Name: Inclusive Leadership Lab: Model and Amplify Behaviors of Inclusion
Uploaded: 2025-12-16T17:30:45.067Z
Duration: 59 min 52 s
Description: Inclusive Leadership Lab: Model and Amplify Behaviors of Inclusion

Transcript for "Inclusive Leadership Lab: Model and Amplify Behaviors of Inclusion": Welcome. Hello. Hi, folks. Drop into the chat. I see that we are we are up to 68 people. I'm Nora tuning in from Austin, Texas, and I would love to learn, where are you in the world? Drop it in the chat. I'm also curious, what are you looking forward to for 2026? I don't know if we have plans yet. Some of you may reply and say, Nora, it's too soon. Back off. Okay? This is I need every waking minute left of 2025 to get through the tasks at hand. Oh, awesome. Okay. I heard, Connie, that Chicago and Detroit have gotten a a real snap of cold weather. Exactly, Emily. Thanks for making the time. I'm always impressed when we're nearing the end of the quarter and people show up for culture club and they're, you know, joining us here. Yes. Keep them coming. Zinnia, welcome from India. I don't know if this is their typical work hours or if this is a unique, time for you but we welcome you. DFW. I'm an Austin, Sarah. I'm not sure how often we we see each other on the road there coming through. Oh, I've got an Austin friend. Tiffany, welcome. And folks, if you are just joining us, I'm curious to know where are you tuning in from, and I would love to learn what are you looking forward to in 2026. I will tell you. At the close of 2025, I went to, a live taping of a podcast last week. It's It's called The Moth. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's, like, a storytelling podcast. And a couple people were local, but a few others have flown in, and they were doing a storytelling sort of display. And I cannot wait to go next year. It won't be for another eleven months, but it was such a powerful and wonderful experience. I'm thinking, yeah, I'm doing that in 2026 for sure. Curious. Yes, Morgan. Oh my gosh. I I don't know if you all know The Moth. It's a podcast. I am not endorsed by them but I love to listen in and it's like storytelling. Sometimes I just do one because it's ten to twelve minutes and they're always stories that someone might tell at a dinner party or something significant. To go do it in real life, I thought is there a very, very big value add? Right? Like, how is it gonna change compared to just going to a podcast? But being in the group, psychologists call it collective effervescence, that feeling of other people laughing when you're laughing, like, the exhalations, that, oh, like, kind of, teariness, that kind of shared moment of it was very, very moving. I still carry it. It was really, really lovely. Yes. Love the comparisons. Amy, very interesting, the Denver friends. That, altitude certainly affecting us in certain places. Folks, if you're just joining us, I welcome you heartily. My name is Nora tuning in from Austin, Texas. Some people have dropped into the chat, where they're from and what they're looking forward to. Thank you, Courtney. If you all see, Courtney has just dropped in, important intel. She is my behind the scenes genius. She is, running the show logistically, and she will also be running if you have questions, put them into the q and a along the way. Yeah. I mean, it's like just a change in the number would be great. We're looking forward to that. Oh my gosh, Caitlin, congratulations! I hope that the the coming season gives you lots of rest and restoration, places to sort of gather that energy for what is coming next. Wow! Oh my I love thank you all for jumping in. This is really exciting. Okay. We're for after. Nora, let's get to it. I, as I mentioned, I'm here to work with you today. Culture Club is a way for us to talk about some of the content that we offer, you know, to our partners and clients and also just to get more, hearing from you all. What's going on? How are things in your world? And so throughout our workshop today, the process is going to be somewhat one-sided because we don't have audio access for the audience. But I do want you to drop questions in the chat, share feedback and observations, and I'll be talking through some of the tenets that we found to make the most difference that can be acted on immediately. Right? We need not wait for the world to be perfect for us to take action and empower inclusion in the workplace. So a little bit about LifeLabs, we have built this workshop and our research based on some of our confirmations from our partners. We go into workplaces and ask people, hey, which teams are really doing inclusion well? And we try to figure out what are the behaviors, what do they have in common? And regardless of, you know, whether it's finance, marketing, engineering, legal, those are all different subject matter expertise, regardless of tenure, what do these humans have in common and what can we figure out as a through line? And then we validate with psychological and business research. So we're only offering you what we find is proven both in the real world and on paper, and that's the combination of our work together today. The agenda is going to briefly build a shared awareness and then we'll practice some of the behaviors of inclusion. So we'll look at psychology and then we'll look at action and then the third part, getting a plan for you to walk away with. And trying to take a beat before we depart for Q and A or other things we've left uncovered. Folks, as ever, I think that you will have dropped into the chat if you are, you know, where you're from and what you're looking forward to. But also if you have anything to share or questions or things that are top of mind, I'm eager to learn from you. So we're gonna kick off with sort of the awareness here. Corvallis, Penny, what a beautiful place. We went to, we went to the the sort of backstory. What's going on in Allbrains? What do we have in common? And this idea psychologically can be tough to think about. Sometimes it's even hard to articulate why it's hard. So I will pull from you all. I'm curious when inclusion comes up at the workplace, what is it that makes it hard to talk about? I'm just pulling this as a this is a group crowdsource opportunity. There's 153 of us. What is it that you think makes this hard for people, to discuss when we discuss behaviors of inclusion? Thanks, Brian. Nature boundaries. Absolutely. Accusatory, power, current laws and regulations. Vulnerability is hard. Absolutely. I appreciate that naming of stigma. Yep. Yep. Inflammatory. Absolutely, Monica. Totally. Tasha, it doesn't mean that I know it's difficult, but I'm aware that other people might fear or see feel that, okay, this is a sensitive subject. I don't want to step on someone's toes. Right? Unconscious biases, nepotism. Yes, Peggy. There is a certain amount of, places in which we know, like I said, subject matter expertise. People opt in or out of certain roles and positions and there might be a fear, like earlier people said, of stigma or sensitivity. Yep, absolutely. And so I take a deep breath as I read this because you're you're exactly right. There's so much going on that we know