Creating A Sense Of Belonging In The Workplace With Dr. Steve Yacovelli

Chris Ronzio (00:29):

What's up everyone. It's Chris Ronzio and you are here for another installment of Organized Chaos. Thank you for joining me for the live edition. Today, we've got a really important topic. Before I introduce our guest, I want to go back because yesterday, I spent most of my day pouring through thousands of comments in this engagement survey that we send out to all of our people a couple times a year. One of the things that we are really focused on doing is how do we build the best environment, the best culture, the best workplace, one that people feel like they belong, and that has this sense of inclusivity. And so, that's what we're going to focus on today, with this guest that maybe you've seen before, maybe you've heard before. He does a lot of content and teaching on his own.

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He's been on the Organize Chaos podcast in the past, and his name is Dr. Steve Yacovelli. Steve calls himself The Gay Leadership Dude, and we're going to talk about all of his lessons and his expertise. He's a speaker, an author, and the owner and principal of TopDog Learning Group. They have nearly 30 years of consultant experience in leadership, change management, diversity, inclusion, and his book, Pride Leadership is one of the first to focus on developing leadership talent, specifically for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.

Chris Ronzio (12:50):

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Think in, speak up, act out. I like that. And when you mentioned the difference between chairperson and chairman, it made me think, are there other simple examples like that the audience could benefit from just knowing some things that we might take for granted in our businesses?

Steve Yacovelli (13:08):

There's a lot, actually in the midst of me and my team are writing a class on inclusive language right now. So I'm kind of elbows deep in this. And it's big and small things, like do you use the term blacklisted, to say how bad things are getting into your email? That's, black means bad. Oh, it's whitelisted, white means good. Are you using that kind of language? If you're in the real estate game, a lot of realtors have moved away from saying, your master suite to main suite, why? Because it's called a master suite for a reason, and that's not some cool things we want to keep reoccurring, and reinforce within our language. Looking at any of the ways that we're looking at gender and you see things like in the acting profession where people have moved away from actor actress, to some extent, to just calling everybody an actor, you make that term gender neutral.

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And so analyze the words that you're using both in print as well as verbally and ask yourself, is this as inclusive as it could be? I'm not trying to be the HR police or the politically incorrect, or correct folks and slap people's hands, no, I'm just trying to say, think about how those words are being heard by other people. Because I have a lot of folks in my classes that are like, well, that doesn't offend me. I'm good for you, what about that person over there? And just think about it. And we talk about effective leadership. Empathy is so under underutilized as an effective leadership tool. And this is a great opportunity to exercise that empathy by hearing things through maybe the ears of others.

Chris Ronzio (14:38):

I think language is so important. I'm glad you gave a couple examples there. We actually, in the early days had this program, at Trainual where it was like a community of people and because people are often making training manuals or operations manuals, we'd called it manual masters. And we changed that to now it's called process people. So simple example of just those little language tweaks, that can be a lot more acceptable. The other thing I thought of when you were talking is we have a few team members out in Ukraine, and I've been learning a little Ukrainian language. It's interesting that the nouns, like actor, never had a masculine and feminine version until more recently they've added those versions. So do you think it's different internationally where maybe in the English language where we're going toward a gender neutral version of words and internationally, you're seeing a different trend.

Steve Yacovelli (15:32):

And I wouldn't say that I'm an expert linguist. I barely know English quite frankly, but I actually, I used to be fluent in French and the whole masculine feminine thing. And I think things are becoming a little bit more ubiquitous as far as neutrality and gender neutral words and phrases, but some of it's just really hardwired into the specific language. And so I think it's going to take a bit of time to either unpack that or look at those different masculine, feminine types of things in certain languages to see them less as one or the other, they're just more part of the linguistic journey that's there.

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Employee Resource Groups

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Chris Ronzio (16:09):

Right. Okay, so let's talk about another way that people can promote inclusivity. So one thing we've set up is employee resource groups or affinity groups. I'm curious your take on those, how to do those right, how to do them wrong if people are trying to go down that path?

Steve Yacovelli (16:25):

A great question, Chris and I do a lot of work with employee. I say employee resource groups, although you're right, there's like affinity groups. So business resource groups, there's all sorts of gorgeous acronyms out there. I'll simply call them ERGs, employee resource groups. And for those who don't know what they are, it's within a workplace, somebody could be the HR function, it could just be team members, but they say, you know what? Let's create a space for this demographic of employees that they can work together, network, support one another, maybe educate internally as well as externally. So a lot of times you have the women's group, you have the LGBTQ + group. And I say plus because of that French thing, by the way means plus, but I tried to make a thing happen, it didn't happen, but it still happened for me. You have veterans groups, I've seen parental groups.

