Latest / Inspiring Stories / Diversity is Saving the Human Race Katherine McCord
Transcript
- 0:04Thank you for listening to pictures, media, radio, your hay, you
- 0:29everything to me. Oh world, strange night utter, Oh well a bad
- 1:00time. I just need to know. So she ships. Welcome back,
- 1:38everybody. I want to tell you a little bit about our next guests.
- 1:42As a little girl, she played HR and she's even some shares of her
- 1:47own company. She fired her mother at the age of five, and she
- 1:55has been successful people operations, consulting, business and speaking internationally while battling more
- 2:04diagnosises than a seventy year old. She's had quite the journey and wouldn't have
- 2:12it any other way. She is Nora diverse with things like bipolar, OCD
- 2:21and mesophania. She has physical diversions, multiple diagnosis, including a seizure disorder.
- 2:39She's successful with the diagnosis, not in spite of them. Her Nora
- 2:46diversity has become her superpower and her mission of inclusion, innovation, integrity,
- 2:54and enjoying speaking and provideiding actionable advice about diversity, inclusion and innovative hiring.
- 3:12She is HR tech entrepreneur Nora diverse. She says, I am energetic and
- 3:23enjoy using comedy, but be aware I am bold and while I can certainly
- 3:36filter my language. I always tell it how it is, and I wouldn't
- 3:43have it any other way. She is spoken in front of the United Nations
- 3:47delegates and aims London School of Business and many other places where she tries to
- 3:58spread this word of innovation, neurodiversity and inclusion. So we want to talk
- 4:05to her about how she got her business started, but we also wouldn't one
- 4:11to hear how she advocates for inclusion. All right, so let's let's turn
- 4:49off with you put in your bio this this story of being five and fire
- 4:56and your mother. I just thought that was hilarious. So why don't we
- 5:00start off how you actually got started doing your business, and then we'll move
- 5:04into why inclusion is so important for you because your business is actually based in
- 5:10the inclusion, isn't it? Yes, Yes, yes it is, so
- 5:14I got into so starting off with a little kid who grew up watching an
- 5:18HR and recruiting for fall and even firing my own mother was probably pretty rude.
- 5:25I also hired them multiple times, so I didn't make it seem like
- 5:28it was fire her, but kind of growing up on that it really an
- 5:33act. And I also have a wonderful father, who was a misstay at
- 5:38home com parent for a while, who also always thought at the college while
- 5:43he teaches music, and he would take me with them to class sometimes.
- 5:46I also had the benefit of really seeing what true education looked like. I'm
- 5:51very proud of my father. He's a superb teacher. And so I got
- 5:57older and I ended up working in a recruiting business. I came to all
- 6:01the different things that I didn't like about that. The things I loved were
- 6:05obvious, right, but then there were a lot of things that were not
- 6:10being done well from processed I point, and also from how we're being treated
- 6:15both on the client and candidate side and agency recruiting, which just sort of
- 6:19appalling to me. Really just this very inhuman approach and this idea treating human
- 6:27commodities and not taking into account when individual clients needed and just it was.
- 6:33It was just didn't make a lot of sense to me. And so I
- 6:38struck out, with the blessing of the person who owned that company, struck
- 6:41out on my own and kind of ran from there. So I started off
- 6:45focusing very much on the hiring effect and then and more into the HR and
- 6:51the consulting aspect, because they were things that I had done as well,
- 6:56skill sets i'd built up, worked with tons of startups throughout my entire career,
- 7:01and it's it's been, it's been a lot of fun. But yeah,
- 7:06then the it evolved more and more and more into the inclusion aspect,
- 7:11realizing very much that was the problem inclusion and lack of understanding other people.
- 7:17So and when when I say inclusion, a lot of people kind of seem
- 7:23confused about what that what that means. And so inclusion is simply welcoming in
- 7:30people as they are and then supporting them and working in a way that's not
- 7:36and that is that is for them as an individual. That's really all it
- 7:42is. It's very very simple and and ty to everybody. I've had people
- 7:46who does inclusion apply to everybody? Inclusion can't exclusive. It's in the word
- 7:51include like everything. It's for literally, it's for all the humans. That's
- 7:58that's who it's for. And it can mean understanding groups that you never understood
- 8:03before, I mean understanding marginalized communities. But ultimately it boils down in a
- 8:09cruddy human right, yeah, kind of where it's that? So and then
- 8:16you asked me, oh, yeah, where why I ended up in this.
