283 Seeking Connection in a Divided World: Belonging, Bias, and Building Inclusive Cultures with Howard Ross | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

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[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited this week to be welcoming, my dear friend of 25 plus years, Howard Ross. I had a conversation back in episode 23 with Howard on his own leadership journey in establishing and growing his organization. In addition to that, Howard is one of the foremost thought leaders.

On diversity, equity, and inclusion with great books, including our Search for Belonging and Everyday Bias, which is what we spent most of our time in this conversation focused on.

I love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming. mahan@mahantavakoli.com. There's a microphone icon on partnering leadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there. Don't forget to follow the podcast on your favorite app, and when you get a chance, leave a rating and review. That will help more people find and benefit from these conversations.

Now here's my conversation with Howard Ross.

Howard Ross, my friend. Welcome to Partnering Leadership.

I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me

[00:01:09] Howard Ross: Oh, Mahan, it's always good to be with you man.

[00:01:10] Mahan Tavakoli: Howard, you were one of my first guests, episode 23, and I would recommend to everyone to listen to that conversation because we focused on your own magnificent leadership journey Now you have an eternal source of energy, Howard, to do positive work. A field that at times feels like progress is a lot slower than I'm sure you would want to see it.

So where do you draw your energy from?

[00:01:47] Howard Ross: First of all, it's really good to be with you again, Mahan. And really wanna acknowledge you for getting to the stage where you're now like 250 podcasts or something. That's pretty amazing. I know what it takes and good for you.

So I. Take a moment for that. There's no question. You're right. It's not easy to do this work day in and day out. It hasn't been for 40 years now. And I think that, what it really comes down to is something that I talk to clients about a lot, which is I. I think one of the things that helps me sustain myself is that I try to keep my eye on what we're trying to build together.

It's , like the title of that old wonderful documentary, the Eye on the Prize. , for people who focus mostly on fixing problems, it's very easy to burn out and clearly we have to fix problems in order to build a future sometimes. But it's so important for us to keep our eye on the future and what that future could be.

And for me, That means building a world for my grandchildren and for their children and their children. When I focus just on myself, I could very easily lose energy. But when I focus on my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren, then that is a whole nother conversation

[00:02:51] Mahan Tavakoli: that is so beautifully put.

You have that purpose that has driven you all through the years. Now you've been a thought leader in the space, Howard with different books, including Everyday Bias and our Search for Belonging, how our need to connect is tearing us apart. And

you open up our search for belonging with a quote by Dr. Maya Angelou,

you are only free when you realize you belong. No place. You belong every place. No place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. What is the significance of that quote and what does it say to you, Howard?

[00:03:35] Howard Ross:  For me, the way I hear the quote and of course we're always interpreting other people's words.

 I'm not saying she meant this, but for me, what it meant was, there's this dance that we do. In our desire to belong, which I postulated a book and I'm not, the only one is our core human need, this need to fit in with people around us. 'cause we're essentially social animals.

 And that is, this desire to be part of something, to be part of a group, a clan, a family bigger than ourselves to fit in, to feel like we can be fully ourselves. But the irony is the interesting contradiction to that is that the only time we can really fully belong somewhere is when we're also completely comfortable being ourselves.

It's you know that the times when you're in the greatest sink in your relationships is when you're fine without them, but you choose to be in them as opposed to needing them. And I think that the quote from me really speaks to that we have to work to develop our own sense of belonging in the world and at the same time to work with the way we interact with other people.

And it's only when we're doing both of those at the same time that we really get that sense of wholeness.

[00:04:37] Mahan Tavakoli: And you mentioned that belonging might even be more important than survival for many of us.

[00:04:42] Howard Ross:  What we're finding out now

through not only social science research, but also cognitive research and studying the brain and watching how the brain responds under functional, magnetic, resonating imagery and the like, is that belonging is our fundamental human need. And it makes sense if you think about it, Mahan. 'cause what's the most vulnerable time of human being's existence?