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You have of course the people of color, Asian Pacific, depending on differences, employee resource groups do that, or at least try to do that. They create that group, the mentality that gorgeous PAC behavior, as we would of course say TopDog Learning Group, but smart workplaces use their employee resource groups. And I don't mean that in a nefarious sort of way. I'm saying you have a collection of experts, that you're allowing to meet, that know your business, leverage the heck out of them. Now also I would go out on limb and say compensate them too, don't use them as your free consulting team, but give them the opportunity to share their perspective, before you do things like, hey, we're going to back this particular political person or political group. Maybe ask your ERGs, is this okay? Does this look okay? Is this make sense? Are we doing the right thing here?

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I know here in Florida, I won't name names, but there's been some that have been dinged for not doing this, and as they should have been, you have these fantastic experts who are representatives of some of the communities you're trying to reach some of the customers that you're trying to reach. Why would you not utilize them as a resource and really help guide policy versus just say, yay, you're going to put on in this case for the queer folks, you'll do the Pride events. Yay, that's nice but what else? Let's make it part of the business versus just a tick box mentality.

Chris Ronzio (18:32):

Yeah, I love that. So beyond just the events, you're engaging people to share insights, to help with the decision-making, to make sure that things align with their beliefs and the beliefs of your customers that might be in the same kind of group, right?

Steve Yacovelli (18:46):

Yep, absolutely. And when those ERG groups, regardless of which ones they are provide feedback, listen to them, and also encourage them to provide that feedback because that's the value, that's the diversity of thought and perspective that we can gain as a business. Why would you ignore that free advice if you're getting it.

Chris Ronzio (19:07):

When you talk about belonging, I instantly think about, are people willing to share everything, or do they feel like they're having to censor themselves? When they're sharing stories about what they did over the weekend, are they comfortable saying my boyfriend or my girlfriend or my, are they comfortable sharing the holiday that they celebrate that maybe no one else on the team does. And I think that when you start to see that language, just come out freely in pictures and we have this Slack channel where we all post our experiences. And it is just, like you said that you use the word cornucopia, it's brilliant, all the different, just things and I love scrolling through that channel, but I feel like that's when know that people have a sense of belonging when they're just sharing openly.

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When Employees Feel A Sense Of Belonging, They Stay At Your Company

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Steve Yacovelli (19:51):

Absolutely. The latest research that I've seen from the Human Rights Campaign says that just about 50% of LGBTQ + folks are out at work. Now this is a little pre-COVID, so I'm not sure how the pandemic implemented that. But 50% when I was researching Pride Leadership, I wanted that stat in there. And that's what I found, that's crazy. Half of the queer people in this country, in the United States, aren't out at work, why? Talk about creating a sense of belonging. If I'm hiding my pronouns to your point and not using that Slack channel that you guys have [inaudible 00:20:24] to say, look, what I did this weekend or yesterday, or this week was my 24th anniversary with my husband. We haven't been married 24 years, but when we got together, equality didn't exist. So we're like, this is our day, our first date anniversary, here you go. So that's what we celebrate.

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But for half of the people in my community, they won't post that on social media. They won't share that with a coworker. And what we have the opportunity is to say, all you all, as I like to say, bring your full selves to work, show us who you love, show us what you celebrate, show us what you value. And when you do that as a workplace, guess what happens? People want to stay, people give 110%, people want to promote your business to their friends. Like, oh my gosh, I work for Trainual, I work for TopDog and I can be my authentic self. And it's awesome. Wow, it sounds like a cool place to work. And today with so much work remote and people picking up their toys and going elsewhere when they don't feel that sense of belonging, there's a great opportunity for us to really engage in creating that environment where people want to be there.

Chris Ronzio (21:26):

And I would imagine in some ways, this sense of belonging and inclusion is more important than a lot of the other metrics, or the salaries. And you could feel totally suppressed and make good money, but you'd rather work in a place where you can be yourself.