- 8:18So I have six invisible disabilities of huge gamut of diet, both physical
- 8:28and ner cities, which if anybody doesn't know, that's just a medically visible
- 8:33and or diagnosical difference in how a person processes information and stimuli. DHD autism
- 8:41in my case, OCD is one of my more prevalent ones, as well
- 8:43as the bipolar disorder. And so people always think it's because I must have
- 8:52experienced some like discrimination and this kind of thing, right, But that that
- 8:58wasn't I. I guess I did a little bit, but never never that
- 9:03badly. Mostly the OCD would get me because people didn't like that I insisted
- 9:07on doing things correct. That seemed stuck me in the workplace. I wanted
- 9:13to do things the best way, and it would kind of people get frustrated
- 9:16with that. When I saw things broken, I needed That's part of the
- 9:22O, right. So it wasn't so much the discriminating discrimination that I experienced.
- 9:30I saw something be fixed, and my little brain just goes must fix
- 9:33started out to do it. Yeah, well, I like what you said
- 9:39about that she include all the human beings and in my fight for for human
- 9:46rights, you know, and and what I discovered was that it wasn't discrimination
- 9:54came about because people were trying to define people, different types of people out
- 10:03of being human beings. Yes, it was. Yeah, like if you
- 10:11don't, if you don't look down and act like this, you're not a
- 10:13human. Yeah, yeah, that was. That was one of the one
- 10:20of the biggest biggest hurdles I found with with with because because inclusion is quite
- 10:28simple. It's like, hey, he walks, or it has two arms,
- 10:39and in in in a brain, you know, like a human shape
- 10:43brain is like, okay, he must be a human being. It's like
- 10:48very simple, right, yeah, it should be. It should be yeah,
- 10:54yeah, yeah, but it's not. And and and for a lot
- 10:56of people to the ego defense is a huge part of what goes wrong.
- 11:01So that's that naturally occurring mechanism that we all have in our brain. So
- 11:05our brain inherently needs to be correct. Right, That's there's science and you
- 11:09can look that up. There's some wonderful studies on that if you google it.
- 11:13So the ego mechanism they built a designed to help us when we're little,
- 11:18tiny children and back in the hunts are gathered times, right, like
- 11:20for actual safety reasons, but as we become adult humans in today's world,
- 11:24it kind of quits surfing its and it just actually starts hindering us. It
- 11:30actually stops us. Because what happens when we get new information instead of inquiring
- 11:35about that like a childhood right, because what did kids do when you asking
- 11:39why? Why? Why? You know it's brain trying to trying to learn,
- 11:45right, And instead of doing that as as adults, we just go
- 11:50no, I'm right, No, I'm right, no, I'm every single
- 11:52time. And you can see it on social media all the days of your
- 11:56life. Mean, just every any even remotely contract, voctional car post,
- 12:01anything that hasn't on it, you'll see somebody on there throwing up ego defense.
- 12:05Right, And that's that thing that when we when somebody says something that's
- 12:11different from us, we argue with them instead of asking about it. And
- 12:15so one of the things that I really work with clients on, whether I'm
- 12:20teaching a class or whether I'm consulting with company, is to break that ego
- 12:24defense. How to do that, how to shut that down responsereosity, how
- 12:30to revert to that just that just just okay, so tell me more about
- 12:33that. Let me understand why because we we make assumptions, right, We
- 12:39make a lot of assumptions and based on our past experience this type of thing.
- 12:45And sometimes the assumptions are right and sometimes they're wrong. But either way,
- 12:48if you attempt, the other person is not going to be receptive.
- 12:54And so as we grow inclusion, we have to learn. And it's hard
- 12:58because oh my gosh, especially when you eat, live and breathe in the
- 13:01stuff. I mean, you know, like there's days you're like, oh,
- 13:03just get it already, you know, like it's not come on,
- 13:07you know, but you dare getting right? Yeah, yeah, but you
- 13:13have to learn. You have to learn respond with curiosity and engagement. Yeah,
- 13:18that's how you get people to act move forward. And that's the people
- 13:22that fluted from all this. That's what I tell them. I said,
- 13:24if you started doing this, it's gonna start clicking and then you're gonna be
- 13:28like, oh my god, I was so far behind, Like what the
- 13:31heck? Why did anybody tell me to just listen? Like, in some
- 13:37respects, how you work when deal with clients, is it done from a
- 13:41point of curiosity, Like you're like, hey, I wonder what it is
- 13:43they really do over there? Yes? Yeah, oh, absolutely, I'm
- 13:48like, what's going on? They actually, what are you doing? Everything?