 Infancy. The newborn baby we'll literally die if it's not taken care of. And whether it's mom or dad or grandma, grandpa or the orphanage, somebody has to be taking care of that baby. And so the first imprint we get and in humans is probably longer than any other animal on the planet, is that we cannot survive without them, without who they are.

That I need you to exist. I need somebody else to exist. And so we know when we look at the brain, for example, that being excluded from a group triggers activity in the dorsal posterior insular of the brain, which is the same part of the brain associated with physical pain. So we've way under calculated the impact of this, and it's important for us as we move forward and try to heal our society to realize that creating space for people to belong rather than being in these oppositional tribes, is what we're gonna need to do if we're gonna get past this difficult time that we're in.

[00:05:48] Mahan Tavakoli: So why is this desire for belonging tearing us apart?

[00:05:52] Howard Ross: Robert Putnam, who's a sociologist at Harvard, and wrote a book.

I'm sure a lot of our listeners have heard his book bowling Alone, which he wrote back in 2000. Huge bestseller and considered to be up to that point the seminal study of social capital in the United States. And what Patna found was that there are different ways that we connect with the people around us, that some of us have these bonded relationships where we're part of something that we almost co identify with.

It could be a family, sometimes it could be an ethnic identity we bond with or some other identity. It could be a book group that we've been part of for a long time. Or a group that you had in college who every year for 30 years you still get together with. But there's a tight bond there and these relationships are generally pretty immutable.

You gotta do a lot. To break those relationships. It's not to say that they can't be broken, but very difficult to break them because we so co identify. But our social capital really expands when we bridge to other groups and when we bridge across our bonded groups and we expand from those groups that we're so naturally tight in.

And as we do that, as we make friends from different racial groups, different gender groups, different areas, regions, sexual orientations, generations, this is how we really expand our social capital. The challenge is that what's happening now is we're being pushed into these bonded groups, particularly politically, although the political groups we're in also align with things like racial identity.

Because we know, for example, that the percentage of white people who vote Republican is dramatically higher than Democrat and a percentage of black people who vote Democrat dramatically higher than Republican, just as an example. And so as these groups become more bonded and less capable of bridging, we then have to make the choice.

Which team are we on? And so we end up getting this division because we can't be without a team. It feels uncomfortable for us to be without a team. And this is of course, what we hear from a lot of people who see themselves as moderates. Now politically, as we've gone from a bell curve society to a dumbbell curve society where everything's on the end of nothing's in the middle.

And so as a result of that, the need to bond, the need to be part of these tribes that we're in is pulling us apart from each other.

[00:07:52] Mahan Tavakoli: And that’s a challenge, Howard, that I hear from organizational leaders and I wanted to touch on a couple of different aspects of it. One, having to do with politics

and the second one having to do with that sense of belonging within the organization. On the political side of it a few days ago was with an organizational leader c e o, who said my. People are. Wanting me to speak up with the smallest thing that happens in the community.

However, we have different stakeholders. We work with the federal government. We need to be mindful. I'm not, I. The spokesperson for a social movement. I'm the c e o of an organization. So the sense of belonging that my employees have is to one of those groups that you talked about and they want me to speak up every time.

How do you see CEOs. Leaders of organizations and teams being able to balance what is the desire for their employees to belong and advocate on behalf of one group while they see the interest as being broader.

[00:09:11] Howard Ross:  I think it's challenging and frankly I have compassion for CEOs who have to face that challenge because it's so difficult when we make these decisions about where we wanna stand, you know what we wanna stand for that we know that in a society, which almost everything has two points of view.

But I think that at the same time we have to be really careful not to create false equivalencies where values are concerned. And this is what the distinction is when I work with folks and have these conversations saying, look, I don't care where your politics are. The question is what are your values?

For example, let's say when target decides to take a position to have gender neutral bathrooms, and they face, challenges in the community, people who don't like that the response is, look, We don't care about the politics. We don't care whether you're Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative.

We just stand for the right, for our employees to have a place where they can safely go and use a bathroom and be recognized in the identity that they want. Because it's a value of ours that our employees should be treated with that kind of equanimity, that kind of equity, that kind of equality it's true that you will lose some people.