Steve Yacovelli (21:42):

Yes. And if you're doing any sort of employee engagement survey, whether it's big or small, please at least have one question on there that says, I feel a sense of belonging at this place. Or I feel safe to be my authentic self at work, or phrases like that. It can just be one question and it can really be a great parameter on how well people feel that they are welcomed, safe and belong at that workplace.

Chris Ronzio (22:06):

We have a question like that, and we have a couple others. I think we have three questions on this, but one of the others is just, what can we be doing better? Simple question, but we get so many great ideas and insights and then we can act on those. And in between the surveys we can say, okay, we took this idea, we did this thing and thank you for that. That's great. So you mentioned at the beginning a little bit about marketing and appealing to people in the hiring process. And so beyond the Pride logo, what other things should we be doing on our sites to really showcase that this is authentically how we feel as a business?

Steve Yacovelli (22:40):

Under the act out, and the think in, and speak up, act out, kind of mentality. And when I teach us in some of our stuff, it's really going through the lens of everyone within your operation. So someone in marketing, you already talked about, what are the materials we're using? Someone in HR, what are our policies, down to our healthcare, are our healthcare policies trans-inclusive? Is our family medical leave looking at folks who maybe adopt or same sex couples, or insert the different types of families here. What are we doing from a hiring perspective? And we said the placement of those items. What about that onboarding? Like I said, you have that image of a senior leader. Is it always a middle-aged white dude? And so a lot of these, I call them artifacts when we're talking about that, think about the virtual and physical artifacts within your workplace.

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Are they promoting inclusivity or deterring inclusivity? I was at a client site, I won't of course mention who, but it was a global manufacturing group. And pre-COVID, we do workshops on inclusive leadership. And so I was on-site, me and one of my TopDoggers, one of my consultants, we were doing an onsite inclusive leadership workshop one day. And we had about 20 some leaders sitting in the room. But before the session started, I'm like, I'm just going to walk around their office and take a look at things. And I went to the lobby, and I looked around there's these four big, beautiful black and white photos of actual employees doing manufacturing things. And the perception I received from all those four images was perceived white, definitely perceived dude, and probably about middle-ish age or a little bit younger. And so I took mental note, walked back into the training room, the class started, introduced myself, I'm like, class, we're going to go on a field trip.

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And my one TopDogger was looking at me, where are you going with this Steve? And so we walked just around the lobby, just a five minute lap, and then we went back into the room and I asked the class, I'm totally off script here, my TopDogger was like, what are you doing? I'm supposed to be learning this class, what are you doing? And I said, what did you see? And they all started snickering. And they're like, we have work to do. I'm like, yes, but at least you saw it. And that's awesome. And let's go talk about our conversation for the next day hours on being inclusive. And I think that's the type of lens that any one of us as leaders can have, is look critically at what we're doing, our processes with the images, the artifacts, and are they being as inclusive as we want them to be?

Chris Ronzio (25:03):

And when we open this session, we use the phrase consciously inclusive. And I think that's what it's about. It's bringing some of the awareness to what was maybe unconscious, if they didn't realize it, but you walking them through the hallways or pointing out pictures that someone has on their website brings the conscious side to, okay, now we need to act on it.

Steve Yacovelli (25:22):

Yeah. I started using that phrase when I first got into this topic, actually, when I worked for the Walt Disney company. And I remember being in a session and we're talking about unconscious bias, we were going through that conversation. And there's a person in the back of the room who just wasn't on board. If you know the term voluntold to be there, they were so voluntold to be there. And so during one of the breaks, I went up to this person and I said, hey, is there something on your mind? And they're like, you know what? It's unconscious, I can't do anything about it. And I'm like, good learning for Steve. And so ever since then, I used the [inaudible 00:25:55] active phrase consciously inclusive, because we can do something about it and it's literally being active. And like you said, Chris getting in front of it, having our eyes open and really being in tune with those differences and different ways of looking that really can help us be more inclusive.

Chris Ronzio (26:09):

Yeah, no, it's a great tip. For us with our website, initially, when we were a small team, it was just all pictures of us. And so as the team slowly got more and more diverse, the pictures got more and more diverse. Then we brought in an artist, that's an illustrator and we made a conscious effort to make sure we're representing all the different types of people. And I think our website is great now. So if anybody's looking for an example, go check out our, how'd you do that?

Steve Yacovelli (26:36):

I have really cool. My doctorate's in instructional technology and distance education. So I've been zooming well before it was cool in a pandemic.