- 13:52When I go into a client, I've had people say to me like,
- 13:54this is the most unusual. That's because I go in and I just
- 13:58watch everything happening, thousands, even about things that seem like they're not related
- 14:03to what I'm there to do, because all of those things interact with the
- 14:07humans, right, and all things affect the humans, and so we need
- 14:11to understand what's happening, and especially diversity front. So a lot of people
- 14:18and this is a huge relation. It's almost a third of the somewhere between
- 14:20twenty five percent and population, and and we're just shoveled down and we're telling
- 14:28them to work in ways that are not natural to them, and even down
- 14:31to different learning styles. It's like, well we do our training, you
- 14:33know via you reading a handbook. Well, if you're a visual learner,
- 14:37great, but if you're auditory, you're kinetic, you're screwed, you know.
- 14:41So we're just we're not right here right, So like I need to
- 14:46be doing this. Let me, let me get my hands on it,
- 14:48let me do the things. So we need to be working better with the
- 14:52humans and into how they function, how they work all these types of things.
- 14:58And when you do that, such as Hewlett Packer has a whole program
- 15:01around that fascinating stuff, and they let people walk around while they were sit
- 15:07on yoga balls, play with fidget spinners, where noise canceling headphones, whatever
- 15:11it is that they need to do, and they that team where they kind
- 15:16of experimented with that is thirty three percent more productive than its counterparts. Yeah,
- 15:20well it works. My last corporate job was actually was in the high
- 15:28tech industry. It was in semiconductors, right, And I could tell you
- 15:33what it is that I did, and most of my listeners know what I
- 15:37did, and they still don't understand what it is that I actually did,
- 15:39right, because it was so far out there, like, oh my god.
- 15:46But one of the things that when I first started working there was they
- 15:52expected me to scribble down all these notes about about how to an lies a
- 16:00sample, and I wasn't doing it. I was sitting there, I was
- 16:03watching it, and my brain takes pictures, so it's like all those pictures
- 16:10of what it is he's doing, and then I had to associate those pictures
- 16:14to why he was doing what he was doing. So all my notes were
- 16:21taken that way, and I got called into the into the supervisor's office.
- 16:26It is like, you're not taking notes, so you're not understanding what's going
- 16:29on. I was like, I do understand what's going on. And he
- 16:37said, well, I'm just gonna pull your training and you're just gonna have
- 16:40to do it all your own, and if you don't get it the first
- 16:41shot around, we'll have to take action from there. It was like,
- 16:48yeah, I was like, okay, but it but it was it was
- 16:52science. It was chemistry, and I love science. I love of chemistry,
- 16:56all those sort of things. Right, It's it's fun, right,
- 16:59and oh yeah, I had a microscope all so so I was left that
- 17:06night with with these two five hundred thousand pieces of analytical equipment, and I
- 17:14just started running samples because I knew that, okay, this one was supposed
- 17:18to go this way. So I click click click here in the computer until
- 17:22and the machine started running the sample, spit out results, and in the
- 17:27long run, we got audited by Bryce Price, Waterhouse Cooper Right, and
- 17:37and who did they name the most consistent in the most accurate tech analytical tech?
- 17:44They had love it because it's like, no, it has to go
- 17:48exactly this way, can't go any other way. This way. So what
- 17:57you're saying about the Nora divergence in that one, because it's like, yeah,
- 18:03it's gotta happen this way. Yeah, like this is this is just
- 18:07the thing. And I tell people too, especially on the neurodiversity siding,
- 18:12so fascinating because our people that some things make people less back to the dehumanization.
- 18:18You know, we know that you dress and that's been strong in the
- 18:22neurodiverse community. So think about autism. What is the first thing that people
- 18:26think of, Oh, they ride the short bus quote quote right, they
- 18:29must not be very smart. Yeah. You ever met a person with autism?
- 18:33Yeah, a lot of them, not all, a lot of them
- 18:36highly intelligent. In fact, sign had autism, Alan Turing had autism.