And I think anytime we take a value position as an organization, we might lose people. , look we can lose people because we raise the cost of an object because, it costs more than somebody wants to pay. But I think ultimately the kind of organizations that maintain their cultures that invariably perform at the highest level, organizations have a clear set of values that they're willing to stand by and they're willing

to, stand by even in the face of sometimes public criticism. It's a very challenging thing to do, and I'm certainly not in a position to prescribe what anybody has to do. I think that the other piece of it that you speak to is an important one, which is, how do you deal with your employees in a circumstance like that?

And I think that requires, deep engagement, really giving people a chance to have an internal place where they can share their ideas, feel respected by listening from those ideas. The leader still needs to be the one who makes the leadership decisions for the organization. And even when, some people don't like it. The first time I took over running an organization was many years ago Mahan when I was teaching and I was asked to take over leadership as an executive director of a nonprofit school. I was teaching at. And I didn't know anything about leading at that point. I was maybe 27 years old and I, barely knew anything about leading.

I was struggling a little bit and made the same kind of mistakes a lot of people made. Somebody would come to me with a problem and I'd say, sure, go ahead do that. And then somebody else would come in and say when they did that, I did this. I said, go back and do the other, and, pretty soon nobody liked me.

 So I was talking to somebody who was an elder to me at that time, and she said to me, listen, and she was referring to Casey Gel, the old manager of the New York Yankees, who won more championships than any other baseball manager. And she said, Casey Stengel used to say that every team he ever had, a third of the people like you, a third of the people don't like you, and the third are in the middle.

And the key is to keep the third who don't like you from the third in the middle. And it's a little bit simplified, but the truth is that, it's life. Sometimes people are not gonna agree with you. You gotta do what's right and I would just suggest we don't wanna make these decisions based on who we're gonna make unhappy.

We wanna make these decisions based on the values of our organization.

[00:12:10] Mahan Tavakoli:  That's a great perspective to have if it aligns with your values and organizational values decide based on that. Now within the organization, belonging is also. Critical to psychological safety. I've also had a conversation with Tim Clark.

He's done a lot of great work and written books on psychological safety. And. Talks about that need for belonging. One of the challenges that I see is that within the organization, there are subgroups where people don't feel a sense of belonging,

so how can organizational leaders think about how to get everyone to feel a sense of belonging to the organization

[00:12:57] Howard Ross: There are a number of things we have to do. First of all, I think it's really important for people to have a clear sense of direction in the organization.

What are we trying to build here? In a deep and substantive way, not just, we're trying to make money or vision statements, which are great. I have no problem with vision statements. We're trying to be the best. This or impact that or the like.

But I do think that what we often do is we don't articulate clearly for people what kind of a culture we really wanna have. What does respect mean in our culture? What does access to communication mean in our culture? What are we trying to build together? And as I said earlier, that's what really inspires people.

And so I think having a clear sense of that is really important. Gordon. I think a second factor is to have structures created that allow people to have their voices heard on a regular basis. That can be done lots of different ways. I know a lot of people now who are doing quite robust online communities where people are engaging on a daily basis, even though a lot of their employees are still working remotely and intend to continue still working remotely.

 Having a structure for how do we deal with conflict when conflict comes up in our organization? So rather than being afraid of conflict, We know that when conflict comes up, we naturally go into dealing with it in a particular way and gives us an opportunity to do that.

 But most importantly, I think that people need to be involved in decisions that affect them. And that doesn't mean that they get to have their way every time, but it means they do get to be involved in decision that affect them, that their voice matters. That their voice counts. And I think as leaders there are lots of ways that we do that by getting out and spending time listening and really getting a sense of what it's like for people in the organization, how they're feeling.

I think that, trust is to human relationships. Like energy is to physics and cells are to biology. It's the basic currency of human relationship. So anything we can do as a leader is to build trust. Plays a huge role in creating that sense of belonging and staying ahead of things too.

