Latest / #WisdomOfWomen Show / Kelly Cooper: What Happens When Good People Stay Silent?

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Kelly Cooper: What Happens When Good People Stay Silent? · #WisdomOfWomen Show

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.
• 0:02
  We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.
• 0:07
  A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.
• 0:13
  I am your host, Coco Selman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of the Force for Good system.
• 0:21
  Today we have an emboldened warrior of the workplace in our midst.
• 0:28
  Kelly Cooper is the founder and president of the center for Social Intelligence where she helps senior leaders, HR professionals and change makers transform workplace culture into a measurable competitive advantage rooted in respect, integrity and accountability.
• 0:50
  Across more than 30 years in the public, private and non public for profit sectors.
• 0:54
  With a deep focus on STEM and natural resources, Kelly has embedded sustainability and inclusive leadership into organizations on four continents.
• 1:06
  Having lived and worked throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe.
• 1:11
  Kelly is the author of Lead the Change the Competitive Advantage of Gender Diversity and inclusion from 2020 and and her most recent number one bestselling emboldened warrior spearheading Social Intelligence in the workplace launched in 26.
• 1:30
  So today Kelly brings a rare blend of scientific rigor, strategic clarity and hard won empathy to every leader she guides.
• 1:41
  Welcome Kelly.
• 1:42
  Thank you so much for having me here.
• 1:44
  Coca Cola.
• 1:45
  Oh, it's a pleasure.
• 1:47
  So tell us, what's one book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life?
• 1:53
  I'll start with a classic, Sheryl Sandberg with Lean in.
• 1:56
  There's also Michelle Obama.
• 1:57
  And then there was a book, I can't remember the author, but she talked about our three superpowers.
• 2:02
  And so I'm always looking for insights and leaning into our own superpowers that we don't often pay enough attention to.
• 2:11
  Yeah, you talk about that in your most recent book.
• 2:14
  It's the End.
• 2:15
  You talk about the importance of superpowers.
• 2:17
  You want to share a little bit more about that.
• 2:20
  I have the book playfully engaging with ninjas in order to help make the topic a little more, you know, approachable because it's kind of heavy.
• 2:28
  So my ninjas have different roles and different superpowers.
• 2:32
  So one of them is my personal favorites.
• 2:35
  I have six faces of the ninjas, two share for people to identify because not everyone's the same on how they want to help the workplace culture.
• 2:43
  So with my favorite though is the upstander.
• 2:46
  So we always talk about the bystander and they're the people who are just looking at the car crash in the workplace essentially.
• 2:54
  But the upstander is that personality who really aligns with justice and they really feel they need to do something and intervene and So I outline ways they can do that in the book.
• 3:04
  Others are more like the scholar ninja who's really interested to learn more.
• 3:08
  So they're the ones doing podcasts and reading books and attending that employee resource group of interest and trying to just understand and learn more.
• 3:18
  Then there's people like the confidant, and they're the ones who you can talk to, share your story.
• 3:22
  Because we need people who can listen to us, like, fully listen to us.
• 3:26
  Because a lot of people dismiss the stories of women and others who are being sidelined, perhaps in the office or harassed.
• 3:34
  Right.
• 3:34
  Or bullied.
• 3:35
  Yeah.
• 3:35
  And so it's nice to have that person who you can actually confide in and hopefully help use their position of power to help navigate things in a better way.
• 3:45
  Anyway, there's many things like that, people's superpowers that they can use.
• 3:49
  And I think also with social intelligence, it's superpowers that are like, we talk about EI skills, which a lot of people know, and that's all about how you address things within yourself.
• 4:01
  But social intelligence is more about how you operate within the group.
• 4:06
  So how do you navigate group dynamics in a way that is healthier?
• 4:11
  So there's things you can do with the individual.
• 4:13
  So you have to give somebody feedback or a review.
• 4:16
  And it's not just what you're saying, it's how you're saying it.
• 4:19
  It's all about the how.
• 4:20
  Right.
• 4:21
  How it's going to land and how we can use those kinds of superpowers or ninjas, in overcoming some of the workplace challenges we face.
• 4:31
  So before we go deeper on to your work with the center for Social Intelligence, let's take a moment and understand a bit more about you.
• 4:43
  So share with us three moments that in your life have defined who you are today.
• 4:51
  Okay, so the first one would be when I was working in my summer job at University of Toronto.
• 4:59
  I had an opportunity to work with an environmental economics consulting firm.
• 5:03
  And the man who was my mentor or boss heavily influenced me.
• 5:08
  He had spent years in Africa.
• 5:12
  And so when I graduated from U of T, I went to Africa.