- 18:41You know, like the list kind of goes on. So I tell people
- 18:44be very careful making that assumption, especially to an autistic person, because they
- 18:48will shut you. We have to kind of move. And ADHD people think
- 18:56that the person can't focus. Well that's actually not true. ADHD means that
- 19:02they in parts of the brain have trouble focusing. In other areas, there's
- 19:04hyper focus. There comes at age right, people think activity now it's hyper
- 19:10focused. It's that it's that really zoned in aspect, and so we have
- 19:17to kind of pivot how we think about this. And luckily there's a lot
- 19:19of science out there right now. Science is supporting moving moving all of this
- 19:26into positive So Jonathan Hopkins, the National Library of Medicine has several studies that
- 19:32we're different s. Like I said, the Arge study was was really influential.
- 19:41McKenzie Institute, a few others have all done different studies that talk about
- 19:45the benefits of neurodiversity. So our bodies, as I'm sure you know with
- 19:49with your background, I'm sure you have some some knowledge of this, So
- 19:52our bodies compensate, right, So if there's something wrong over here, at
- 19:56strength over here to kind of compensate to keep you safe. Well, the
- 20:00same thing with their own diversity. Our brain does the exact same thing.
- 20:03So if there's kind of a difference over here, a little bit of a
- 20:04struggle, it compensates. So people neurodiversity, they have strong inclination towards innovation,
- 20:11towards science, towards and first depending on the neurodiversity and the individual,
- 20:15but creativity. Mottle thinking, which is really next level stuff. It's really
- 20:22super fascinating. Some people are extraordinarily empathetic. Some people, you know,
- 20:27it's just it. It kind of varies, but there are strengths that go
- 20:32with it. So I love. My favorite thing about the neurodiversity movement is,
- 20:37other than just getting on all these meat learn about and meet all these
- 20:41crazy cool people whose minds are just fascinating, is that the whole premise of
- 20:48it is that difference is not a deficit, you know, it's just how
- 20:55you are. So this thing over here may weird, may be hard to
- 20:59deal with, and and I know it, like I tell people all the
- 21:00time, but the OCD and the bipolar, there's bad things and there's great
- 21:04things. Like I don't know if you've ever seen somebody when they're in a
- 21:08manic but it looks like a freight train coming at you. You know.
- 21:15There's just so there's so much work that's done so rapidly actively. I wouldn't
- 21:23I honestly wouldn't trade it for the world, which shocks a lot of people.
- 21:26But so there's good things, and there's bath things. You know,
- 21:30there's there's things that that we struggle with, and then there's things that are
- 21:34great, but it's just learning that that's just part of the human experience,
- 21:38you know, And people hear disability, same thing, and they think,
- 21:41oh, bless them right and do things. No, that same mother that
- 21:47that little five year old girld rudely fired as rubatoid arthritis and would go into
- 21:53you know, meetings with all kinds of executives and they'd be thinking, oh,
- 21:56look at the pitiful little lady with their walker, you know, until
- 22:00she opened her mouth and then it's just this full, you know, a
- 22:04brilliance and strength and trust me, nobody knewbody questions that lady when she shows
- 22:10her mouth, and so it's it's just one of those things we have to
- 22:15realize. We have to learn to see people as they are and to be
- 22:19curious about them and learn them and ask them what they can do, and
- 22:22ask them, you know, these different things instead of just assuming, like
- 22:27your boss assumed about you. I mean, how weird. Yeah it was,
- 22:33but like like it's that was my last Actually I was at that at
- 22:37that job. Uh it was actually with Mitsubishi, and I was there for
- 22:44more than uh for more than half of my chemical career. So oh wow,
- 22:48Yeah, yeah. I mean once they knew you were the best,
- 22:51I mean, well that was yeah. But that was one of the things
- 22:56is they throughout the the industry. Well see, here's here's one of the
- 23:03fun parts about for me for neurodiversity and science, right that I became one
- 23:07of maybe a handful of one hundred people that could actually do the h the
- 23:17analytical testing that we were doing, right Okay, And of course it was
- 23:22my my eventual downfall that I was so well trained and so focused on this
- 23:27one thing that I couldn't I couldn't get another job in chemistry because because they
- 23:34they pigeon holed you, right, So, and I allowed them to pigeon
- 23:38hold me because because it was it was just so much fun, right,
- 23:48I got really got really good at it. Like I said, it's like
- 23:52auditors came in, they were like, hey, he's probably one of your
- 23:55one of your best texts. It's like wow, because he doesn't he he
- 24:00has a consistency to him. But so eventually I wanted to retire away from
- 24:07it. But but the but the fun part about science is in what I'd
- 24:11like about the science community. You want to talk about inclusion. They don't
- 24:15care if you have a valid answer of valid statement, they will take it
- 24:21into account. Yeah, so that's true, that's very very true. Yeah,
- 24:27and where where's other other things in our world? Like you're one another
- 24:33thing, you know, not the thing it's it's It is fascinating from that
- 24:37standpoint. And it's interesting too because for a while, quote science, although
- 24:44you know, there was a certain and human existence where I don't know,
- 24:47science is really the right word for what was going on, like like uh
- 24:53like magic slash voodoo. I don't know what it was there for a while,
- 24:57you like back in the day, like when you look at like old
- 25:00medicine and stuff like that. But science as we know it, as it
- 25:03has evolved, draft right, the whole point of it is to right and
- 25:10to seek the best way the best things. And I think that's why I've
- 25:15always kind of gravitated towards science for all of my answers, because that's how
- 25:22I think too. I want to do things the best way, the correct
- 25:23way, right, and so and so that I always kind of compact that.
