The part that sort of confounding to many of us around implicit bias is that you can hold these attitudes, stereotypes aversions completely against values you would otherwise say you're defined by 99% of us will have implicit biases that might pop up or come out, that will even surprise us. And I think that it just feels so unprofessional to have any aspect of your behavior or contributions that you aren't in control of. So I think that that has been part of why it's been tough to tackle. Good people, leaders best in class organizations have been incredibly persistent and are so encouraging for us to find a way in to implicit bias, and other aspects of equity, diversity and inclusion because it just matters so much. A successful
workplace or organization hinges on a number of soft skills, the types of practices that one might not necessarily learn in job training or in academic studies. And increasingly, a cohesive work environment is dependent on presenting an equitable and inclusive place for employees to succeed, and patrons to feel acknowledged. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm your host, Steve fast. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are topics that even today are overlooked in the workplace or in an organization's culture. Identifying the common barriers that perpetuate cultural bias within an organization is key to maintaining a healthy and sustainable place for all people to work, learn, or commute. We're going to talk about how organizations can improve with both some of these soft skills and with addressing equity, diversity and inclusion on today's podcast.
I'm Christina Schultz. I'm the Associate Director of Business and Industry Solutions in the Continuing Education Department. My work primarily focuses on providing professional development opportunities to anyone in our community, both through open enrollment classes that folks might see in our booklet or on our website, or also through customized events or services that we might provide through organizations seeking assistance, either nonprofits for profits, so I get to really be sort of in the court of anybody in the workforce, and help them make any kind of forward movement that they seek and find beneficial.
Part of that outreach is something called the essential skills workshops that are offered at Heartland, can you tell me a little bit about what those essential skills workshops are?
Your essential workplace skills series became available to the community in 2019, following some analysis done through our chamber of commerce, and also our Economic Development Council, the kinds of skills, competencies, attitudes and behaviors that employers are seeking from employees. So we really got going on creating a series of PD events aimed at frontline employees around those skills that are crucial for interpersonal and interpersonal relationship management. They are sometimes called soft skills, although they're pretty essential, which is why we use that in the title, the series. And we initially piloted and then launch to five affecting such topics as being a professional communicating effectively effective decision making things like that customer service. And then around 2020, we realized a piece of that family was needed. And that's the advancing equity, diversity and inclusion topic. So that's become the sixth and final part of our overall series.
I think Equity Diversity and inclusion in the workplace is something that is getting more attention nowadays. And it has been overlooked for a long time. It also I think, is a series of topics that employers might not be the best equipped to handle. Internally, when it comes to customer service. That's something that perhaps just through the experience of a business, you can figure out, but you might not have the time to employ those best practices in teaching on the job. But when it comes to equity, diversity, inclusion, there are a lot of things that can be maybe institutionally overlooked. And organizations from Harlan Community College, to large corporations to small businesses, they're all taking a look at these efforts. Now, one of the things that is difficult to tackle, and maybe something that you teach in these classes, as sort of a skill you have to learn is locating, identifying and even defining implicit bias. So can you talk a little bit about what implicit bias is and how that directly affects productivity in the workplace?
Absolutely. So implicit bias includes a range of things include Being attitudes, stereotypes, prejudices against are sort of a versions that we hold without thoughts in the context of the workplace or our community, we almost always use this term in relation to individuals or groups of people. The part that sort of confounding to many of us around implicit bias is that you can hold these attitudes, stereotypes aversions completely against values, you would otherwise say you're defined by. So you will, if you ask me, Christina, what are your values? And I'll say, Well, I'm, I'm really open minded. And I like everybody. And all these things that I can consciously say, is the truth. And yet I to like everybody, 99% of us will have implicit biases that might pop up or come out, that will even surprise us. And I think that part of what has been so tough about watching this term become more dominant in our professional development world, and in our workplaces, is that it just feels so unprofessional to have any aspect of your behavior or contributions that you aren't in control of. So I think that that has been part of why it's been tough to tackle voluntarily, like, individually. It's also hard to do mandatory. I mean, how do you make people confront those things. So it has been a little bit of a tough way in, but I think people good people, leaders, thought leaders, you know, best in class organizations have been incredibly persistent are and are so encouraging for us to find a way in to implicit bias, and other aspects of equity, diversity and inclusion, because it just matters so much. And we really have to be able to take some risks to our ego, in order to uncover new ways of relating to people, new ways of learning to listen, new ways of learning to collaborate. Now that we have such an interesting, multi generational workforce mobility across the country, to you know, where you grew up, where you live, where you retire, those can all be vastly different places at different points of your life. So, you know, we're just more mobile, we see a wider range of people who aren't like us over the course of a lifetime. So it's, it's there's definitely a need to understand implicit bias, and our habits of mind around how we relate to the people around us at work, in particular, because we spend what up to a third of our life working. And so this is an important topic, even though it is a fairly kind of sore point to say, there are going to be things that I don't like to be true about me. Because they don't necessarily align with the values I otherwise feel, are reflective in how I treat people and how I conduct myself every day.