there is going to be differences. We know there might be some people who don't agree and that frankly can, make us stop from even trying, right? And so psychologists call that protective hesitation where I know I'm not gonna get it right but I therefore hesitate or I try to figure out, oh, I don't I don't want to hurt myself. And later I'd like to cite the other term I learned recently, insinuation anxiety, which is to say if I bungle this or if I get this wrong, especially in a virtual and distributed environment, later are people going to think less of me and I never know. Right? So I'm not trying to plant fears, I'm just trying to name how very complex and complicated the situation is exactly. So while we look at this, I will cite some of the research that has found we have a few things going on in those beautiful brains of ours. One, we call it social pain which is to say there really is an association and discomfort with being excluded. Researchers who put real humans through something as sort of unrealistic as playing catch with an avatar in a virtual game, those real humans who were in that game felt a sense of exclusion when they were left out of the game and they mapped it neurologically to pain networks. And one of the one of the citations in the study is actually about the the feeling of having, like, hot coffee poured on you. It's a social pain that can actually register as discomfort. Right? It's not just, this is the warm fuzzies. Someone doesn't feel left, like, someone doesn't feel included. It actually can result in, difficulty and and obviously subsequent refrain or sort of, like, nervousness. The other piece is ego pain. Now, I've gotten pushback on this before. One time I went to a workshop and people were like, Wait, you called us egotistic? Every person has an identity, right? In order for us to remember who we are when we wake up in the morning carrying a set of values and beliefs, we have ego, right? And ego pain comes up when we know we've made a mistake. So while you've proven to be nothing but intelligent and curious and you're here, I mean come on in the in the end of the month I'm so thrilled to have you. That idea of an ego is that we think, okay I'm curious, I'm thoughtful, I'm considerate. And when we make a mistake or as one leader I worked with, the technical term of open mouth insert foot, we can feel this experience of shame, right, which leads us to avoid or an experience of defensiveness. Oh, that's not what I meant. You got me wrong. And that leads us to dig in. And so as you all mentioned in the chat, there's a lot going on, but the feeling of social and ego pain firing on our brains can make it even harder, right? Because we're thinking, Oh, I've been there. I know how this goes. With that in mind, today's workshop, our little, you know, sample culture club here, as well as afterwards, what we see as the biggest difference is people willing to explore that 10% extension. We're gonna get into my stretch zone. What is conversational capacity? Being able to talk about it before escalation happens, being able to build inclusion and figure out how people want to participate and contribute in their workplace is part of the solution. So today's goal, filling 10% conversational capacity. Like I said, for most of you that will be via the chat, but I want to make sure that you feel inspired and think through, well, how might I actually bring this to others? And that's really part of our goal and and one of our major values at LifeLabs, right? How can we open the circle and build inclusive workspaces? So my first roadblock, we already talked about what's difficult. The first roadblock I'll ask you to practice is our own bias. And I understand that we have unconscious bias, some people put it into the chat, but the the brain carries it wherever you go. As much as our work world has advanced in the past five nay twenty five years, we still have wiring from very very old experiences for humans. So we have this ability to form bias pretty quickly. I don't know if you all are a fan of Kahneman's work, right, thinking fast and thinking slow. This idea that bias goes faster than some of our cognitive thought can catch up. So what we're going to do today, 10% practice, we're going to do a very brief exercise where I want you to pick one of two options: good or bad, good or bad. And some of you are like g b that's fine thumbs up thumbs down, however it feels right for you on the keys. But I'd like you to practice whatever comes up first, share it in the chat. And I'm going to show a series of images that you are going to hopefully have an immediate reaction to and then I want to see what are we getting goods or bads. All right, things like we've got all right so this instruction is there Put into the chat g, b, thumbs up, thumbs down, good, bad. You can call it out. I won't be able to hear you, but that is also a modality I welcome. Alright. Are we ready? Drum roll. That's my notebook. Ready? Good or bad? Excellent. Wow. We really cut wow. That was very fast. Bravo, folks. Well done. Okay. Alright. Alright. Let's move on. Let's move on. Good or bad? I'm impressed. This is a very quick group. So engaged. Very nicely done. How about oh, the plot thickens. Ah, yes. We're getting unhappy faces, all caps. I see. I see. Mhmm. Kelly sees it as an invitation. Got it. Got it. And Right, quite the mix here. So traffic had a bit more of a consistent trend for us. So I guess why we do this it's a very, like I said, it's a way for us to exemplify that place where we have a bit of a well I thought faster than I acted or my brain was moving quicker than my cognition, right? There's a lot of different gaps for us and these biases can really come up as in conflict with our beliefs. So, I appreciate we're getting a bit more articulation there's only good dogs, this and that. And then I also want to acknowledge that LifeLabs has not chosen an image of like a cute little puppy in a in a sunny field, Right? Like, we've we've asked you to look through your lens at this dog that I could argue is looking a bit threatening. Right? That that dark imagery, the shadows casting, it's got a collar that might indicate to some of you that this dog needs training. And I guess I'm curious where you have come from, right, whatever experiences you have with animals, dogs, specifically pit bulls, it certainly informs your beliefs and your bias, right? And I tell this story sometimes, you know, I moved to an Asian country where rabies vaccines weren't really prevalent and I had lived in The US for about twenty five years and moving to a rice village I had to literally, I would go and see a dog and I had this acculturation. Oh dog, cute, right? I had grown up amongst dogs and I had to stop myself and say, Woah, woah, woah, woah, these are not safe dogs. And of course they were good dogs and and I'm sure, you know, the whole the whole setup was really different, but I needed to stop my own brain from its habits and say, Wait, this isn't necessarily a dog you want to cuddle up with. In fact, I need to avoid that. Wasn't near a lot of great hospitals either. So the idea of bias is part of your brain's really quick