 A lot of times we have a tendency and I think this is true for human beings in general, in life, not just in organizations. We have a tendency to kick things down the road a piece if we can not deal with them and then we wait until they become big problems. Chance to resolve before they become issues that are really big for us to

[00:14:57] Mahan Tavakoli: handle.

Howard, you mentioned that listening and that engagement with people. One of the issues that a lot of organizations have been having is many of the senior executives feel like there isn't as much of a sense of belonging with people not spending time in the office. So they want their people to be in.

Person in the office more. There's a lot of resistance from employees. So how would you recommend for leaders to approach that? And is it easier to have a greater sense of belonging to a group and organization when people are in person,

[00:15:38] Howard Ross: Human contact matters, being able to see each other, touch each other, the casual conversations that happen. We are all zoom fatigued. One of the things that we've really lost, or the casual kinds of conversations happen in between, when you're walking into the hallway, you run into somebody you say, You have a brief conversation, Hey, you don't need for lunch, let's catch lunch together.

Or let's get a cup of tea together. Or you're sitting around for 10 minutes before or after a meeting, those kinds of things do matter. And I think a lot of organizations are moving to some kind of a hybrid arrangement for that reason in the early days of the pandemic, there was a lot of stuff that was coming out that was showing that people were actually being quite productive.

I. Staying at home. But the current research on that is much less clear. In fact, there's some evidence that there are some very non-productive kinds of jobs. And I have to say, just anecdotally, not long ago when I was talking to a couple of early 30 somethings who were living in a group house.

 They both work from home and I said what's it like? We love it, man. It's really great one of 'em was an attorney and one of 'em worked in the music business or something.

It said, We're really good. So we get our work done by one o'clock. We have the whole rest of our day for ourselves. And I sat there and I said, so if you were in the office, what would you do at one o'clock? And they both the blood drained from their face and they both said I guess we do other work.

 And I think there's a lot of that, there's a lot of stuff going on. There's no question that people are using. Substances is more while they're working, when they're at home, there's no question that people are doing other things when they're working at home.

They've got music or TV on or all this other kind of stuff. So to say that we're functioning at the same level it just doesn't seem realistic to me. The other side of it though are, there are some jobs, for example, some tech jobs where people spend their whole day just sitting, looking at computers anyway.

In those cases, why not be at home? There's no reason to have people come in. I think people have to make these determinations based on their own cultural environments and the nature of the work that they do. I know the smartest leaders I've been talking about this.

Do basically what we've talked about before, they get people to give them feedback and input. They put together teams to come up with suggestions for them. So what they come up with. Then represents, some work that the organization did with the input of the organization and people are likely to receive it.

And then I have other people who say we just asked people to come in two days a week. And some people who got hired during the pandemic said that's it. Forget it. Then I'm leaving. And, these are some of the decisions. It's like I said earlier, some people aren't gonna like it.

Then you have to say are we gonna change our whole system just to keep this person in the organization? Maybe they're gonna have to leave then, which it's too bad, but, Again, we have to make the decision that's right for the values of our organization. And if you believe that having people together every once in a while is good for the culture, that's a value.

[00:18:10] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the way you put it, Howard look at the values. Ask whether it's the right thing for the organization, get people's engagement, and then make a decision and move on. Not everyone is going to agree that's right and like it, but as long as it's aligned and you go through the process correctly, you give a best chance for people to feel that sense of belonging and engage.

I also agree there is a special element in those in-person experiences. So I had a conversation with Vanessa Bonds. She's a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell. And she's done a lot of different studies and quotes, other studies as well. Her book is, you have More Influence than you Think, and she shares the example and a study where when people are in the same space, Even without seeing each other's faces, when they taste chocolate, let's say bitter chocolate, the sensations, are more magnified. Than if they are not occupying the same space. So we don't exactly know what it is. About humanity and two people occupying the same space, feeling a certain connection to each other that doesn't get duplicated with the technology, so in person helps with that sense of belonging.