Well, identifying those sorts of biases is probably very important when it comes to developing an inclusive workspace. But looking more holistically, how would you define an inclusive workplace? What does it look like? What does it function like? What are the key things that need to be identified, so you can try to get there, if you are not already there, at your place of business or wherever your
your work? Yeah, I think you make a good point, it doesn't have to just be the workplace. And organization can mean a lot of things. And that can also include where you spend a lot of your volunteer time or where you spend a lot of your leisure time, it could be including your goals you send your kids to, you know, things like that. So not just not just where we go for PE. For those of us in the workforce, you need a blend, an inclusive workplace needs to have a few tiers of functionality. So one of them needs to be top down, there has to be a commitment, that inclusion is important that you can expect that to be part of the organizational culture, the organizational values, whatever you want to call it. So you do need to feel like it's not just lip service. So that's being modeled, it's visible. And it's being demonstrated that by people who are leading the organization, we also want to create an environment where everybody has a voice. And that's not the same as saying, you know, we have an open door policy, you know, it's not, again, just sort of putting the words out there. It's words in action, right? It's more important, what you see what you experience. And so when when you're in an inclusive workplace, where everyone has a voice, people really will be speaking up using their expertise, they'll be able to contribute, they'll be valued. Something else that you need, is to have some equity and salaries, equity and promotions. So again, there's some structural things that need to be in place for an inclusive workplace to be real, not just not just an ideal, something else else that we often look for in inclusive workplaces is that those goals of diversity have become realized in some way. So again, not just a target, but truly having diversity in positions of leadership, management. And so again, that you can point to things like concrete. And so I think that's one of the things that can also be sort of tough when we talk about these essential workplace skills. And of course, we're focusing right now on the equity, diversity and inclusion aspect. It's such an important combination of not just how we conduct ourselves, but how our organizations are measured, and needs to become real in the concrete. What does the bottom line say? Where do we put our money, where our customers voices? So in terms of customer service, I think that we need to make sure we're listening to what they want and need. And so you can count that satisfied customers, customers who left, so again, needs to be combination of things you can count. So that quantitative stuff, but also the qualitative, what's the general experience? What's the trajectory? What's the lifecycle of an employee, like in an organization, so those would be things I would attribute to an inclusive workplace.
So earlier, when we were discussing implicit bias, you mentioned that it's difficult for people to recognize that they might have it, and to sort of take a look at themselves and think about the things that they might not be consciously processing, you know, when it comes to being biased against somebody based upon their background, or maybe some kind of cultural stereotypes that people might have embodied. When you have students or, you know, a partner's people coming in for these essential skills workshops in you're going through the process of kind of examining what that workplace is like or what that organization is like, do you find that it's difficult to get folks to open up and share examples of some cross cultural encounters where they think they could have taken a better approach to get them to reexamine things they're already doing. And even in the cases of folks that have been on the other side of that, and have felt that they are being discriminated against, in a small or large level? Even sometimes folks like that, especially if their bosses in the room or their co workers are in the room? They might not be comfortable speaking up about that as well. Some are some aren't. How do you try to traverse those kinds of barriers? Because this is something that people find a little difficult to talk about there. They don't want to admit that they're biased about anything, sometimes. And they think that that'll reflect poorly upon them, and maybe even affect their career.