- 25:29And what's interesting is that now fast forward decades later, and you know,
- 25:33in in my lifetime, which is great to see science is what's bringing
- 25:38us the answers to inclusion and science is what's going. Hey, guys,
- 25:42we've been really stupid for the last few millennia. Actually this stuff is all
- 25:45pretty cool, and we need to stop being stupid, you know. It's
- 25:49just it's really cool to see science bringing in all of these answers and supporting
- 25:57all of this. I think it's I think it's absolutely fascinating. It really
- 26:02is, and and I'm actually excited to see how that continues to progress.
- 26:07Well, one of the things that I watch happened because because I was in
- 26:11the sciences and computers and watched the computer like grow to it what it is
- 26:17now even right now. Maybe it's scaring me a little bit, but I
- 26:22think that maybe because Yeah, so I found this this book and I love
- 26:33audiobooks because I don't actually because because and I discovered why I love audiobooks so
- 26:38much. I've found this one book where they were talking about this this boy
- 26:44in during the Second World War, and it had this term called word blindness.
- 26:52H al fast forward to to to like the nineteen eighties when I'm in
- 26:59school, and now they're calling it dyslexia. M hm. So I went
- 27:04and I was told that I would never make it into university. Well,
- 27:08I had to prove them wrong on that one, right, the university.
- 27:14I made it into one of the toughest discipline science disciplines that they have physics
- 27:18and chemistry too toughest. And somebody sat me down and said, well,
- 27:27you should probably drop out of it is because you're not going to make it
- 27:30through because if you're dyslexia, you should go with something a little easier,
- 27:34shouldn't you. And another UH counselor that they were sitting in the same room
- 27:44at the same university, said, do you realize that in the tech world
- 27:47they're coming up with with with with spell checkers, so it'll fix his spelling,
- 27:56right, Yeah, okay, now fast forward again and yeah, so
- 28:02we've we've gone from from a true recognition of what's going on to a solution
- 28:07to now we have chat GPT. But I don't know everything. I mean,
- 28:11there's PDP readers, there's all kinds grammarly, there's all kinds of awesome.
- 28:17I used grammerly myself, you know, for for just every email I
- 28:21send out. So if you ever get an email from me and it becomes
- 28:25a little confusing, please pick up the phone and call me right, please
- 28:30find I had a It's interesting that you bring this up because I had a
- 28:37young woman years ago that was a recruiter that that I was training, and
- 28:42she was really brilliant, brilliant individual, and it very obviously, very quickly
- 28:52that she had yet as her boss. It was not appropriate, of course,
- 28:57for me to her and I wasn't sure. I was never one hundred
- 29:02percent sure if she knew or not. I don't think that she did.