imprinting to keep you safe and I hope you don't work with saber toothed tigers currently but the move of course is your brain trying to condition you so you don't have to think through it again. And then we run into that at work because it separates us. We have gotten messages. We have all been a part of a cycle of socialization, for example, with the dogs or, you know, meat or traffic, controversial salad. But the idea of us coming through this in the workplace is saying okay well what can we do about it? Psychologically if we all carry bias and we have the social pain and we have the ego pain, how do we get by? And because it's so complex, so we wanted to distill today some very clear and concrete behaviors of inclusion that, like I said, you may already be using. I'd love to equip your tool belt further and give you some examples and ideas of places that you might be able to act or say, yeah. I can just do a 10% improvement here. I can make a small move to encourage people and build inclusion so I'm not accidentally excluding people. And when we do have real experiences of social pain or ego pain, we are more equipped to maneuver and communicate because we've built that conversational capacity. It's not simple but it's promising. So with this, I'll move us into some of the behaviors of inclusion. Thank you all for your participation and, the responsiveness there to the good bad bias exercise. When we look at behaviors, there's a few different levels and layers you might go to. Some of you are thinking, Okay, horizontally I need more inclusion across my team. Or you might be thinking vertically. My team is good at some of the service level things but we need more inclusion in the tough moments when there's collaborative conflict or when there's issues with who are we going to hire or how are we going to lead this next campaign. So as we talk about behaviors and inclusion, I'm happy, like I said, to get examples, places that you've been able to succeed in this and share with us your own experience. The bias hot spots that LifeLabs found as pretty predictable regardless of workplace, regardless of, you know, the team's tenure, in group gatherings and meetings people are on display, right? We see each other in collective, right? That idea of okay so who's asking questions, who's leading things, where is information found after a meeting. The second hot spot was feedback and decisions. I doubt it comes as a surprise to any of you, right? But this idea that when we make decisions there are some places that we tend to favor or, sort of penalize ideas that people might have given like, well in the past they said this thing and it wasn't, it wasn't really a great decision. But I don't know if they ever got that feedback. So this idea of open loops, how do people know where their performance is valued or where their behavior should change? And then finally, microaggressions. And microaggressions are now common parlance. A lot of people understand them. We will spend a little time today looking at them as well and I think before I go any further I should clarify a big moment for me when I joined LifeLabs. Microaggressions doesn't mean that they're tiny. Micro isn't from that. Microaggressions means that they're interpersonal. So this is something else, like these might be in one on one situations, it might be in a group setting. So these three hot spots could be all, you know, all siloed and they also could be sort of start to weave together some of your responses. When we talk about the hot spots, we're going to apply some of the behaviors of inclusion. We'll start with this group gatherings and meetings and look through what could you do? How might you empower people and role model for them what inclusion looks like so that they're more likely to do it later when you're not in the room? So when we talk about opening the circle, this is based on a sort of in person imagine you're in a conference room, like a really big gathering of humans. At tech conferences for a long time, they would call it Pac Man, do the Pac Man. And what that meant was our tendency as groups to gather in circles. Most of us didn't get a manual, like, hey. When you join people, circle up. But what they're trying to undo is the fact that the circle might not leave space for someone to join. So we call it a behavior, a thinking of how can I display to others that I'm a green light? How can I show, hey there's space for you to join? It might just be that you change your circle, the bagel, to a croissant shape or, you know, you keep the Pac Man variety if you're in person gatherings. I'm curious how many of you have, in in twenty twenty six plans to go to a big conference? Are you going to be meeting with people? Will you have a retreat in the first few months of the year? Drop into the chat like, I'll be going. I'm curious to see how many of us are. Yes, exactly. Planning on on getting to that. I want to. I've been hearing a lot. I've been able to travel for LifeLabs in the past six months. I hear a lot of people saying, one thing I'm gonna do for my career development, my growth, is to get out there more. Right? To get to guilds or to get to, functions where people who do my role are gathering. Just just something I, Nora, anecdotally have heard, not not a LifeLabs official comment there. But if you're thinking of opening the circle, we could certainly do that in person piece of, you know, leaving space, that physical space. And the other three, we love to endorse as anytime, any place virtual, right, on one of during your onboarding, during one of the regular retros or stand ups that you do every Wednesday, that kind of thing. Where are you employing invitation statements? That is to say, the extroverts, the people who maybe have more tenure, people who have been raised in a culture where dissent is welcome or even, you know, like embraced, those folks might jump in more readily and it doesn't mean they have the best ideas. Hello. Take it from me. Secret's out. I'm a major extrovert. And I I I want to, at times, use that instead as a as a pivot and say, well, what do other people think? You know, inviting, hey, Omar. What what do you think about this? The corollary, the backup is to say, You're always free to pass because I don't want to put someone on the spot, right, and say, like, You must share now. This is this is high stakes. But the goal is that people know that they're included and that their voice is welcome. It's fascinating to see how much we can start to curry and foment over time people's participation through using invitation statements and that always free to pass, right? I like to joke maybe the dog is barking, maybe you're deep in thought, but I want to make sure that as a person who, you know, has earned a certain level of reputation within my team, other people feel that they too have a voice and there's a place for them to ask questions. Next up, context. You can read the quote, the backstory. This is one of the single most valued skills when I talk to leaders at LifeLabs, people who write our content, they'll say context statements. This is one of the things that if people did it more often, right, we would