• 5:18
  So I would have been 22 by myself, signed up for a group tour with other kids my age that were mostly from Australia and New Zealand.
• 5:28
  And we're talking 1992, the life before phones.
• 5:31
  Okay, so it was a big deal.
• 5:33
  It was a bold move, I guess you could say.
• 5:35
  And I absolutely fell in love with it to the point where I came home, eventually, got a Labrador dog, and named her Kenya.
• 5:41
  But it was very much a shaping Experience, obviously, coming back, I had counterculture shock.
• 5:47
  I was living in Toronto.
• 5:47
  It was a cement jungle, really.
• 5:49
  But I had been living in tents and among animals and just backpacking around.
• 5:54
  It was a wonderful experience and it shaped my appreciation for culture.
• 5:59
  It also shaped my appreciation for Canada as a female and what you can do.
• 6:03
  So for me, it was like, anybody who complains about the dynamics here, I'm like, please go travel.
• 6:09
  Yeah, curious.
• 6:11
  What was it about that mentor?
• 6:13
  What sparked inside of you?
• 6:15
  He's had his children there and he just spoke of it so fondly, and it just sounded like freedom.
• 6:21
  It sounded like magic.
• 6:23
  It just sounded like back to primitive times almost.
• 6:28
  In a world that I really value more now than ever, I've been trying to unplug more and more from social media and really get back to my roots, and that's what I'm on the mission to do nowadays.
• 6:40
  So that really nurtures my soul, that kind of travel.
• 6:43
  And.
• 6:44
  Yeah, so I'm getting back to more of that now.
• 6:46
  Now that I'm an empty nester, I can revisit these kinds of adventure trips.
• 6:50
  So that's your first experience.
• 6:51
  Tell us about another one.
• 6:54
  Well, when I was, unfortunately, my brother, who was closest in age to me, took his life.
• 7:00
  So that was a massive moment.
• 7:03
  And that basically can either bring families together or blow them apart.
• 7:10
  And I say that blew our family apart.
• 7:12
  So that was very difficult, obviously.
• 7:14
  And I had just had my first child, but I had to come to terms with that, obviously, and realize that he made his choices, but I have to make mine.
• 7:26
  And I could have easily stopped having kids, but I always wanted to have a couple of them.
• 7:31
  And so I carried on and had another child.
• 7:34
  Life has its way of throwing curveballs, and how we respond to those curveballs is everything, right?
• 7:43
  It shapes our character.
• 7:44
  It's how do we want to be.
• 7:46
  Do we want to be resilient or do we want to fold and succumb to the pressures of life or the challenges that are thrown at us?
• 7:53
  And I guess I've always decided to take that choice of moving, make a difference whatever extent I can.
• 8:02
  I have the blessed experience, knowledge, personality to do something with this lifetime.
• 8:10
  And if I can do something that can make it better for the next generation, I'm going to do it.
• 8:14
  And that's what I've been doing.
• 8:16
  But that was definitely a very heavy turning point experience in my life.
• 8:21
  Yeah.
• 8:22
  Wow.
• 8:23
  Just choosing to not crumble, I guess.
• 8:26
  You know what I mean?
• 8:27
  Nowadays, it's an epidemic, you know, we're seeing that Suicide is becoming such a huge deal and it's kind of scary, right?
• 8:35
  It's.
• 8:35
  People are losing hope.
• 8:37
  Yeah.
• 8:38
  And I like to give hope to people, and I've been doing that through the workplace as well.
• 8:43
  But also people who know my personal story.
• 8:45
  There's many peaks and valleys in it.
• 8:48
  You just have to keep going because you only go around once.
• 8:51
  Yeah, that's right.
• 8:53
  Give us one more experience.
• 8:55
  Shapes who you are today.
• 8:57
  Another one was when I was walking down the canal here in Ottawa.
• 9:02
  And that year I had been living in New York, traveling to Washington, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, like all over the world by myself.
• 9:12
  I was on a.
• 9:13
  Working on the United nations file.
• 9:15
  I was 26 years old.
• 9:17
  So when I was in Ottawa, a lot, walking along the canal, which was one of the nicest neighborhoods here in Ottawa, broad daylight, wearing my running tights and my Walkman.
• 9:28
  And I'm not a runner, but I.
• 9:30
  Because I have asthma, but I, you know, speed walking.
• 9:32
  And this guy came from behind me and grabbed.
• 9:35
  Put his arm over my shoulder and grabbed my crotch.
• 9:38
  What?
• 9:39
  And this was in broad daylight and there's a road right there.
• 9:41
  Cars are going inside.
• 9:43
  So anyway, I brushed him off my shoulder and he had the other hand down his pants.
• 9:49
  And in these moments, you never know what you're going to do.