[00:19:34] Howard Ross: There’s no question about it. I know when we did the research for our search for longing, we have lots of studies that showed, for example, they do these pain studies and the way they'll induce pain is by putting somebody's hand in ice water.

So it doesn't harm them, but it causes pain so it's a good way to do that. And then they'll say, from a scale of one to 10, how much does it hurt? And let's say the person says nine. So when they do it by themselves, they say nine. Then they say, okay, do this with a loved one.

Let's say you and your wife do it together. Now the same person, same experiment, says only five. It doesn't hurt as much when I'm with my loved one. We also know, for example, that the Greater Good Science Center out at Berkeley just a few months ago, came out with the study that shows. How much little engagement makes a difference in human happiness?

That, for example, when you pass somebody on the street and you say good morning, instead of just walking by them, you get a little hit of oxytocin. You get a little hit of that positive hormone in your body. When you help somebody, when you're on an airplane, you help somebody lift their baggage up or stop to help somebody change their car or pick something up for somebody.

All of these little tiny activities, we've all seen those bunker sticks or random acts of kindness it turns out that these random acts of kindness increase our level of happiness, lower our blood pressure, and when we don't have those opportunities when we're sitting here looking at screens all day and don't have those opportunities for those little micro engagements.

We also lose that. It's not just the big engagements, it's the little things that you're talking about. Being with somebody, seeing somebody, just having human presence around us makes a huge difference. So I don't mean to sound also like a Luddite and say we need to go back to the old days of everybody working nine to five, five days a week.

Of course not. But I think we need to find the middle ground that still allows us to have that human contact even while. We are using technology in a way that is more efficient for certain people and especially people with family situations with children or elderly parents at home or long distances to travel or things like that.

So it's not an all or nothing. And I think that's a good lesson about a lot of this stuff we're talking about is that we have too much of a tendency to see these things as binaries rather than things that we can work with nuance. 

[00:21:33] Mahan Tavakoli: In your book you talk about the eight pathways to belonging.

Howard, I wanted to touch on a couple of them, the third one is personal connection, vulnerability, and consciousness.

What is the right level? How vulnerable should you be?

[00:21:46] Howard Ross: , we've created structures and organizations for generations. This notion that the person who comes to work is not the same person you are outside of work. Meanwhile, we know that there are people who have all kinds of things going on in our lives around us. We have no idea what's happening. It affects people's performance. We have no way to help them. I remember years ago having somebody in our company who had been an excellent employee for about seven years, and then she went through a period where for several months her performance just dropped through the floor.

And, one of the people, leaders of the company was pushing on me to fire her. And I said, we're not gonna fire her. We're gonna find out what's going on with her. 'cause at first she was resisting sharing and then finally I took her out to lunch one day and we'd known each other for many years.

We had that, it comes a truth conversation. And I found out that she's being abused at home by her husband who's also cheating on her. What did we do? We got her help. We got counseling support for her. We found a safe place for her to go, Ended up being a good employee until years later, she left for an appropriate reason because she was taking on a different profession.

That's obviously a pretty dramatic circumstance, but the truth is, my experience with working with people over the years was the more I was willing to be myself, first of all, the more people were willing to be themselves with me. And secondly, the more people were willing to be themselves, the more honestly we could deal with things.

 That were going on around us. And I think the best tool that I can think of for doing this is storytelling, sharing stories. One of our consultants went out when I was still running, cook Cross, went out years ago to a United Way in the Midwest. They had a circumstance where there was a scandal and the c e O got kicked out and they had to replace them, and the poll place was a mess, and he got there and he just realized that these people didn't even know each other. There were new people, so he said, here's what we're gonna do for this session. All we're gonna do is everybody choose a partner. And they took, I think 20 minute intervals is the way he did it. And they spent 20 minutes with a partner each taking 10 minutes to tell their story, and then they chose, another partner did it, then another partner, and they did this for a few hours and got it going.

So each of them got seven or eight different partners. Then he went away and came back a month later. They had been so taken by it that they had spent the whole month doing this in the organization. Every lunchtime somebody had somebody else to share stories with. And just by doing that, the organization had started to heal just by knowing each other.