all be getting along better just because people can't possibly know the whole backstory. And I don't want to tell everyone, well, I was born on a Tuesday so the context is like it's not like I understand that there's a limit to it, but where can you start to encounter or anticipate, oh yeah that person's been hired in the past few years, they can't possibly know that it took us a really long time to get to this client or in this account. At LifeLabs, we are a very agile company. We change a lot, we do a lot of different experiments, and so when someone's someone just joined our team full time in summer, I was like, hey you probably don't know that we actually tried this. It was it was sort of like seen as a as a not experiment to pursue and now we're back at it again. Like that's helpful context for them. So it could be circumstantial, it could be big picture. That is another way to build inclusion especially for our virtual and hybrid teams. Do you report from an office but 20 to 30% of your people tune in virtually? They need context, right? There's a chance that we're all falling victim to proximity bias. Oh well I ran into so and so in the elevator. We made a decision. Okay, totally fair, respect the decision. How are you making sure people know that that was decided? And finally the bridge statements particularly valuable for those of us who don't control the internet, which I would dare say is most of us. I I can't tell you how many times I've gotten that like buffering symbol or sort of like kicked out of wifi. We all need it. We all use different, interfaces and access points. Can we not penalize, right, when someone gets kicked out or someone has to take a call? I know a lot of you are very sensitive and sort of trying to make sure that we're building a shared experience for people who are caretakers, right, like folks who are on from 6AM to 3PM. That bridge statement of sort of, hey. You you had to hop. This is what we were talking about. And so these are some of the tiny ways that you can implement opening the circle. I I love the value as a mindset. Where can I open a circle? And we'll see it in our chat. Sometimes people will say, oh, reference point. Like, this is, you know, this is some sort of jargon or vernacular the sales team uses. Oh, o o t c. And o t c just means, like, hey. I'm trying to help define this for you so you're not lost in the acronyms. Folks, your turn. Looking at these four, which do you wish you employed more? Which one might you use after this? And I know we're on a Tuesday so it may not be, available to you till Wednesday. Like I said, people are in India, all over the place. Interesting. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So, I mean, my mental math isn't perfect, but it seems like invitation statements are kind of are kind of favored here. Yes. Exactly. And, Monica, some teams will decide, right, our gatherings are really, really in need of a rework. Right? Like, we've fallen into habits. It's totally fair. They've served us for certain reasons, but how can we build an invitation statements and then follow-up? Or some teams will, you know, will do different different methods to get people, more access to the microphone. Okay. This is helpful for me. Add some bridges. Awesome. Well, the other piece. If open the circle is more of a happenstance, sort of places that we're gathering and running into each other, there's some really deliberate skills that you can use in meetings and especially if you have, some, like I said, standing meetings, you can make tiny changes to build more inclusion. And we know the teams that have more inclusion in meetings are more successful in the long run. And this is great research. I love to cite it from Willie, but the idea that it's not IQ, it's not years of expertise. Folks that were equally taking turns in meeting spaces, those those teams were outperforming others. Another way to say this is, like, how does our informal communication build our comfort, build our capacity than to deal with things when there is dissent, disagreement, or, you know, that that, to use Tuckman's term, storming. Yeah, I love it, Lisa. So this is good for me to hear because we're teeing up for the more structured space of a meeting. How do I monitor turn taking? Well, some of you say, I did not sign up to be a referee. I don't want this job. That's not my thing. Totally fair. I would love to exactly what Louise is mentioning. I would love to encourage you to figure out where are tiny frustrations or micro moments of of potential exclusion, and how can we build in turn taking. So the things that we saw the most effective teams using were pretty consistent. You may not need them all, but I would like to make sure you have an idea of the differences so you can take them and say, hey blame the culture club, right? This lady from Austin was so pushy, she insisted we try this new thing, pilot it for two weeks, see what happens, and then ask people for their feedback on it. But to monitor turn taking, there are a few different really consistent ways that the behavior, like I said, of one person influences the group. This is these are the places where we have a very important unlock for the collective contribution exactly airtime signaling! So when we monitor turn taking we start with thinking time. You might be the person who says this, you might put it into an agenda, you might be really clear about the expectations so that you don't have to do as much enforcement in the moment, but we work multi generationally. There are five generations present in the workplace and yes, you have someone in your life who mentored you, who brought you up in the world, who told you well at the work world you need to expect these kinds of things. This is a new frontier. We don't have it figured out yet and so this idea of thinking time works for us multi generationally. It works for us multi nationally, right, for business English speakers who are using it as a lingua franca but they're actually multilingual speakers of English. Separately, we invite and encourage diversity in processing speeds, right, neurodivergence. And so the idea of thinking time two minutes, one minute, thirty seconds give people that spaciousness, they are more likely to contribute something they want to say and not feel like, ugh! Second, it makes other people better listeners! If I already know what I'm gonna say and now it's time to go, you know, in in sharing, I'm not I'm not occupied with why I was gonna speak out. That's my invitation of me in a meeting when I don't have thinking time. And I want to make sure people have a chance, oh okay yeah actually Louis said exactly what I was gonna say, plus one. No nothing more to add. So thinking time, major asset for us. The other part, a time round robin. And I looked this up, round robin because speaking of English as a as a sort of lingua franca, it's from etymologically it's from France or French where it's where people were using round robin as a as a sort of terminology about going on and signing a document in turn. We're talking about doing it in a meeting as more of a vocalization. And so a timed round robin helps you with