• 9:52
  It's not like I ever premeditated this.
• 9:54
  I was so ticked off that I just ran after him and I ran after all 15 meters, let's say.
• 10:03
  And I'm.
• 10:04
  He deeked into this back house area that had a fence and he was cornered and I went right up to him and I grabbed him by the chest and I'm like.
• 10:14
  And he's like, don't touch me.
• 10:15
  And I'm like, you touched me.
• 10:17
  And I yelled at him and I dragged him to the sidewalk.
• 10:21
  And at that moment, this car came whipping around the corner and this woman jumped out.
• 10:26
  She says, I'm an off duty police officer.
• 10:28
  I saw the chase.
• 10:29
  And so she takes the guy and throws him against the tractor car or whatever, and he was put in jail.
• 10:35
  And he had done this before to a couple other women, but of course, nobody ran after him.
• 10:41
  So would I recommend that to others?
• 10:44
  No.
• 10:45
  No.
• 10:46
  But in that moment, that's how I responded.
• 10:50
  And again, we're talking in the 90s.
• 10:53
  Yeah.
• 10:53
  Before phones or anything.
• 10:55
  Yeah.
• 10:55
  Yes.
• 10:55
  Yeah.
• 10:57
  I was ticked off.
• 10:57
  I was like, who the hell are you touching me?
• 11:00
  Yeah.
• 11:02
  I love this response.
• 11:04
  Right.
• 11:04
  I love that your instinct was, like you said earlier, not to crumble.
• 11:09
  It was to stand up for Yourself, it was to not take the abuse and hold others accountable for their actions.
• 11:18
  I'm just blown away by this.
• 11:20
  Wow.
• 11:21
  So.
• 11:21
  Well, if you read the Emboldened Warrior book, you will see where I also did that in a different context.
• 11:26
  Share with us, Tell us more.
• 11:30
  So my book is all about toxic leadership and how I believe we can counter it.
• 11:35
  The antidote is social intelligence.
• 11:37
  And if we have social intelligent leaders, we're actually going to change the channel quite significantly on how the workplace culture operates.
• 11:44
  It's actions that we can take as individuals, but also we need to create a system that supports those individuals.
• 11:50
  So those whistleblowers, which I ended up being a type of set, how they can be protected because otherwise they're just scapegoated and their lives can be destroyed.
• 12:00
  So in my case, I was leading initiative across the whole sector, gaining a lot of momentum.
• 12:05
  I was in the fourth year of six years of this project because there was funding coming from the federal government and also private sector, but a lot of it was from the feds.
• 12:14
  And in that fourth year, people in positions of power were getting a little uncomfortable with the.
• 12:21
  The progress that I was making.
• 12:24
  And instead of working collaboratively with me and having the social intelligence, they opted to undermine.
• 12:31
  I don't know if you ever saw that show House of Cards with Kevin Spacey.
• 12:35
  Okay, so what they tried to do to me.
• 12:37
  Dark show.
• 12:38
  Yeah, dark.
• 12:39
  Very dark.
• 12:41
  This was a dark situation too.
• 12:42
  They basically tried to throw me in front of a subway.
• 12:45
  And what they do is.
• 12:46
  And this turned out to be a complete learning I had not known about prior, but I had created two executive leadership teams.
• 12:53
  There were 40 executives in total.
• 12:55
  And the intent was to educate them on the skills needed to be more socially intelligent.
• 13:02
  And along.
• 13:03
  These couple of people in positions of power weren't liking that.
• 13:06
  They wanted to have control, I think of the narrative.
• 13:09
  They wanted to have control of the pace of change and they wanted to be in the limelight.
• 13:15
  Anyway, they tried to.
• 13:18
  They took a lot of people away.
• 13:19
  They literally phoned around and lured people away from the initiative.
• 13:23
  It was a volunteer initiative.
• 13:25
  And I was like, what are you doing?
• 13:28
  And I was told by a lot of them, the people that left, they're like, well, we don't know why, Kelly, but we have to go with the pack kind of thing.
• 13:36
  It's like a complete pack mentality.
• 13:38
  So it's something called mobbing.
• 13:41
  Yes.
• 13:41
  So I didn't understand that term before.
• 13:44
  I only learned about it afterwards.
• 13:47
  Just to give a quick summary of what happened before we go into what mobbing is.
• 13:51
  I ended up having still just under half that stayed.
• 13:55
  And instead of educating those two teams, I decided to open it up to the platform and go around these gatekeeper people in power positions and just was basically going like, forget it.
• 14:08
  Like, you're not stopped.
• 14:09
  This is my business.
• 14:10
  Yes.
• 14:11
  What are you doing?
• 14:12
  Yeah.