And so I think it's really important that we get that, that waitress who is impatient, we don't even know that she's got a child who's sick at home. There's a wonderful story. I know you've read probably Stephen Covey's book Seven Habits, and there's a wonderful story he tells in Seven Habits

when he's on a train in New York City at Subway and this guy gets on with his children and the children are running around wrecking havoc and pulling people's newspapers. And the guy's just sitting there staring straight ahead and coming. Finally says, aren't you gonna control your children? And the guy says, we just left the hospital and her mother died and I just don't know what to do.

And he said, at that moment, I went from frustration to compassion. And I think that's the kind of listening we need to do with the people around us to recognize. That we share so much in the way of the challenges we face and in the way of what we want for our lives and for our families lives.

And when we really talk about that, when we really share what we're up to in our lives and the challenges we're facing and the objectives we have and the goals we're setting, then we begin to see our common humanity in a very clear way.

[00:24:45] Mahan Tavakoli: That’s beautiful way for us to help that sense of belonging by becoming better ourselves and working on ourselves.

I love that Howard, and that storytelling is really powerful. It also connects with point number seven, honoring narratives. The power of language. So how can narratives be honored in an organization in a way that doesn't

[00:25:10] Howard Ross: going in with that understanding is an important piece of it to know that there isn't one way and that people can respond differently at different times. And to be listening to is this working for you? Do you feel like you have an opportunity to be heard in this system?

 The thing about narrative that's so important is not just 'cause it's some touchy feely thing that makes us feel good, but because it gives us a deep understanding into people's motivation. Leslie and I, my wife and I used to argue by keeping the window open at night in the bedroom 'cause she wanted it open and I didn't like it open.

And for a long time it was like, I want it open, I wanna close, I want it open, I want to close. And then finally, it did take us long, fortunately, but we sat down and said, Why do you want it open and why do you want it close? She wanted it open 'cause she likes the fresh air and she gets a little bit warmer at night, so she likes the cool air.

And I wanted to close because I get a little bit colder at night and because the noise bothered me. So once we realized the reasons, it was pretty easy. Earplugs and a heating blanket and it's handled right. But until you get to. Where people are coming from.

You don't understand that. And I think that's the thing that's really important. If you have people who feel like, you know this way of sharing narrative is not speaking for me, then the appropriate question is, great. Tell me why and tell me what we can do to have it resonate with you.

But I do think that it's really important for us to understand the power of narrative in the human experience. And it was a wonderful. Anecdote. That was Gregory Bateson, who was Margaret Mead's husband, and a noted anthropologist in his own right.

In one of his books back in the 1940s, had this story and he said they were trying to create. The first computer that actually thought like a human being. And so they did all this work on it. Finally, they pressed the button and the wheels turned and everything happened, and it spit out a little piece of paper and on the piece of paper it says, I have a story to tell you of Bates.

It says, then we knew it was actually thinking like a human being because that is the way we approach life. We think in terms of stories, we relate things to the stories of our lives. When I look at a new situation, I guess what's going on in this situation based on what's happened to me before, and as my friend der Obie, who heads the , brain, body and Action Lab up at McMaster University in Toronto, says the brain was designed to be good enough most of the time, the human brain. Does a lot of guesswork based on is this situation similar to that last situation? So the more in-depth stories we have about people, the better sense we have of being able to connect and relate to that and connect and relate to each other.

[00:27:27] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a powerful point that you make in that sense of belonging, I had a conversation with David McCraney. He has an outstanding podcast. You are Not so smart and a great book, how Mines Change, and he shares a lot of different examples, including the example of when kids are given different color shirts. All of a sudden the people who are the green shirt ones don't like the ones that are red shirt ones, right?

So we do go through those exclusionary thoughts. We do connect with people of similar backgrounds, similar experiences, but that power of narrative that you talk about allows us to connect with and understand and have common grounds with more people than we would immediately have based on the surface interactions.