Chris Ronzio (26:44):

Wow! All right, well, anyone that's just listening. Dr. Steve has some really cool onscreen tricks as well. So you have to check one of his videos out. All right, so we've talked a lot about this. You brought up kind auditing your policies and some policies might not be conducive to trans-people or to other groups. So how can we audit all of it? How do you go through all of it? Do you need a third party?

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How To Audit Inclusivity In Your Company Culture

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Steve Yacovelli (27:13):

I mean, if you have the resources to outsource that to an organization that can help you critically and objectively look at those policies, absolutely, that's a great route to go. If that's not in your resource wheel, if you will, this is where you can leverage employee resource groups to help them look at things through their respective lenses. It could be just pulling together a diverse group of employees and saying, hey, we have a special project for you to look at these. So there's lots of different ways we can do it. The important part is having that diversity of thought and being really mindful of who is on that team, and what potential lens they're coming through. I'll tell you a very quick story. Several years ago, I was working with another manufacturing group and we were talking a lot about diversity of teams, and that diversity of thought and all that stuff.

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And they created household products. And so we went through all this great work and they're like, Steve, I got a message maybe a month after we closed the project. And they're like, Steve, just so you know, here's the demographic makeup and the look and feel of our new product team that we're doing x, y, z widget. I'm like nice job way to apply our learning. So flash forward, they're creating their widget or whatever it is, and they get to market and they realize, oh man, it's only right-handed people can use it. And so that's what diversity can be beyond just race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability, age, and all that. So diversity's a big thing.

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If you Google the five layers of diversity, there's a beautiful model by two women, Gardenswartz and Rowe, Lee and Anita, they're just fantastic. I had the pleasure of having met them, and they made some sense on defining what really is diversity. And in the case handed this is the way people look at the world. And so sadly, this project team forgot that. And it's not that saying you have to have every demographic of every kind on every team you have, no, but do the best that you can do to be diverse. And unfortunately, for a group that was creating something that's very tangible to not have the hand in this, that's missed opportunity.

Chris Ronzio (29:16):

Yeah. Now I almost equate getting better with diversity, with the maturity of your experiences and the business. And as you run into these situations, now you're conscious of them. We had a situation a couple weeks ago, I was golfing with one of our leaders and he had a red golf ball, and the red golf ball against the green is you can't see that if you're color blind, and we're going through this pallet system to recreate the colors inside our application. So that's top of mind and it started this conversation around, these are things you wouldn't have thought of before, but we're bringing awareness to them, and I think that's important.

Steve Yacovelli (29:54):

And that's brilliant, and I love that. And I think I learned as a trainer always to be mindful, if I'm in front of the room doing my flip charts, never do the green and red because of exactly what you said, but that's my experience. Not everybody has that. Or unless you are in that particular demographic, it may not be aware. And so I do think that you were never going to get it all right as a business, never. I mean, I still screw up. I was doing another interview and I used to always say, oh, our brothers and sisters, and the person interviewing me said, and siblings, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're right, because non-binary, why would I not think of that?
And this is just a year ago, and I've been living in the space. We all make mistakes. But the cool thing is if you're creating a culture of both accountability, as well as open to feedback, you'll always course correct quite quickly, because hopefully you've created that culture where people want to share. Hey Steve, you probably want to say it this way, or consider this perspective. Thank you for sharing that gift of feedback, course correct and just move on.

Chris Ronzio (30:54):

Is there something that you suggest being able to tell our teams, tell our people that says, this is a priority, we're open to feedback. We want to hear you. We're not perfect. We're going to make mistakes, but we have great intentions. How do you cast that net?

Steve Yacovelli (31:12):

Just how you said it, Chris. You make it known from senior leadership that this is our priority, this is important. Now, if it's part of your core values, it's already there, you just point people toward that and say you know what? One of our values is being inclusive in a spirit of trying to be even more inclusive than we already are. You give the gift of feedback to us, and that's awesome. I mean, I truly believe that anything that a business does, if nothing else create that sense of trust, because that's truly the secret to good leadership is building trust. And one of the best ways you can do that is having a feedback rich culture where people feel that they can share those types of things without being swatted on the hand, or dinged in their permanent file or whatever that is.

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What The Pride Leadership Book Is About

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Chris Ronzio (31:55):

Perfect, okay. Well let's talk a little bit about your book. I teased it in the intro, but can you share just what people would get out of the book, where they can find it?