• 14:12
  Because everybody was all excited.
• 14:13
  The momentum was huge.
• 14:15
  Everyone was happy.
• 14:16
  Nobody was doing it.
• 14:17
  It's in nobody other organizations.
• 14:19
  Lane of work.
• 14:20
  But you got to think of this sector kind of operates like the mafia.
• 14:23
  Yes.
• 14:24
  And these two individuals were like the mother and father of it.
• 14:27
  Okay.
• 14:28
  And they're in different organizations, but they mutually help each other all the time.
• 14:31
  Like they're always pulling games behind the scenes of behind closed doors, that kind of thing.
• 14:36
  So, yeah, I went around that and just continued with finishing the project.
• 14:40
  I had a couple more years I had to do.
• 14:42
  And then I went international with things and it was amazing because I went to this world conference in that sector and there everyone had been following my work and it was the leading initiative worldwide and people were wanting
• 14:53
  photos with me and having posters in the halls and of the project.
• 14:57
  And I was just.
• 14:57
  And I was on panels and everything.
• 14:58
  I was just like, okay, it's in the dark ages back in Canada and in North America.
• 15:04
  Yes.
• 15:05
  Yes.
• 15:05
  So it was a real eye opener there.
• 15:07
  But mobbing is different than bullying.
• 15:09
  So bullying is one on one.
• 15:12
  Mobbing is a group against an individual.
• 15:15
  So people at positions of power can motivate others in the group because of their position.
• 15:21
  Basically isolate and undermine the target.
• 15:25
  And the target is a target because they are challenging the status quo.
• 15:29
  They are all the things I was saying earlier, like they ask questions.
• 15:33
  You think you go to school, that you're supposed to, you know, truth to power, all of that.
• 15:37
  No.
• 15:38
  So I was quite shocked.
• 15:41
  Also, one of the people who I'm talking about, and I call them the ringleaders in my book, one of them was the testimonial on my first book.
• 15:49
  So these are people that are in your circles.
• 15:51
  Right.
• 15:51
  Like the snakes in the grass.
• 15:53
  So it was shocking.
• 15:54
  I only learned about this mobbing concept because it was in one of these company's respectful workplace policies.
• 15:59
  But the things that were in this policy blew my mind.
• 16:02
  They were exactly what happened to me.
• 16:04
  Abuse of power, interference with performance of work and destruction of workplace relationships, including something they called mobbing.
• 16:12
  And I was like, what is this?
• 16:14
  I've since learned there's a whole playbook on how it goes.
• 16:19
  And that's what's also in my book.
• 16:20
  So I explained to people these unseen behaviors that go on in workplace cultures and why it's so important to know them.
• 16:27
  Because you could be a target.
• 16:29
  Yeah.
• 16:30
  As a leader, you want to see it for what it is when it's happening.
• 16:33
  You want to root it out.
• 16:35
  You want to expose any behaviors, even your own accountability for anything that could be slipping into that toxicity.
• 16:43
  There's the seen and the unseen behaviors that I speak about in my book, Individual actions and then system solutions.
• 16:50
  And I explain also this.
• 16:53
  This playbook so that people are aware, because to me, it's the next evolution of mankind.
• 16:58
  We need to be socially intelligent.
• 17:00
  You know, we just have to raise the bar here.
• 17:02
  Okay.
• 17:03
  And right now, I feel things are kind of rolling back.
• 17:07
  Women are getting a huge pushback.
• 17:08
  It's part of the game, unfortunately.
• 17:11
  It's having the strength and the resilience to stick it out.
• 17:14
  And that's what I did.
• 17:15
  So what happened with my story is after I got through this initial mobbing moment, I had decided to do an access to information request with the government of Canada, because I knew funding came from there anyway, 80 pages
• 17:30
  worth of communications between these individuals, which they never were.
• 17:36
  This was the Department of Women.
• 17:37
  They had never operated with that department before.
• 17:41
  There was no.
• 17:41
  And it was targeting this initiative that I was leading.
• 17:44
  And they were doing their best to undermine my leadership and redirect the funding to a competing platform that they subsequently created to lure people to it.
• 17:57
  Anyway, within that 80 pages, one of the names wasn't redacted.
• 18:01
  So that became my moment of, oh, my God, what do I do with this?
• 18:06
  God is giving me this name.
• 18:08
  This is.
• 18:09
  This isn't what's supposed to happen.
• 18:12
  And I'm sure they felt they were safe because usually all the names are redacted.
• 18:17
  Right.
• 18:18
  But one name wasn't redacted.
• 18:21
  So that's where I would ask you, what do you do with that?