the, let's just say over talkers. Hi, can you imagine my team's Friday meetings? We need a timer. Come on. Like, we we're all talkers and so that idea of a time round robin gets people a chance to say, Oh, it's not you, it's not me, it's an objective greater good, right? I love to cite Priya Parker as generous authority. Like, I want to hear all your thoughts for forever and we only have, you know, one minute per person. And the round ramen is the part where we're including all voices. People have a chance to pass but again we're creating a scenario in which opting in is the expectation. And love to cite Gawande's research here, some of you are big fans of Gawande. He's, you know, his research was done while he was on a surgical team. Talk about mission driven, highly trained people who care a lot about outcomes. What he found is that when surgical teams took a moment to do an introduction before surgery, there was more than thirty percent reduction in fatalities from that surgery. Think about it. What was happening? What he posited was that people who are doing introductions in the beginning are more likely to speak up when they see a problem later. And this is very important in a in a group like a surgical team that has positional privilege. Right? Like, I know what my rank is on a ladder, and that's part of a a hierarchical help to a surgical team. So I hope that you don't just have time round robins in your meetings. I hope that if and when you need surgery, the teams are are sort of introducing themselves to each other so we have more, welcoming of voices. People are more prone to actually jump in. Speaking of jumping in, ritual questions. Where can we make it more comfortable for all brains to know what to expect and what it means when we're done? I don't know how many of you have a meeting that just kind of tapers off. It's like, okay, yes, we'll see you next time and people gotta go and there's a lot of hustle and and, you know, we're running over. I don't know. Ritual questions, I love to encourage. You could take the ones from these slides. You will have access to them later. Thank you, Courtney. Separately, we can also put in, I love who will do what by when. Like, you have a phone, keys, wallet habit maybe when you leave the house. I like to leave a meeting and people don't always like that about me, but I'll say who will do what by when, where can the people who are out of office find it? Ritual questions, right? What perspectives are we missing? Who haven't we heard from yet? And that second question or third question might be a great way if you work in a culture where people really want to save face or they're a newer hire or they came from, you know, a different team and teams have been reorganized. All of that might be something in service of more voices and just more certainty, especially in a very volatile environment. A lot of you mentioned 2025 has looked different for some teams. How can we make it more certain and clear what's going to be expected of our group participation? Folks, the final case, if you like the bridge statement, this might be your favorite application for a meeting structure, which is to say, oops. Someone got interrupted. Or, hey. You know, Alex Alex had an idea and then we kind of ran with a different thing. Let's circle back. The goal of tracking completion is not to, like I said, to penalize the fact that interruptions happen. It's natural in a virtual environment. Two people chime in at the same time. Oh, is it good? Wait. Who? Yeah. Okay. So we wanna make sure we're tracking completion. It's not about interruptions won't happen, especially some teams that are very creative. I've worked with design teams who are like, I want a really popcorn microphone experience. I want people to be on fire in our spaces. So then I, as the facilitator of the meeting or the generous authority of the person who called the agenda to order, I might say, hey, well, you know, let's circle back on this. Okay. Back to you. Your turn. We talked about sort of opening the circle in more nuanced group gatherings. What about meetings? Which of these might you take first and employ? Drop it in the chat. I'd love you to see what's trending. I'm certainly curious. How interesting. Yeah. Absolutely. Mhmm. Yeah. And I appreciate there's a lot to, like, one blending and weaving into the other, so I might do thinking time as my ritual question. Right? I encourage your creativity. I heard a few people mention there's a lot of interruptions. I need to track more completion. What might be your if then? If x then y, how can I do it? Yes. Yes. Exactly. Monica, I mentioned Kahneman earlier. And, one of the interviews I listened to with he's so charming. He was talking about, when he won his Nobel Prize. He's one of the only psychologists who won a Nobel Prize in economics because he spent so much time studying how we make decisions in a way that we sort of make judgment. And, his joke was that he won his Nobel Prize at just the right age. He was 67, so it didn't ruin the rest of his career. And I I find that so endearing, but I also really appreciate his point is that there is, like, there's often a time and a place for things. And if we can just hit the pause button, interrupt our own intuition, and get a little bit of, like, yeah, like, we're being asked to go at mock speed. The riptide will pull us back in the minute we leave this meeting. How can I create a container? Taking a breath, giving people space to consider what it is we're setting out to do. I would also recommend folks I we have a whole other workshop just on meetings. So this is this is sort of the the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Okay. Remember the q and a. If I've missed something, if there's something about the differentiation amongst the tools, what behaviors, you're thinking of of sort of use cases. I'd love to make sure we have time for that before we wrap. I'm going to move us forward into the next hot spot which is feedback and decisions. And as I mentioned, most people understand that part of the perpetual issue in the work world is that when we feel discomfort, if we don't give feedback then people can't improve. And I like to say feedback is a vote, right? Feedback is just a vote for how I want someone to keep doing what they're doing or maybe switch it up, right, diminish something or learn from something. And so part of the tool and the terminology LifeLabs is using to get out of our own way is what we call the debler. And what a camera can capture may sound, oh, I don't know. It's a court of law kind of feeling. But really, what the asset is is that it's objective and it's specific. It's not about how I see the world or how you see the world. When we blur, people can misinterpret. And, I mean, I'll just ask you to think through, how many of you have had a manager who was the source of typos? Right? They would come to you with all kinds of comms, drop in the chat, yes. That's me or I've seen it, whatever. You know that's that's sort of one hand. We also have had a manager who is really fastidious about typos. If I have a single typo I'm gonna hear about it. I've had the manager who says send