Yes, true. It has been so interesting. We are challenged, especially since launching this particular session, which all essential workplace skills learning events are for ours. And prior to COVID, we did them in face to face classrooms. And so there was all the benefits of that shared space that just and having kind of physical presence we can you again, your nonverbal that we're really big on nonverbals in our in our AWS series, right, so you can read the room read the vibe, we've transferred all of those to zoom since COVID. And we've been offering essential workplace skills are the two sessions we've had on EDI virtually. And so I think that that has been somewhat of a enhancer of the difficulty, because to your point, to bring up questions around people you've just met, because in our open enrollment sessions, you're seeing a mixture of folks from the from the community, which is good, because you want to learn from other people's examples. But you also have to work quickly to build up trust in a welcoming space so that you can say, we're going to bring forth some aspects of how we how we view the world and how we treat other people at work. And sometimes we're going to have to learn from messing up from making mistakes or from not having done something as effectively the first time as we would like to do if we get the chance a second time. So a lot of people have come to EDI saying I just want to know a little bit more about these terms. I want to understand a little bit more about what are best practices, I want to kind of like what what's all this about, you know, let's let's all the hubbub, other folks are there because they've set the commitment we've had several people say our organization is committing itself to being a leader in this area, in the industry that we serve. And so we're here to really kind of do our homework and set some intentions and make some goals for ourselves. What we do as facilitators is we, we try to remind folks that we're all here in order to learn and improve. It's a no blame, no critique, you know, we're not here to feel bad or guilty. Like that's not where you do your best productive growth with a big guilt trip or hanging over your head. And again, we're not here to blame. We also talk a lot about we start to frame things in the positive. So one of the very first discussions we have in the session is what are you already doing to recognize people in your workplace and then we can kind of create a launching off point, there are skills that we have, there are points of excellence we already have. So why not build from those and kind of create the frame of any improvement we need to make is going to leverage strengths and abilities we already have. We also try to start the session by asking people what brought them here? What are the prevailing questions you have, or the needs that you have? Again, so that we can sort of pivot to exactly where the most growth is possible. That really prevents us from talking down to anyone or sharing information that feels like you're just doing check the box, you know, so so we really are in this AWS session focusing on increasing self awareness, increasing intention, increasing the ability to articulate, like explicit goals that can become demonstrated back on the job, what can I see? What can I do? What can I count that will show I am doing my part to advancing equity, diversity and inclusion, I think that combination of really focusing on how our learning environment is positioned makes a big difference, but that we also unapologetically go into it, you know, like, Hey, I'm not gonna lie to you, 99% of us have this implicit bias thing, like, it's, it's here. So we also try not to demean the importance of these topics. So we'll, we'll just put it out there. We we talk about things like, what microaggressions are, you know, how, what would be micro interventions to those? What is cultural competency, we just sort of put right out there, here's what great organizations are doing. And they look like this. And we don't soften it, like, you have a lot of time to still decide about this. We're also not pressuring or bullying anyone, like why aren't you better? And why can't you have this mastered yet, we offer a real nice middle path. This is an essential part of 21st century professionalism. It's happening, it's happening. Even in your industry, it's happening, even in Bloomington Normal, our local community, McLean County, beyond, please become part of the effective ways of going about this, you know, be a contributor, treat it just like you would any other professional expectation placed upon you, here's how you can do that. So again, we try very hard to offer what we know to be true locally. And nationally. Like I said, we have the data from our local employer survey. So we create some safe sort of umbrella examples. So aren't ready to bring forth something vulnerable, an experience that hurt them an acknowledgement that maybe they've hurt someone else, and I don't mean hurt physically or just in terms of while I diminished that person's sense of contribution, or I didn't listen as well as I might have, or I made an assumption. And now I'll never know, if I if I had really read that person or that situation correctly. I just think it's very important that we, we offer some examples. So we'll talk about All right, here are some things we know that can happen in hiring, that are counter to advancing inclusion, because of the way implicit bias can pop up in in interviews, we'll talk about, okay, here's where gender bias can pop up. And so people are allowed to either offer their own personal professional examples, or they're allowed to sort of nod their head like, okay, I can see that or I can understand that, or they're allowed to just wait, maybe that the couple examples I've provided so far, are just not hitting it for them. That's fine. And for ours, we have plenty of time to discover an example or a situation that will resonate with something that could happen in their workplace or industry, we do try to kind of make the rounds that way. So if people are feeling a little bit hesitant to put their personal experience out there, we find other ways of creating the case, you know, the business case for why it matters, how it could show up, where there's improvements to make to make your workplace more inclusive. And so that's kind of how we go about it.
As you mentioned, this is sort of a workshop, some organizations, they'll have people watch videos or read something, there'll be reminders through email, all those things can be effective and be part of the picture. But with a workshop, I would imagine you have exercises and engagements that show exactly what some of these things might be that you need to be aware of in the workplace, things that might play out. Are there any examples of sort of process you go through to kind of make people think about some of this stuff? micro aggressions is a good example. I think people might have heard the term but they might not understand how they play out and if they are using them or even are subconsciously suffering from them because they don't have a way to put a name on it.