• 18:24
  So I sat with that knowledge for a long time, finished the project, and then once it was finished and I had already gone international, I saw some more interference from that individual on my business.
• 18:42
  Oh, my goodness.
• 18:43
  And he was trying to redirect traffic away from me, and he used it a lot, his influence, and so did she.
• 18:48
  There's a woman, too, and they both live in the city, so it's like they had.
• 18:54
  Anyway, I was just so appalled by the low level of behavior and individual agendas overriding the collective that I was like, okay, I have to do something now.
• 19:07
  And so I ended up sending him a cease and Desist letter.
• 19:10
  I had to go to Toronto to get a lawyer, got an international lawyer, which perfect, female perfect.
• 19:17
  And did what I had to do.
• 19:19
  And, and I knew that like you're basically sending a cease and desist letter to Mr.
• 19:25
  Mafia.
• 19:26
  Yeah.
• 19:26
  Wow.
• 19:26
  But I was like, if I don't do this, yeah, he's never gonna stop.
• 19:30
  And if I do this, he's still probably not gonna stop, but at least I know he's on notice and he knows I have a network looking for me anyway, subsequently to that is leaving the sector.
• 19:42
  If not been told to leave the sector.
• 19:44
  And I am hopeful that the other ringleader is not far behind because these are unethical people without integrity, making poor decisions, frankly, for the betterment of all.
• 19:55
  And I certainly don't want their job.
• 19:57
  But I definitely think somebody with it won't be hard to find better.
• 20:01
  Do you know what I mean?
• 20:02
  Yes.
• 20:03
  And you got to get people outside of the sector because this is really like they're teaching.
• 20:08
  They, they taught others who were within their group.
• 20:11
  Yeah.
• 20:12
  This is how business is done.
• 20:14
  And it's a fear based culture.
• 20:16
  And that's not healthy.
• 20:19
  It's not.
• 20:20
  It's not healthy.
• 20:20
  And it helps us underpin why you've created the center for Social Intelligence.
• 20:26
  Can you tell us more about what it is and what it does, who it serves, what the problem is that you're helping to solve through the center for Social Intelligence.
• 20:36
  Well, there's a lot of organizations that don't have healthy workplace culture.
• 20:42
  I work with private sector government, whomever is needing that, obviously to improve it.
• 20:49
  I've been looking around here and we just don't seem to have things gelling.
• 20:53
  We're losing more people than we're keeping.
• 20:56
  There's a problem here.
• 20:57
  And I talk about workplace culture in economic terms first and foremost.
• 21:01
  That's what I'd go on about in my first book.
• 21:03
  So people understand the value proposition and there's no excusing it.
• 21:06
  It's like you've hammered me, Kelly, for half this book.
• 21:09
  In a very fun way, but a lot of facts.
• 21:12
  There's no denying it.
• 21:14
  We need this for.
• 21:15
  We need more women in the culture.
• 21:17
  It helps to create better teams, better business outcomes, greater innovation and less turnover.
• 21:24
  Yep.
• 21:25
  All the things that feed the economic side but also feed the social side.
• 21:31
  So for a founder who's building the purpose led, visionary company, it's hard sometimes to know how to behave.
• 21:40
  We see power modeled as authority and command and control.
• 21:45
  So for those listening, what's the first thing that she has to unlearn before she can learn to lead this way.
• 21:54
  So I think the first thing is to know you have your own leadership style and it doesn't have to mirror what you are around.
• 22:05
  So for me, I was always in STEM sectors, obviously male dominated, and we've always traditionally just fallen into the same thing.
• 22:12
  And then what happens is you have women competing with other women, which is what happened to me.
• 22:18
  I'm like, what are you doing?
• 22:19
  Like, you're shooting us in the foot here.
• 22:22
  So first thing is have the social intelligence to know that you can be collaborative and not competitive and create great results.
• 22:33
  So we have this PI is shrinking concept as opposed to realizing there's so much here for everyone.
• 22:41
  And if we want to better the business, we need diverse thoughts TABLE and especially now, like, we have a huge influx of immigration in Canada.
• 22:50
  It's really gotten heavy.
• 22:52
  A lot of people are uncomfortable with it.
• 22:55
  But if we don't address how to deal with people as human beings, either in or outside the workplace, we're going to have serious social unrest.
• 23:02
  And we got to be responsible with how we're engaging with others because the economy can tank if you don't.
• 23:09
  You can have all the greatest projects, but if you have this turnover going on and you can't keep staff, that was one of the influx reasons was there wasn't enough labor.
• 23:16
  We had labor market demand issues.
• 23:18
  So our government thought, oh, let's bring in all these people.
• 23:20
  Okay, well now you've got a new problem.
• 23:22
  Housing problems, social problems, education, healthcare.