me every email I'd just like to proof it before we send it out. These two managers I have the same position, two managers they cannot effectively use the term sloppy or prepped because they mean very different things to those two people. And so what we find is especially as people are trying to be casual or not step on toes or you know empower people I hear a lot of folks say I don't want to be a micromanager. Yes, but where are you asking people to fill in the gaps for you and make inferences that they can't possibly get right? Especially because we are so diverse, because we do have different lived experiences, we de blur. And so I'll give you some examples here. Mentally underline the blur words. When I hear it from people my first skill is all in my head. Okay, don't mean to brag but I can internalize this. The idea of okay so what might be misinterpreted? Again I see the chat is pretty popular so just drop in there what do you see here that could be seen as different based on who's the speaker? Drop in the chat what blur words you see, and this is, you know, our practice to mentally underline later. Bingo. Yep. Culture fit. Mhmm. Right, Kelly? Oh my goodness. I laugh because I mean, it can it can become a slippery slope. Right? We can like, who who are you? What is I? Like this concept can get very, like a, you know, philosophical. But I really appreciate your point that, like, what we're doing, we're falling into our own trap. We have a chance here to de blur and say okay I hear some tone, I hear culture fit, I hear unprofessional. What does that mean to you? And what I'm doing with generosity and with a collective spirit is that like I can't possibly carry the exact same definition of that as you do. And I don't wanna make you feel like you're put on the spot, but I do wanna honor that our vocabulary and our working understanding of the world must be different. So one example, I did a whole at all staff in Dallas. There was a 100 plus people there, And, one person raised their hand and said, oh, but I see seasoned as a good thing. She's like, I use it as a compliment. I I, like, I say seasoned meaning you have a ton of experience. You've got all these, you know, ideas, and you've seen it all before. And another exactly, Raven another person raised her hand and she's a few generations older than her colleague and she said oh no no no no, seasoned means I'm stuck in my ways. It means that you don't think I can use tech. Right? And we have this like very real and raw Diebler moment because someone truly had felt seasoned was a compliment and someone truly felt seasoned was an insult. And so what I encourage us to do is because it's so subjective is to use that deblurring lens to pose some questions. And when I'm posing questions you'll notice what does blank mean to you? I'm not asking that person to be the subject of the of the question. What do you mean by? That could raise defensiveness, get that shame back in. Oh, did I misstep here? What does season mean to you? Right? What does culture fit mean to you? And I could tell you lots of stories. Right? Some teams will say, well, culture fit means a person who, you know, thrives in failure and is very independent and willing to make high level decisions without a lot of, confirmation. Right? That could be a very real reason someone needs that kind of, you know, spirit or idea on their team. And someone else may say, but we have five out of six of our people are like that. We may need culture fit to mean the person who's a little bit more fastidious, a little bit more, well, what does the book say? How do we check this? And so what I appreciate is the potential and the power of these types of disagreements. What is culture fit? This is a great conversation, but the idea of an impact or sort of who else does this, those are the places that we can get some real meaning from people. Folks, I've told you a couple different examples. I certainly wish I had the Debler skill. One of my earliest leadership jobs I was tasked with hiring my replacement. Right? I moved from one of a team of three into the manager of that team, and so we had one empty spot. And, my boss's boss was in on the interviews with me, and we did not agree on the qualities of the top two candidates. And I not only wish in the moment I had deblurred and said, well, what does, like, what does that mean to you? What does professional or what does prepared mean? And separately, I wish I had been doing it all a lot. Before I needed it for the big decision, which was to hire someone and that was going to be the person I worked with a lot, guess what? The director won and I had a lot of, you know, subsequent work to do. That skill along the way before I needed it, that's where the behavior of inclusion comes in to me, right? I'm not waiting for, oh, highest stakes. I'm de blurring constantly so that when it is time we have built a lot more of the trust quotient between each other and also I feel more confident in understanding and assessing what that person is saying as opposed to my immediate judgment or what I think I heard. Alright folks, I know some of you have been to Culture Club before dropping the chat. If you use Deblur at a certain time or place where you found it really helpful, I want to make sure you have a chance to crowdsource from each other because I know that you are in a group of like minded people who have self selected into a learning opportunity. So please don't be shy if you have a deeper moment or a place that you're employing this. Let's all learn from each other. Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. It's just it sounds like it's a enthusiastic let's let's start today. Wonderful. Well, this is not an exclusive opportunity. I'm happy to to hear more. Oh, Betty. Yeah. How interesting. Okay. Thanks, folks. I really appreciate the the content all the time. Mhmm. What makes you say that? Absolutely. Great, Lisa. Okay. Great connections. So we got one final hot spot. I wanna make sure we have plenty of time to discover and sort of, like, look through how it might work, and then, also, as I mentioned, answer anything in the q and a. Yes, Sharon. Ask for examples. Some people tell me at this point for the deblurr, they'll say, okay. I try to do it especially when it's positive. Oh, she's such a rock star. Or someone's getting, hey. Great job on that presentation. Okay. Tell me what was great about it. So, like, even when the index feels not threatening at all, I'm practicing and building those reps and muscles. So, like, Tim was saying, I'm I'm using it even more regularly than I than I think. Okay. Microaggressions. Let's move forward. Alright. Right, what does it mean? I already mentioned they're interpersonal and the basis of microaggressions it's really important for us to let go of is to say that they're always intentional. They're not. It's just something that reveals a stereotype. It could be a comment, it could be an action. Some sociologists have referred to it as a bias leak, right? Because someone says something like oh that's not actually my belief like we talked about with the dog, right? But it's something that is moving faster or making