- 29:04Actually, I don't think she knew. She knew that what was going on,
- 29:07she knew what the name for it was. But I introduced her to
- 29:12grammarly and she thought that was the best thing that had ever happened. And
- 29:17all of a sudden, all of her emails started, you know, driving
- 29:19because she was very articulate, very articulate woman. When it came to the
- 29:25sentences would be you know, a kind of funky, and the emails and
- 29:30written communication. But it was amazing the difference that those tools made, and
- 29:36how then she was able to accelerate her career right. And it was a
- 29:38free thing. It was free, you know. And I didn't make her
- 29:44fill out a form for HR. We didn't do all that nonsense. We
- 29:47just here's what you need. Here you go, and to me, always
- 29:51be that able. And you know, in the Department of Labor recently even
- 29:55released the statistics that fifty six percent of accommodation read and there's another like twenty
- 30:00or thirty percent something like that that are under ten dollars. Why are we
- 30:04making people jump through hoops to get these things? Make it simple, like,
- 30:08hey, this makes it easier for you to work, you know,
- 30:11like you're with your school work. Hey, here's spell checker, here's grammarly
- 30:14here, there you go. You know, we're just very very simple.
- 30:18Why make it right? But it's amazing how how we struggle, how we
- 30:27we still struggle with these things, right, you know, trying to help
- 30:30people. It's like, well, so let's go this way, because I
- 30:37think this would make a much better question your own staff around you, What
- 30:41did some of the multitude or how many how many tools do you actually have
- 30:47on different workstations to help people get their job done? Oh gosh, it's
- 30:53it's for every It's different for every person. I now, my personal approach
- 30:59is I like to just cater the experience to what the individual needs. Right,
- 31:03So everything from and by the way, I mean, you can't see
- 31:07it blocked, but my desk is covered to accommodate my very distance sundering needs
- 31:14that I have, right, and I use different things for my screens and
- 31:18all that because I do have seizure activity and so I have to be very
- 31:22careful with screen exposure and the amount and the amount of changing light that hits
- 31:29my eyes. And it was like, so I use different tools for that.
- 31:33I've had people with one accommodation and by the way, it's very rare,
- 31:40very rare. On one of the teams that I'm working with it,
- 31:41by the time I'm done, there's somebody that does not have at least one
- 31:45accommodation that they've decided what actually really helps them out. So then we'll have
- 31:53up to seven. So we do. One of the things that I really
- 31:56like is use your Way and there are others to that, by the way,
- 32:00but it's an application that you put on your into your different software is
- 32:06your website, all of that. It's very affordable and a person can select
- 32:10a need that they have or a diagnosis and it changes the appearance of the
- 32:15software site for that person's needs. And that's a huge game as wonderful PDA
- 32:23reading to Grammar late. We talked about I do very big title things.
- 32:30I tell people if you need to keep your hands busy for whatever reason,
- 32:34if you need something for grounding exercises, any of that police, so free
- 32:38to have that stuff on your desk. We do, I mean just all
- 32:42kinds of all kinds of different things. So it just captions on all meetings.
- 32:46I'm a big proponent in that with my clients, whether it's zoom teams,
- 32:52whatever it is, there need to be captions for people. A lot
- 32:54of people are hearing in paaris these days, especially because we all like to
- 32:58listen to our loud music on our loud stereos, right, So so we
- 33:01need this caption and then different different things to help to help people. His
- 33:07ways really just kind of depends on the individual. But the mostitions I think
- 33:14I've ever had come up was I did have eight different accommodations, but they
- 33:19were all very simple, and we spent I think a maximum it was under
- 33:22forty dollars. It was over thirty under forty dollars on eight accommodations, So
- 33:27not a big deal at all. Yeah, well, we need consider when
- 33:30you're going to increase somebody's productivity. Yeah, yeah, oh it was.
- 33:37Yeah. By the way, so I did actually clock how I like to
- 33:40kind of experiment with this and watch people, and he's able to increase his
- 33:46his productivity. He was by the time, he was at one hundred and
- 33:52twenty six percent of what he'd been at before. So he had a very
- 33:59increase in his activity, very very When I started accommodating myself assisting that I'd
- 34:05be able to do things in ways that made me physically couple, I was
- 34:09already high active. I'm not sure he needed to be more productive. My
- 34:14productivity also went approximately fifteen percent, so that was really super helpful. It's
- 34:20probably actually than that now because of the seizure condition that I've developed since then.
- 34:25So I'm actually probably more productive, far more productive than I would be
- 34:29without the accommodations now. But it really does make a difference. It does.
- 34:34And it's so simple, right, let's let's help them. That's kind
- 34:37of why it's there. Well, you know, it's the right tool for
- 34:45the right person for the right job, right, yeah, exactly exactly,
- 34:49And then you also get healthier employee, happier employees, Innovation goes up,
- 34:54you know, and by the even Boston Consulting Group released a studies showing that
- 34:59profits go up an average of nineteen percent when you let when you're fully inclusive.