• 23:26
  There seemed to be a shortsighted view on this, but we have to now deal with this and deal with it responsibly so that we don't go down the tube both economically and socially.
• 23:38
  I love in your book that you make a striking claim that traditional command and control leadership doesn't just stifle innovation, but it actually drives away diverse talent.
• 23:50
  So talk to us a little bit about that.
• 23:52
  Command and control leadership is a problem for innovation.
• 23:56
  I think it probably never worked, but there are reasons why now it doesn't work where it did back then.
• 24:01
  In the past, we obviously had one income families, the men obviously being that one.
• 24:07
  And we also had this old boys network.
• 24:11
  It's not a shame to say it, but as we get more women who are aspiring for senior levels or looking to get further into STEM sectors or we have different cultures coming into our country, it is going to
• 24:24
  break up the old boys network work.
• 24:26
  And that creates a lot of fear for these guys because that's how business has been Done.
• 24:31
  So in my experience for this one, I just shared with you about what happened to me.
• 24:35
  I'm a female who came in and I could see things for how it was and I was able to be savvy enough to figure things out.
• 24:44
  And I've been around long enough to know how to do certain things to figure things out.
• 24:48
  Had my own connections and relationships.
• 24:50
  But I could see you get a few, a few women or people who were actually going to go, that's not right.
• 24:58
  I would love to say to all the wives of these men, I would love to have their emails to say, did you even know that your husband was doing this crap at work?
• 25:08
  I'd love to know.
• 25:09
  What would you say to him?
• 25:12
  Anyway, the point is, when we have the diverse minds we have, you're kicking the tires on ideas.
• 25:18
  You are looking at problems differently.
• 25:20
  You're adding value in ways you don't even realize.
• 25:23
  You don't even know you're in the I don't know what I don't know box.
• 25:25
  And so they're kind of rudderless in that, but they're self facing, they're inward facing.
• 25:31
  Instead of, I would say like inclusive leadership is all about being open to new ideas and not feeling threatened by those ideas.
• 25:40
  And again, back to my experience, it's like they were threatened by my ideas.
• 25:44
  I had a system approach to how to change things.
• 25:47
  It was very logical, it was very understandable.
• 25:49
  People wanted it, but they couldn't handle the change or they had to have control over the change.
• 25:55
  But if they had been a different personality, not part of, like I write in the book about the dark triad, the psychopath, narcissist, Machiavellian types, we have some of those in leadership positions.
• 26:05
  So when the systems approach, I talk about, you can kind of weed them out.
• 26:09
  But in the moment, like we have to be a savvy to these people and realize that they need to see the bigger picture.
• 26:17
  And that's what's often missing.
• 26:18
  We're obviously looking at the economics and they're not, they're missing out on, well, if we had diversity at the helm, we would have a different sky.
• 26:30
  It leads into my next question, which is about resistance.
• 26:34
  Because they're experiencing resistance.
• 26:37
  Sometimes we experience resistance.
• 26:39
  In your book you talk about resistance so beautifully.
• 26:42
  Isn't a behavioral issue, it's a human one that surfaces when people feel uncertain, threatened or disconnected from the why behind the change.
• 26:54
  What do we need to do differently when we hit resistance?
• 26:59
  I have a whole online training course on all of these aspects.
• 27:03
  Inclusive Leadership, allyship, and how to overcome resistance.
• 27:08
  And they're all set up with the initial introduction, which helps give a lot of the rationale on the why.
• 27:16
  So that you are connecting the dots.
• 27:18
  I was fortunate with my career to go really big picture with the United Nations.
• 27:22
  Right.
• 27:22
  What I was able to do in my training modules is to link for people the concept of sustainable development, which is environment, social and economic.
• 27:30
  So that concept was, hey, guys, we can't just rape and pillage the land and command and control with our people.
• 27:38
  We have to get a better return on our environment.
• 27:40
  We can't pollute it to death, and we have to get a better return on our people.
• 27:45
  So as I talk about in that introduction, in the 90s, we really talked and taught corporate about the value of the environment and showing the return on your investment from doing so.
• 27:56
  Fast forward 30 years, I see us now pushing the envelope on the social angle of sustainable development.
• 28:02
  So if we can get our heads around the bigger picture of that concept and see, that's really where we're striving to be as a planet.
• 28:09
  You know, better to the environment, so we have sustainability, better to our people, so we have sustainability, all while having our businesses thrive and they actually feed into the bottom line positively by doing so.
• 28:21
  Right.
• 28:21
  So when you connect those things and then you take it from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the big picture, what we're doing, and you take it to the country level, and then you take it to the
• 28:30
  corporate room in the boardroom, how we shape our boards, like, who's our.