Steve Yacovelli (32:03):

Yeah. So my book Pride Leadership: Strategies for the LGBTQ+ Leader to be the King or Queen of Their Jungle. It started in 2019. Well it came out in 2019, no pun intended there, but it really started as me thinking through, I wanted to create a leadership book, in theory, in general, I've been doing this for almost 30 years. I've seen thousands and thousands of leaders over that time and you start seeing patterns of behavior. And so when I was starting to think through what are the six competencies that I feel that any leader is either using and rocking and rolling or not using and crashing and burning. And it really was these six, authenticity, courage, empathy, communication, relationships, and culture. And then if you remember back Chris, it was the TV show Sex and the City, the first one. So I'm just getting all my thoughts together, kind of land on those six competencies.

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And then the little Carrie Bradshaw, "I couldn't help, but wonder," and if you're not familiar with that show, she was a reporter, and that was like the shtick every week, she'd open up a little tiny old MacBook and say, "I couldn't help, but wonder." And then that was the theme of the week. Yeah. Well I'm sitting there putting these things together and I'm like, you know what? I can't help, but wonder is there something about the LGBTQ + experience that allows you to exercise those six competencies just differently? So for example, authenticity. Chris, if you Google authentic leadership, you'll just get a ton of awesome gurus. Brene Browns and awesome folks like that who are saying yes, if you're authentic, you're a better leader, people trust you, they know when you're not authentic. So be authentic, authentic, authentic. Awesome. Now through the rainbow lens. If I'm an outman at work, if I'm a trans-person being my authentic self, that's power.

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And so in Pride Leadership, I talk about how do you channel that to be an even more effective leader? Now side note, my awesome allies love it too. It's a mix of bad dad jokes with solid leadership theory. So if you can handle some of the subtitles, like storytelling, like Tori Spelling and some cheeky, dumb dad humor by all means it's really for anyone. And I've actually had that feedback from my publisher or my editor, she's like, "Steve, I have to tell you I am a white cisgendered straight woman." I'm like, oh no. She's like, this is the book I wanted in my MBA class. I'm like what? She's like, "It's so fun, but it's so approachable and it's applicable." And she's like, "You need to de-gay the book." I'm like, no, but thanks for playing, if you enjoyed it, someone else will too. And so that's Pride Leadership in a nutshell.

Chris Ronzio (34:32):

I love that. And I mean your personality, everyone can see that's listening or that's watching this. If we could package that up in a book with a bunch of leadership lessons and dad jokes, sign me up. So we'll be buying a bunch of copies of that too.

Steve Yacovelli (34:46):

Nice.

Chris Ronzio (34:47):

For anyone that wants to follow along or connect with you directly, where can they find you?

Steve Yacovelli (34:50):

The easiest place to follow along is topdoglearning.biz. There, you'll see more information about me, about our courses, our books, my team members, and ways you can get ahold of us and see how we can make your world even more awesomely inclusive.

Chris Ronzio (35:05):

Amazing. All right, Dr. Steve, thank you so much for being here, I appreciate you.

Steve Yacovelli (35:09):

Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate you.

Chris Ronzio (35:11):

All, everyone, that was Dr. Steve Yacovelli. He said at the beginning, sometimes people mess up his name. People mess up my name too. They say Ronzio, Ronzio, Ronzio, Ronzio. Yacovelli, to me it reminds me of Machiavelli, or seeing the future, whatever that is, right. And I think you can tell from everything that Steve's talking about, this is the future of how to run a business, and it shouldn't be this hard, it's just about accepting people, making people feel welcome, making sure that they belong in your business, that they feel like they belong. That you're inclusive, and you're building an environment where people can be their authentic selves, where people can contribute and where people can bring a diversity of thought and perspective to make your business better. So please check it out. Dr. Steve's book, it sounds incredible. I have not read it yet, but I will.

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I'll commit that to this group. And thank you for just being here while I learn more about this. Like we talked about, I think our companies can have some grace for us if we're constantly learning, and we're applying those learnings. And so be sure that of the tips, the dozens of tips that you heard in this podcast, if there's one, if you can change, add pronouns to your Slack, if you can phrase something different on a job application, if you can swap out a photo in your office hallway, or on your website, those little changes add up. And that's what I hope that you're able to take away from this, is some practical changes that you can implement.

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