- 35:02So why not? Right right? Right? What is it? See?
- 35:13One of the reasons why I also state to the sciences because you know
- 35:16the office politics thing, right, I couldn't. I couldn't deal with that
- 35:22stuff. So no, the like because because of your your attitude of inclusion,
- 35:31what is the atmosphere of in that the working atmosphere like like you guys
- 35:38are like more of a family sort of thing, or how does that work?
- 35:42I don't. I don't really like the playing because I okay, so
- 35:47me personally, two things. Number one, I don't believe places entitled to
- 35:53your personal So if you want yourself separate for instances. My husband, who
- 36:00does work for my company, by the way, not full time. He
- 36:04has a full time job, but he done tracked with me sometimes he is
- 36:08much let's just do work and leave it at the personal as personal work as
- 36:14works. We're very incautive that my team and I, though, are very
- 36:17comfortable. That's why I tell people have drawing psychological safety. All of my
- 36:23team. I cannot think of a single person who's ever worked for me,
- 36:25who's not looked to me at one point and gone, I don't like this.
- 36:29I don't think I want to do it this way, Like okay,
- 36:31let's talk about it, let's do this. I have people just be on
- 36:35a regular basis, which I love and and I've some of those, some
- 36:40of them, I've had to coax it out. I've had to you know,
- 36:43they're so used to that, Oh I'm always supposed to say yes to
- 36:45the boss, right, you know that kind of mentality. I'm like,
- 36:50no, no, no, no, it's all right. You know,
- 36:52you have to show people that you have to let them see that that's okay
- 36:55and encourage it. So drawing that out of them, letting them know that
- 37:00they have a voice, that they that they can speak up, that they
- 37:02matter. So I would say our, I would describe our my team's environment
- 37:08as autonomous, as psychologically safe, and as mutual feedback. I have a
- 37:17great mutual feedback circle happening where we just kind of sicklically talk about I perpetually
- 37:24give feedback to them, they perpetually give feedback to me. So we always
- 37:28kind of know where we're standing with everything. And it's been highly effective.
- 37:30So far. Yeah, because Okay, so this is when I'm ultimately when
- 37:38I'm thinking that if you are able to put that into your workplace, that
- 37:45you can actually help others that you work with put that into their workplace.
- 37:52Oh gosh, yes, that is what I love doing. I love going
- 37:54and in helping them set that up up. It's a wonderful rewarding feeling and
- 38:00it works. It works, makes a much more effective team. I mean
- 38:04again back to the science. You know, kind of kind of focus is
- 38:08if you're trying to conduct an experiment and nobody's affect and you're not going to
- 38:13get very far. I think was right, Like, what if you're out
- 38:15there, do you think Tom Brady would have won? What is it like?
- 38:19I don't know, five thousand Super Bowls by now. I think he's
- 38:22actually six or siks actually, But if he wasn't communicating well with its absolutely
- 38:28not. You know that communication and giving people the autonomy and the strength to
- 38:34be able to speak up and do jobs effectively without micro management, that's the
- 38:39way to go. Yeah, I'm gonna say sometimes micro management can be the
- 38:47killer of inclusion. God, yes, oh it is the worst. But
- 38:52always see never it makes but it never ceases to amaze me. Nobody mayors
- 39:00I meet over the years that will tell me that they hate micromanaging, but
- 39:02they do it all the time. I'm like, how unself aware are you?
- 39:07Like? Can we like so now I actually do a self aw awareness
- 39:12portion to some of my classes, because like, sometimes we need to realize
- 39:16what we're doing and you know, be you know, be aware of it
- 39:20a little bit better. It's funny, though, it never ceases to amaze
- 39:24me. I get that all the time, all the time. I hate
- 39:28micromanaging, and then I go I go in there and they're covering over people,
- 39:30telling people exactly how to do things and all this like shit, oh
- 39:37breathe. I learned a long time ago. I liked even before I own,
- 39:44I own my company. I liked to ninety nine work because people treated
- 39:46you more like an adult because you were, you came in an expert.
- 39:51You know, all that they couldn't micromanage you is actually against the law,
- 39:54so they so they couldn't do it. And I liked that much better.