• 28:36
  What's our makeup on our boards?
• 28:37
  That's a big focus right now.
• 28:38
  Okay.
• 28:39
  Then you take it right into the business in terms of who's in charge and what roles, how do we ensure diverse thoughts are being heard so that we.
• 28:48
  And they often like.
• 28:49
  The quota thing I always talk about is like, people get upset about quotas.
• 28:53
  Nobody wants to be a quota.
• 28:54
  Yeah.
• 28:55
  Okay.
• 28:56
  Right.
• 28:56
  So the only quota I talk about is we need three out of 10 people to be different.
• 29:02
  Yes.
• 29:02
  The rule of three.
• 29:04
  Yes, rule of three.
• 29:05
  Because then, you know, you have enough to validate your opinion, and it's enough to move an idea differently.
• 29:12
  But if you're the only.
• 29:14
  Which has been a thing for a lot of women.
• 29:16
  So the three is really important.
• 29:18
  It could be a woman, it could be someone of the LGBTQ community, it could be indigenous, it could be, you know, immigrant, whatever.
• 29:25
  But three different people.
• 29:27
  Yes.
• 29:28
  Helps make the difference.
• 29:29
  So anyway, when I go from the sustainable development big picture and then take it down to the boardroom and then take it to the corporate and then take it to the individual actions.
• 29:38
  Because everyone has a role to play.
• 29:40
  Yeah.
• 29:40
  And I map that out in the online training as well.
• 29:43
  Yeah.
• 29:43
  People start to go, wow, I didn't understand that.
• 29:46
  Now I get it.
• 29:46
  It's like, light bulb's going off and people are motivated now in a way they weren't before.
• 29:51
  They were pushing.
• 29:53
  Oh, my God, these immigrants or whatever.
• 29:54
  Oh, my God, these women.
• 29:55
  Don't they have an.
• 29:56
  Don't they?
• 29:56
  Aren't they happy enough already?
• 29:58
  One guy said that to me, how come you're pushing for women?
• 30:01
  Don't you see they've already got enough?
• 30:04
  I was like, excuse me, what is that?
• 30:08
  Why are we even fighting for this?
• 30:10
  I like to always ensure that there is a clear purpose of the business, the transformational reason that the company exists.
• 30:17
  Then when you want somebody, for whatever reason, to change a behavior, if it's tied somehow to that purpose, to that change, to whatever's gonna benefit someone or something, then it's a different conversation.
• 30:33
  You need to have that common mission which people go through these exercises within their business.
• 30:37
  Right.
• 30:38
  Are we on.
• 30:38
  All on the same page here?
• 30:40
  Yes.
• 30:40
  Okay.
• 30:40
  Well, if you're seeing somebody within the team resisting and, you know, eventually, if they still can't figure it out, then you may have to say, this might not be the right place for you to be working.
• 30:51
  Like, this is what we do.
• 30:52
  This is what we do, and it's how we do which is really the pivotal change in this whole conversation.
• 30:59
  It's not just getting economic results.
• 31:02
  It's how are you getting those economic results?
• 31:05
  Because how you're getting them can be the deal breaker between turnover, innovation, and all those goodies.
• 31:14
  Right.
• 31:15
  You declare that SI Social intelligence is the new KPI and then you map it out with the six faces of allyship in your book, the scholar, the confidant, the advocate, the amplifier, the upstander, and the sponsor.
• 31:30
  Talk to us about how a listener can learn from this and bring this social intelligence piece home into their business.
• 31:42
  And so that they have that alignment, so they have that social intelligence built within the power of their company.
• 31:52
  I would say it's knowing when you see certain things in the workplace or so, for example, you may see somebody being overlooked for a promotion, and you're like, that person definitely deserves it.
• 32:08
  I can't believe that they're going with that guy's best friend.
• 32:11
  It's knowing that and doing what you can within your piece of influence.
• 32:15
  If you're in a Position of influence.
• 32:17
  And that's what we're trying to deal with here is knowing how you can manage the people that are making the decisions.
• 32:23
  You can find ways to highlight in a meeting.
• 32:25
  I really recognize that Coco has been doing this for a number of years.
• 32:30
  Again, you're working with a system that's also giving that space for these people to be brought into it.
• 32:41
  Because in a lot of the private sector there isn't that process.
• 32:45
  In the federal government, they do try to do that.
• 32:48
  They have a three person panel, One's HR and then two are the people in the workplace.
• 32:53
  And they go through a set of questions and it's a whole grid of deciding and then so they have quite a.
• 33:01
  So it's an important, I think, thing to replicate in the private sector.
• 33:05
  And the other thing I would say while we go through the hiring process, we often talk about, people get really bent out of shape right now about the diverse person in the group being chosen.