me act faster than I actually intend. So microaggressions may be unintentional and we still own up to the impact, right? This is an important part not just of the work world but of the world itself and the fact that people are dealing with microaggressions not just in the workplace. I'll show you some examples and I'm curious just to hear from you all why might these hurt whether it's you don't act gay or you're so articulate or where where are you really fun? What might come up as a pain point for the folks that are encountering this? Add it to the chat. Yes. Alienation. Exactly, Betty. Assumptions. I'm not sure if it's Keisha or Kesha, but the idea of, where where people might feel just othered. Right? Yes. Mikaela, same. Exactly. That's right, Mary. It's a certain amount of okay. So I have a working definition in my head, and you don't fit that definition, and therefore, explain yourself to me. And and as I mentioned, right, we all carry bias. I don't sit here in judgment of people who have committed microaggressions because most people will at some point. The idea for us then is what to do about it. And because people might be experiencing microaggressions throughout their commute or, you know, in certain instances with their family and friends, we we want to make sure the workplace is particularly able to address it so that chronic stress doesn't affect the whole team, right? We don't just want to retain top talent, we want the workplace to be a place where people can express themselves and also feel that they belong. And so this idea of microaggressions as an opportunity for us to respond, not react, but to respond, right? When you have an emergency you call a first responder. We want to have a sort of plan in place And so if you think about what to do, there's going to be a lot of different varieties of response here. We are 172, 73 souls, so we have different responses. But I want to make sure that we have a sort of tenant and through line on what might work best. And psychologists call it a micro intervention, which is where the person who has not received the microaggression, a third party, a bystander, they intervene. They say something. Why? They may be feeling less social and ego pain and have more control of their affect or communication choice than the person who is the recipient of the microaggression. And what I love about it, I mentioned earlier feedback is a vote, to me a microintervention is a vote for a workplace that is more inclusive. And I'm not saying that it's going to go the same for every person here. As I mentioned, your authenticity, right, and your decision making are are paramount. The scenario I'm going to show you is a brief video of a microaggression and I'd like you to think through what's my move. And and there's no wrong answers here. I'm curious though to sort of point us in a direction. Are you going to reply in private or are you going to apply reply in public? And so I will pull up a short video. I'm going to confirm that it hopefully works all well for you. The, the video is going to show a microaggression, full disclosure, and then my question is, like I said, public or private? What's your move? Hey, team. I'm excited to introduce you all to Rob who just joined engineering. Hey. You don't look like an engineer. What is it that you yeah. Interesting. Public? Private? Okay. Monica's going with a quote, sort of, like, what it is that she would say. And how do you decide that? Thank you all so much for the vulnerability in jumping in. I know this is a this the video itself can be hard to watch for some, and so I'm just reading through the comments. Yeah. Exactly. Jessica, how it's well put? Right, Sharon. It agreed. It should not have been said. And so the question is, how do we maneuver? What's our response? Yep, Bella. It depends on the severity. There's a couple different ways. Right, Diane. It might be that I'm in a position of leadership or, like, your your shot who just introduced this person, and so you may say, well, it's gotta be public so it doesn't derail us. And if if you're gonna go public, here are some suggestions. How can I keep it micro, right, like it's still interpersonal and also I'm not derailing the whole agenda and making it all about Rob and making people feel perhaps even more attention than they signed up for, right, like that discomfort? The the public space, if we are going to do so publicly, the key takeaway is to make sure it's not defining the person. I don't I don't, endorse or approve of what that person said, and, also, I don't wanna define them based on this one moment. So I'll say something about the action not about who they are. That's right. That's right. And so the next, if you're more of a private I'm gonna respond in private, like this is already something that, you know, I don't already know where I'm going to land or how I'm going to articulate this well. And so the next move is to think through if you are in private this is why we did the deeper earlier I want you to to sort of use this formula and you can practice it now today, you can practice it in separate spaces when I've done it before when I'm driving just like I said to build up my own. It's like oh I noticed that you you know cut me off here at the light whatever. But I noticed that you said and and I don't I don't care to make you say something that's objectionable to you. Like, if the language or the word choice is something that I would never say that. Okay. But the the opposite, the the downside of it is, hey. Can we talk about the thing you said to Rob in the meeting? Maybe the meeting's two hours long and the person has no idea what you're talking about. So we've kind of wasted our opportunity. So try to lean in on as specific as possible, that deblur of the behavior. And then why? Why does it matter to you? Is it about having a workplace that's inclusive? Is it about making sure people feel welcome on the right foot? Is it about the fact that, you know, humor is really different? And then the last point is getting this question in. And one of the best antidotes we have for those heightened feelings of shame or defensiveness is curiosity. And truly it's something we can gift each other. It's also something that we can cultivate for ourselves, right? Research shows that when we when we have conflict, the most effective managers of that conflict are people who lean into curiosity not criticality. And so if you choose to do this privately, some of you said both, I saw that in chat, like say something in a moment and then circle back later one on one, but to mention, hey, I noticed x. I mentioned it because y. How do you see it? Or what are your thoughts? And part of it is also I'm I'm disrupting my own tendency like, oh, I'm dropping my golden nuggets of wisdom and walking away. Like, I wanna engage with this person. Right, they are not defined by their behavior in one moment and how can I learn about it? And I'm loving what you all are mentioning too, like, in the chat about how you might do this because part of it is to prepare for if and when you are the practitioner of a microaggression. If it happens, I don't know where it might occur, it might