Yeah, we are. In this session. We do a lot of balancing out sharing of a term that you can use consistently like thanks for coming to us here. Let us help you. You know you asked earlier implicit bias, so Here you go, here's an attack. Here's how we can define implicit bias. All right, now let's read an article about these different forms of implicit bias, we'll divide it up into small groups so that nobody has to read all this very long article, everyone sort of chunks it out, and helps summarize the key aspects of that article. And then let's have a discussion about what does this really mean for where you work. And so we do try to link the new with the known, right, so All right, this might be a new sort of subject matter area, but you always were, and always will be an expert in your own life. So let me put some of these concepts and terms and expectations for professionalism in front of you, you compare and contrast it to what you know, to be true. What you know, need are the the gaps, you know, you want to be improving upon, where are the strengths you want to sustain. And so it's, it's interactive and participant centered in that way. So it really connects with people's lived experiences. But there's also that you came here for some information, because it is hard to sort through 90,000 Google hits. Or you don't have time for 17, different LinkedIn learnings, which would be amazing if you had time for but you don't. So give it a good a good four hours and and take some goals with you back to the job. So we do have things like that where we do have examples. I think with micro aggressions, again, it's one a little bit hard for people to say like, let me give you mine. So we do have a few examples. And then we sit back and say, What would you how would you respond to it based on things that we've talked about that we know, does work in terms of letting people know what's not? Okay, you know, how would you do it? How might we give people a safe space to maybe practice? What would be the words? You know, that's the hardest part, like get over? Like, how might you phrase it? How do you say that that jokes not funny? Or I don't actually think that about people are I don't I don't agree with you, or, you know, you're free to think that I don't actually think that, you know, what are the safe ways of many people, especially in the workplace, you want to be consistent, if everybody has a voice and everybody has a place, then you're trying not to have the pendulum swing too hard in either direction, and not trying to really squash anybody or make anybody's sense of personhood, feel diminished. At the same time, you have to also be able to say, certain ways of thinking about or talking about or treating people are just not okay. And if they ever once were okay, or treated as if they were okay. That's not how we're going to treat it anymore. And that's not how we're going to treat it going forward. So there is this really interesting blend of using sort of safe examples. But pretty quickly, people will naturally start to make comparisons of contrast to their own life, and then they want to talk about it, and they kind of want to rehearse it. So by the end of those four hours, we say, All right, what are your top five takeaways? What are your what are the top things you're going to try? What do you got? What do you plan to do, who you're going to tell you're going to try to influence. So we do try to make sure it goes back. Because very often, and there's a lot of statistics to back this up. People have every intention to use their professional development, they go to a conference, they go to a meeting, they had a great time, maybe they made a new friend, they go back to work. And the demands of that workplace are such that they just go right back to what they were doing the way they've been doing it. And it can be very tough to apply change, you know, or live out the changes that they were hoping to see. So we try very hard to help people have a few things they can go back that are kind of ready to go ready to implement. And we always encourage participants to have a debrief with their supervisor or their manager get support in applying what you've learned, helped the organization by really putting that new learning new idea new action plan to use, I help spread it around. And most often employees are going to find out their their supervisors are up for whatever it is they've got an idea for. So I think with the EDI topic, as you mentioned, we have found people in most of our AWS sessions don't have just employees, they often have supervisors or a combination of employees and their supervisor with them. And that usually helps quite a bit, because then you've got some kind of inherent accountability. Like you saw me sit there for four hours, I saw you sit there for four hours, shame on us, if we don't do anything. It would be a real loss to the organization if we we could have had such interesting and productive conversations and not not bring anything back to the organization to benefit.
Well, Christina, thanks so much for talking to us about this day, people might have engaged here in there with professional development opportunities, and heard about some of these topics but not really dug into them. So it's nice to get an overview of not only equity, diversity and inclusion efforts for a workplace or an organization, but also just a way to think about them a little bit differently. So thanks for talking to us about them today.
Thanks for having me. And I encourage folks to check this out and any of the other AWS sessions people are always welcome
Christina Schultz is the Associate Director of Business and Industry Solutions for the continuing education department at Heartland Community College. If you're interested in other interviews about professional development, or equity, diversity and inclusion topics, check out our other random acts of knowledge podcasts on Apple podcasts, Spotify, audio boom, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