• 33:16
  And I get back though to you're all qualified.
• 33:20
  So if you do the rep process correctly, you create a pool of qualified candidates.
• 33:26
  They meet all the credentials and criteria that you need for that job, no matter what they look like.
• 33:32
  And then you're going to look at the team.
• 33:34
  What's in my team.
• 33:35
  So I need to bring in these other diverse people in order to help have some critical challenge function to the ideas.
• 33:43
  If I were to be brought in, I speak up.
• 33:45
  I know any woman who would be in the STEM sector is like, you're there because you're qualified.
• 33:50
  And so back to your question.
• 33:52
  So for example, another example would be people, you know, making racial or gender jokes.
• 33:58
  Yeah.
• 33:59
  And you're listening to that and often people will just be laughing along and not saying anything.
• 34:08
  But if you're socially intelligent, you know to say something and, and frankly, it makes you a little uncomfortable that people are talking that way because, you know, you know there's a woman right there.
• 34:19
  Yeah.
• 34:20
  Who doesn't want to hear that.
• 34:22
  And so you have to as.
• 34:23
  And men are especially important as allies to do this because it's often their counterparts that are doing these jokes and to speak up and just say, you know, we just don't.
• 34:33
  We don't tolerate that around here.
• 34:35
  Or we don't.
• 34:36
  That's not cool in our company.
• 34:38
  And you don't have to make a big deal out of it.
• 34:39
  But you can make the point.
• 34:41
  That's what a socially intelligent person would do.
• 34:43
  So what do you think?
• 34:44
  What's the, what's the world you're building?
• 34:46
  Well, I love the concept of social intelligence as a, like a, like a certified concept because I think it is a magnet for top talent because you know you're going to be treated well.
• 35:00
  Well, and it's a magnet.
• 35:02
  It's.
• 35:02
  And I think it's also, I feel like it's also a magnet for customers.
• 35:07
  It's just the smell of integrity and goodness and doing things with integrity and consistency and honesty.
• 35:14
  Right.
• 35:15
  Accountability, showing up and doing the right thing.
• 35:18
  Respect.
• 35:18
  These are things that are so clear to a customer as well.
• 35:24
  Well, we talk about the value statements.
• 35:26
  We always talked about value statements in a company.
• 35:28
  Social intelligence is putting those in action.
• 35:31
  Yeah, that's what it is.
• 35:33
  That's probably the best way to summarize what it does is and I think people are drawn to it like flies to fly paper.
• 35:41
  I'll say that it's a more positive.
• 35:44
  I love it.
• 35:45
  Oh, well, thank you.
• 35:47
  It's time now for us to move to our fast fire round.
• 35:50
  So five questions and five wor or less.
• 35:52
  Are you ready?
• 35:53
  I'll try to be.
• 35:54
  Okay.
• 35:55
  All right.
• 35:56
  Social intelligence in one word.
• 36:01
  Integrity.
• 36:04
  One word for toxic workplaces.
• 36:19
  Oh, I don't know if there is one word.
• 36:21
  Everywhere.
• 36:22
  Everywhere.
• 36:25
  Your spirit animal as a leader.
• 36:29
  Golden dragon.
• 36:32
  Golden dragon.
• 36:34
  The miracle you're manifesting now.
• 36:40
  Higher intelligence of mankind.
• 36:45
  An emboldened warrior is someone who fill in the blank,.
• 36:57
  Has conviction and aspires for leaving things better than they found it.
• 37:07
  Beautiful.
• 37:08
  And how can our listeners and viewers learn more about you and the center for Social intelligence?
• 37:16
  I'm on LinkedIn.
• 37:18
  I am mostly on LinkedIn for social media and my website www.centerforsocialintelligence.ca that is Canadian center spelling so C E N T R E F O R then the word socialintelligence.
• 37:36
  CA.
• 37:37
  Wonderful.
• 37:38
  And I have books on Amazon.
• 37:40
  I should also point out.
• 37:42
  Yeah, lead the the competitive advantage of gender diversity and inclusion.
• 37:45
  And then my recent book the emboldened Warrior.
• 37:48
  It's wonderful.
• 37:49
  And all of that is going to be in the show notes for everybody to find easily.
• 37:55
  So thank you.
• 37:56
  Kelly, thank you for joining us today on the wisdom of women and for bringing to us your enlightened hopeful path for creating a better world.
• 38:08
  Thank you.
• 38:09
  Thanks for having me.
• 38:10
  I really have enjoyed talking with you.
• 38:12
  Thank you.
• 38:13
  And just remember, the world is made better by women led business.
• 38:19
  So let's all go make the world a better place.