 Now Howard, the other thing I would love to get your thoughts and perspectives on this sense of belonging and the issues in organizations is there are people, like Jonathan Haidt that talk about. A couple of different things.

Part of it is the social media and the impacts that those things have had. Part of it is he says that we have lost the ability to have conversations because we are very quickly offended and we've become more fragile. I would love to get your thoughts on that, and how can we then have better conversations, including in organizations.

[00:28:57] Howard Ross: I have a tremendous respect for Jonathan.

He's work. And I think that, he points to something really important, which is that we're developing a. Which people are so worried about being safe that they're forgetting how to deal with difficulty.

And this is why I often say to people I'm not so interested in creating safe spaces. I'm in creating brave space. The ability people lean in. When I was growing up. Now mind you, I'm 72 years old, so it's been a while, but when I was growing up, you had to work things out for yourself, on the playground and the like.

I'm not saying it was always great 'cause a lot of times that meant that. Bullies left without control and stuff like that. But we've now gone to the opposite extreme where anything, some adult swoops in to resolve or extreme trigger warnings and not being able to speak about subjects and, all of this stuff.

And of course there's some of that happening on both sides of the political equation. I think it's I'm far more concerned about the book banning and stuff that's happening on the extreme right than I am on the fact that people are uncomfortable about certain conversations on the left, but both of them are problematic to a certain degree.

And I think what ends up happening is you raise a society of don't know how to deal with difficulty. 'cause they never had to learn to work things out on their own. And as soon as somebody disagrees with me my solution is get them away from me or make that disappear as opposed to learning how to deal with it and learning how I'm reacting to it and why I'm reacting so strongly to it.

 And so it is absolutely a challenge and I think that we have to come to terms with, I. Creating structures that help people feel safe enough to engage in a little bit more controversy. And there are some great organizations who are doing that out nationally, politically, there's a braver Angels, there's one organization's doing that.

I think there's no labels organization. There's something called Operation Respect, which I know Peter Guro from Peter Paul and Mary is playing, big part of. And there are lots of organizations that are out there doing it and Even some people in the DC area who are just sponsoring dinners, bringing people together.

But I think that we really need to get past this notion that just because somebody disagrees with me they're not worth talking to. Yes, there are extremes in both cases. I'm not saying that, if somebody said to me, would take on trying to convince David Duke not to be a racist, I would say, why would I bother wasting my time?

He's attached its identity to it. It's no longer a point of view. It's now his identity to be. A white supremacist, so I'm not gonna waste my time with that. But if you talk about somebody who's, on the other side of the political spectrum, who's, let's say a Romney Republican just to take a name out, of course I talk to that person and I may even learn something from that person.

I may even learn something about my own perspective. So I think we've gotta get out of the ization at these differences and realize that we're really on a continuum. And there always are people who are on the other side of a politics who we can still reach and talk to.

[00:31:35] Mahan Tavakoli: So in order for us to do that, Howard post George Floyd's murder.

There've been a lot of conversations in organizations where there were anti-racist statements and initiatives. Some started and have gone well, most have sputtered out. What from your perspective, needs to happen on an organizational level for us to continue the movement and have a greater sense of belonging and that inclusion in the organization where everyone, regardless of background, ethnicity, gender, feels like they can be part of creating that better future together.

[00:32:16] Howard Ross: Yeah. It's true what you're saying is true. Post George Floyd, unfortunately we're an instant pudding society. We like quick solutions to things, and so a lot of times we're very reactive. So George Floyd got lynched and then all of a sudden people took all these big positions without even thinking what it would be like or what they needed to do to play it out over time.

And then of course we get the counter, the pushback, the anti critical race theory and all that other nonsense pushing back. And it ends up being the sort of windshield wiper. Now I do wanna call it, there are a lot of great organizations that have sustained those efforts.

Capital One is one here in the DC areas. This is some remarkable work in terms of training its leaders relative to racial equity in these kinds of issues over time. And they stayed with it. There are a lot of other organizations similarly who really stayed with it. And I think that there are a couple things about this.

