was why it was important for me to stress the importance of speaking well, presenting oneself well, being flexible, and you can do things to help even very young children understand that. We talked about how do you behave or communicate when you're in a theater, at Church, in a ballpark, et cetera. So being flexible and knowing what's appropriate for what particular space we talked about, I helped them understand in my own way, not necessarily they understood it that way when they got older. As adults, they're going to be living and working in a different world. And if you were looking at the data and you saw how the world was changing and also the United States of America, it said to me that the vision would be for me to have them understand culture, to be able to work with other people. So I use the vision to work backwards to what are the gaps that need to be closed so that youngsters to get to that point where they could feel good about themselves, which meant the curriculum had to reflect people who look like them. The contributions that's when I went down the multicultural curriculum road. So I really felt when I became a diversity professional and accepted the job. I said to my husband, I'm nuts. Why did I do this? I know nothing about affirmative action. I've never been in human resources. And then I stopped and said, you know what? But I've been a teacher, so I know how to educate because I think as a diversity professional, we are educators. We're helping reveal for adults what it is that they know inside their genes, in their body or something from just being adults, growing up and making it come alive. So that they say, I never thought about that or using analogies or stories. This is really not rocket science.It really isn't

At all. When we started this conversation, you talked about being a warrior and the scars that came along with it. And so as we've talked and we talked about my journey in this space, and I have scars, too. And so a lot of the people that are going to be watching this are practitioners that are now dealing with their own scar. What advice would you give them as they continue to do this work? Knowing that this is a battlefield.

I think it's important to develop your own support system with others who may be doing this work as well, people you can use as thought leaders, people with whom you feel safe to invent. You really have to take care of yourself doing this work. And I know you and I have done a lot of talking, and I've supported you when you were still in the workplace at the end of your career in corporate America. But when I started this, I belong to different diversity groups or had people where I could call them just to borrow a brain day if I'm doing something and it's just not working. And it's just such a relief sometimes to find that other people are struggling with the same kinds of things in their work. And so whether it's having a spa day or doing something to take care of yourself, because it's extremely selfish, because very often we go out and we represent organizations and we communicate well about this. And there's the assumption that things are great in the organization. We're the face of the organization, but we know some of the things that we're trying to work on to change. We're also experiencing ourselves as diversity professionals and quote, leaders where we feel marginalized. At times, we feel not included. So that's a double whammy. You're trying to work for someone else, but at the same time, you have to keep yourself strong and sane to be able to do this. You also find that there are times when you have to have the courage to say things or to step back and say, Is today the day I'm going to say this? Or do I wait for another time? Or there are times when you've got to stop it right in the moment? I remember. I can give you examples of kinds of times when I had to really have the courage to just put things on the table. I remember when I was working in a publishing company, we were developing materials, and I was the only person of color at the table. And the question was, Lolita, do you think that would work for the at risk students? Now, I could have let that go by, but in my mind, there's nothing wrong with the student necessarily. It could be the environment that's putting them at risk. So I felt a need to take that moment to even clarify that because we labeled people. One of the things I learned from Dr. James Banks do not put in the textboo Harriet Tubman was born a slave. Harriet Tubman was not born as slave. No one is born a slave. And if you tell that story, you don't get to talk about the underlying story about the fact that slavery was institutionalized when she was born. So these are all the nuances that we have to sometimes put on the table and not let them go by and stop people and use it as a moment of education. So that's why education the ability to inform and influence others and also be knowledgeable yourself about what's going on in the external environment. Another thing is to try really hard to understand the organization that you're in because you have to have business acumen doing this work so that you show up not as a diversity Queen or King or guru, but as a business person with expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Does that make sense?

Absolute sense? Absolutely. Because I think we've talked about this. We both had our DEI careers in marketing.

Right.

And one of the things that I had a head of diversity and inclusion, tell me, was your job is only to make things look pretty. And I'm thinking about that. I was like, there's nothing in my job description that says pretty. It's supposed to be a part of what I do. But the challenge wasn't where we bumped head was I was calling attention to things, the dirt in the corner. Right. Like, let's talk about that. Marketing should be about authenticity. Marketing should be about knowing your audience and what's going to resonate with them. And if my audience are people of color or those that are marginalized, I'm going to talk about the things that are going to draw them in.

Right.

Which is often the dirt in the corner. And so I was seeing, as, you know, this upset employee that was making the company look bad. And I was like, no, I'm trying to have a conversation about diversity in tech that's going to pull people in to know that we are actually willing to have this conversation. And so it's a very different thing. And I think as you were talking about scars, that's one of my biggest scars was you talked about earlier being your authentic self. But there's danger in that

yeah. I was in that experience where in an organization where I was working as a diversity professional, the person who was responsible for recruitment never wanted to interact with me unless she was trying to find talent for an organization where she was asked to bring in a, quote, diversity candidate. Let me talk about that one. Right. That's another conversation. I don't know what that is a diversity candidate, but they were looking for black sales representatives. And in a conversation with her, I said, it's interesting that we've never talked about recruitment. Have you not been open to talk about it? But you're asking me now because you're looking for a sales representative who happens to be Black, and I don't know all of the sales representatives who are Black. That exists that I could point you to. But I think it's important for us to have a conversation about recruitment in the context of an organization that has a diversity and inclusion initiative. So I'm not just the person who's going to help you find people of color in the organization. Just even those kinds of conversations or taking the opportunity to have people be aware of the language that they use that doesn't move the agenda forward.Like I said, diversity candidate, what does that mean?

Right.

Let's talk about, tell me more, what does that mean to you? And so there are just so many things, and people often wonder, what does a diversity professional do? So I think it's easy for people to attach certain things to what you do as a diversity professional in the organization. But it's also important as diversity professionals for us to make sure we are aware of how we are perceived in the organization, our brand, because our brand can get in the way if we are not showing that we understand the nature of the business. I remember when I was often invited to talk to a manager would invite me to talk to his or her team about diversity. Lolita is here to talk to us about diversity. And there are ten managers or five managers in the room. And I say, I'm not here to talk to you about diversity. I'm here to talk to you about I'm here to understand really what keeps you up at night. And I post that question, finding good people, keeping good people, having high morale, getting people to be creative, getting deadlines met. And then that led us into the conversation about, if I could show you how engaging in a conversation and understanding what we're trying to do with diversity and inclusion would help you find the people, keep the people, have great morale, all the things that you're looking for. So to the degree that we can attach diversity to what's important. I learned this from being trained as a sales, as a sales person who does sales training, sales trainer is that you've got to first understand the customer. If we're diversity professionals, we should see ourselves as consultants - seek first to understand.

So we could go on for days.

Yeah.

For these conversations. But I just want to thank you so much for this because I think it's important that people see and understand one. We've come a long way yes. In some regards, but in others, we're still kind of where we are before and we have to continue to put that armor on. We have to continue to push forward, find our community, understand how we educate ourselves. Because I think that's the other piece of this is you get tapped as the DEI professional and the know all be all of everything. And I always say, like I'm a constant student of this, I'm constantly learning through this. I think like half the book on my bookshelf you've given me around this, right? Because I've taken from your bookshelf and put over here because I want to constantly learn and see what's happening and understand the space and the areas where I'm just not 100% confident in. So thank you for joining me today. I absolutely love you.

Love you back.

All right. Thank you so much and thank you all for watching today. I hope that you were able to take away one or two nuggets from this conversation and we look forward to seeing you at our next episode. Have a good one.