be a thing that is totally unintentional, right, and that idea of a bias leak happens. But the the graciousness we're practicing giving each other is something that will well equip us if and when we practice a microaggression and we have a moment to say, All right, I'm really sorry. That is not that is not what I intended. And you'll notice the first two, I might use those or employ them when I'm feeling escalator. I notice I call it my shame spiral. I, I don't I don't mean to brag but I've definitely been there in a shame spiral and I don't need to be I don't really wanna center myself. I can sense that I'll just go on and on and on and on. So I might say, oh, thanks for saying something. Take a deep breath and say, I'm gonna circle back with that person a couple days. Right? But to focus on them and not ourselves and then back to that antidote, that magical cure of curiosity is a place to say, okay wait what can I do to support you in the future? And research interestingly shows people who have committed a microaggression and know it are more likely to micro intervene in the future. So I'm not here to encourage you to start feeling tweet oh oh oh I see it all the time, but I do want you to feel equipped with some best practices when we encounter this at the workplace and we're really really sincerely trying to get get more inclusion for folks and to move into this idea of inclusion. All right, I see a couple questions coming up and I love this idea like how do you see it or why did you do that is like a really nice thanks Bella for voicing the sort of difference of how that can land for the the micro aggressor. All right folks, well I mentioned I want to save some time for Q and A. I've seen some pop in the chat there so I'm going to take a minute and peruse that. While you commit to one certain thing, I know that you have access to the worksheet Courtney put in the beginning, but there's also a space that you might want to revisit. Paper and pencil still work? We've talked about a lot and I want you to have a moment just to zoom out and assess for yourself where are you at on a scale of zero to ten ten is the highest and with that afterwards I'll ask you to share your focus area. But I want to give everyone about thirty seconds just to think through and do a moment of reflection before we depart. Okay. That was exactly thirty seconds. I have a timer right in front of my face, so it's that's not me counting. Okay? I don't have that good of a sense of time. I would love to pause and invite everyone to share. So what's your top one? What will you do first? And we use this as public record to build more accountability but also so you have an idea of sort of where you fit with the group here. Excellent! Okay yeah great and and that idea you might take away the thing that you're already good at. I'm with you. Again, back to the psychology. Sometimes sharpening our super strengths helps us get over a barrier before we go to the real hard parts. So please feel the wind in your sails. I am totally supportive of whatever you decide to act on. Let's just do it one thing at a time. Right? I see a couple great questions. I'm gonna go in reverse chronology. I saw the question about like what if they get defensive? So I'll go there first. In in our experience about this, so I understand that micro interventions and feedback are not the same thing, but I will offer you what we've seen. If I notice defensiveness, I will do the same deep blur. I'll say, Hey, I'm noticing this may not be a good time. Why don't we put the ball back in your court and let me know when it is? Now this is a tester. I'm not in the legal department saying it depends, but if I try that and they don't circle back then I know the onus is on me. But I believe in this and I actually I personally know that it's valuable for me to close the loop. I don't want to carry this around as I'm like well I tried to talk and it never worked and etc. And then I have this whole other sort of equation that I'm working through that isn't effective for me or the person. And frankly, maybe that person does have an internal relationship with that with the with what I perceived and they really do have a jocular sort of joking trust background. So I would I would encourage you, yes, notice the defensiveness. You don't have to say that word. It's like this isn't a good time or I'm noticing I might have caught you in a thing that that has a lot a lot of history to it, whatever it is. And then ask them to circle back. And I think the the q and a the other question I'm seeing okay. Yesenia, I'm not sure. This is a great question. Intros for people when the people already know each other. I'm gonna tell you sort of like behind the scenes. This is the Nora move. I have, like, sort of three assessments, my if then. One, if people already know each other and I'm satisfied by the amount of interaction and engagement, skip the intros. Fine. Two, people know each other and I'm not satisfied by the amount of engagement I go with intros and I try to build in then something else. Like, obviously, the amazing intro question of what are you looking forward to in 2026 may not break the ice. Some people take the intros and go a different way. So with a hot take, what is something that's almost topical, newsy, but also you know not too controversial? I've seen a lot of teams benefit from like what's your take on the Marvel universe? Or what do you think about the, I don't know, like the current state of the British monarchy? Right? Like I don't know but something where you're trying you're using intros and round robins to cultivate that interpersonal connection that is truly a value add, not just a nice to have in a work world where people feel higher anxiety and isolation which leads to disengagement and lower performance. So those are my first two. And then the third is if people people say that they know each other and I sense that they don't, I just play the heavy. This is this is both based on me, Nora, and also what we find at LifeLabs. Those ideas of, like, sort of like, yep. It's good for us all. You may not love it, but, those those moves that we made to build connection and that relational space. Hey. What's a story your family tells about you that that no one knows? Or what's a skill that you used to have that you're glad you gave up on? Like, oh I'm so glad I stopped playing guitar. I don't know. But like giving people that space to talk a little bit about themselves and their talents or their learnings is usually a connective tissue. Yes. Oh my gosh. Drew. Priya Parker fans, unite. Folks, I see that we're nearing the time. Are there questions that I've missed? I feel sad to leave. I am so grateful for you all. Please do connect. I saw some people sharing. I'm on LinkedIn. I hope that you are or whatever whatever serves your needs. And I hope, as Adam Grant says, that like whatever comes in the next couple weeks, you have some time both for restoration and decompression as well as learning and growth. I appreciate it. As much as you do need to take care of others, please remember to take care of yourselves. I think I have to end this, right? I guess it's over. Bye.