I think first of all, we need to realize that being our word is more important than having the popular thing to say. And, saying something because it's the popular thing to say or do. If you have no clear intention to be your word only will set you up for greater failure. Because the people in a lot of these organizations I know 'cause I talk to them are more frustrated than they were before George Floyd because people made false promises.

Now you've made a false promise. You've upped people's expectations. I think that we need to think strategically, just like anything else we do in business. You don't just say, all right, we're gonna treat our customers better, go do it. What are the chances you've seen all these efforts and you know how, they're like rain dances, it's like a rain dance.

We're gonna bring in the rain dancer and that's gonna somehow change the weather. It's just, as opposed to, all right, let's be very thoughtful. How do we take a culture change approach to change management approach to looking at what are the structures and systems in our organization that are gonna have to be changed to make this sustainable?

What's the communication strategy we're gonna develop? Will we need some education as a part of it? All of the different components and when we put that strategy in place, then put an accountability system in for how are we measuring whether or not they're working. I think that's how you create change over time, and that's where people who've been doing it in a sustainable way how they've been approaching it.

[00:34:08] Mahan Tavakoli: And you've done a great job in making sure that you are a vocal advocate and help organizations in that journey because I think it requires people that sometimes also hold up the mirror to the leaders and the organizations and challenge their thinking that. There is more progress to be made and help guide them in that direction.

And you've done a magnificent job of that with lots of different organizations, Howard.

[00:34:39] Howard Ross: Thanks. Appreciate it. So

[00:34:42] Mahan Tavakoli: Howard, in addition to your own books, what resources would you recommend typically for leaders as they're thinking about. Both how to create a greater sense of belonging in their teams and organizations and to be able to tackle the biases that exist as they want to have a more inclusive team culture.

[00:35:04] Howard Ross: There's so much out there these days. In terms of leadership thinkers, one of the people who I respect the most is Ron Heitz, who's at the Kennedy School at Harvard, who's just, I think, a brilliant leader, I'm sure you're familiar with he's often at the top of my list when people say, can you gimme somebody for look at leadership?

Because HY has really emphasizes adaptive leadership, and I think that's what we need at this time. There's some great work on bias out there. There's two colleagues of mine in the diversity space. Michael Barron did a great book on looking for how bias shows up in small activities.

 Merin, Benji and Tony Greenwald. Benji is at Harvard Greenwald's at University of Washington. Did a great book called Blind Spots about bias. And they were the developers of the Implicit Association test, which I'm sure some of the folks are listening will have heard about, which is a major test in that regard.

But I think that, one of the great things nowadays is you can also just, look through TED Talks there's just some amazing thinkers Simon Sinek's work and some of these other people who are out there who are just brilliantly.

I think pointing us in the right direction, how to think about some of these things newly.

[00:36:07] Mahan Tavakoli: There are great talks, great books, and great conversations with Howard Ross as well. There's a favorite podcaster of mine. He has a tongue in cheek, funny way of saying, He says it's a dumb time to be dumb.

His point is there's so much great content out there if you like watching videos, there are lots of great videos if you like reading lots of outstanding books and if you like listening, lots of great conversations to listen to. So Howard, how can the audience find out more about you, connect with you and your books?

[00:36:45] Howard Ross: The books are all available on Amazon and the like my current company is called Uta, U D A R T A. It's actually the the Hindi word for generosity and compassion. So I could be reached@howardatuta.com and I also have a website, howard j ross.com that people can find me at.

[00:37:01] Mahan Tavakoli: For someone who has known you for more than 25 years, you embody. Generosity and compassion, and I don't think you could have picked a better name for your organization. Howard Ross, I really appreciate this conversation and most especially, I appreciate that for 25 plus years, you have helped open my eyes.

Help me see opportunities in. Community, help me see a future potential for our organizations and for our society. Thank you so much, my dear friend, Howard Ross

[00:37:42] Howard Ross: Mahan, I'm so touched by your words. Thank you so much. I really deeply appreciate it. It's always great to be with you. I.