- 40:00And I and I thought, you know, if we could just treat everybody
- 40:01like this and give them the respect that they deserve, you know, how
- 40:06much, how much better off would we be, and also allowing humans to
- 40:09be human. I think that's another part of inclusion that's missed, right,
- 40:13Yeah, is that we have this like for years and years and years,
- 40:17you know, hundreds or maybe even thousands of years, we leave your your
- 40:21work life, you know, leave your personal life at home and separate it
- 40:23from work, and well, you know, you don't necessarily have to talk
- 40:28about everything from your personal life at work. We are holistic beings and so
- 40:31if something's hurting us over here, it doesn't leave us just because we go
- 40:36to work. So another thing that's been very important to me building my ZIP
- 40:42over the years, but now even at my own my own company, is
- 40:45to teach my team that I want to know, you know, that it's
- 40:51okay to tell me today's a bad day. And I always tell them you
- 40:53never have to tell me why. You never have to give me the details.
- 40:57You do not owe me that, But just let me know. You
- 41:00know, something's going on the need from you or I don't know what I
- 41:06need, but I'll let you know, right, you know, Yeah,
- 41:09you kind of jumped jumped, jumped through a question before I got a chance
- 41:14to ask you. I was going to ask you something about that that's pretty
- 41:16cool. So I'm realizing that we're actually starting to run out of time.
- 41:30Now. It's a good conversation of time, Yeah, it is, it
- 41:35is. It's a great conversation. Just something something a little maybe a little
- 41:40more personal to you. And if you could create a world where they just
- 41:51look look the most beautiful to you, what would it look like? Actually
- 41:55I can give a perfect illustration because in almost every respect it's created by Seth
- 42:01McFarlane in his show The Orgal. So, if you're unfamiliar that the creator
- 42:07of Family Guy and American Dad Money is a movie Ted So I Want and
- 42:13So created a star trek spooth called The Orbital and it's hilarious, but it's
- 42:19also very poignant and very has some very touching moments in it. But the
- 42:22world that he created where in you know, in this particular culture, not
- 42:30every culture that's encountered in the show, but in this particular prime culture.
- 42:35Your money quote quote is your contribution, whatever that is. It could be
- 42:39writing points, it could be music, it could be sigence, it could
- 42:44be your you know, you go fight on the battleships. Whatever it is,
- 42:46that's that contribution. And everybody just rolls with it. If somebody's got
- 42:52some weird, quirky little thing about them, they're just like, all right,
- 42:55cool that people ask the questions about it and then they move on.
- 42:58It is the most beautiful example of responding and curiosity and just having questions,
- 43:04and they have whole episodes around that and absolutely fascinating. That's what my world
- 43:10is. Just everybody is fascinated by humans as I am, and just rolling
- 43:16with and even if they're not, just like, if this person wants to
- 43:22be this over here, then great, cool. Rock on. You're not
- 43:24hurting anybody do your thing, you know, if that's what makes you happy,
- 43:28rock on. Now this person works differently, so we're going to steer
- 43:30into their set them up for success, and we're gonna let them do their
- 43:34thing their way. And I think that so cool and that is very much
- 43:39what I want. Wow. Okay, best ways to work with you,
- 43:45best ways to work with me, So reach out to me on my website
- 43:49Type Management USA dot com. If you want me to speak or teach.
- 43:52You can also go to my speaker site which is k m Accords Speaking dot
- 43:55com and other than that LinkedIn. I'm all over that and I want to
- 43:59two. Kath McCord's with my spelling in the United States. That's that's prevalent
- 44:02on LinkedIn, so I'm very easy to find, so absolutely connective me.
- 44:07I'm on there every single day. Yeah, well, we'll have to stay
- 44:10closer in touch on LinkedIn of course. Oh, of course. Obviously we
- 44:17have a whole world to change, don't we. It's a very exhausting need
- 44:24all the help that you can get. Go go check out, especially if
- 44:32you if you run an office or something like that, go check out Catherine,
- 44:36because I mean, she's doing wonderful work and she will actually increase increase
- 44:42your productivity just by simple tricks of how to get your people to do what
- 44:49it is they need to do in a more natural way. So that's right.
- 44:53Thank you for joining us today, Catherine's it's been a lot of fun.
- 44:58It has been. I really enjoyed the conversation. You awesome new questions
- 45:01for me. I enjoyed the challenge. Thank you. Oh you're welcome,
- 45:06all right, Thank you for listening to everybody, and we will see you
- 45:08next time. Find that subscribe button wherever it is. I don't know,
- 45:52yes, said me like child, And we can't read to so can't see
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