Latest / Love Letters to Troublemakers / E3. Fear of Losing it All - Golden Handcuffs

Transcript

E3. Fear of Losing it All - Golden Handcuffs · Love Letters to Troublemakers

0:00
Having to do this kind of underground campaign of
0:02
whispering like are you experiencing this too yummy, too
0:05
yummy too and putting it together in a report.
0:09
You know, principal and above level women in leadership in
0:12
this business before they were, before they got the justice that
0:17
they needed. All right, hi everybody, and
0:29
welcome to another episode of the Circle Back Club where we
0:32
name what is broken at work, back it up with receipts, build
0:36
real power with workers who are done performing.
0:39
No productivity hacks here, no personal brand advice, just an
0:44
honest analysis and a community ready to change the status quo
0:48
and new episodes every week. Today's episode holds a mirror
0:52
up to white collar workers, the people who have healthcare.
0:56
We have salaries and titles to protect and names the invisible
1:01
tax that we pay to keep some of those things.
1:06
We're not letting white collar workers off the hook.
1:09
We're asking them us to look at what their silence and their
1:13
habits are doing not only to themselves, to their colleagues,
1:17
as well as to the workers who have far less protection to
1:21
lose. And to help us make sense of all
1:24
of it. I am super excited to invite my
1:27
friend and colleague, Dr. Dalia Perez.
1:30
Dalia brings lived experience inside corporate institutions,
1:33
including Microsoft. She's currently at the
1:35
University of Washington. She has really, really deep
1:39
experience building inclusive cultures and high performing
1:42
programs. She's going to help us name what
1:44
the systems rewards, what it punishes, and what it costs
1:50
workers to stay inside the lines.
1:52
Hi, Dalia. Hi Aparna, thank you so much for
1:57
having me. Yeah, we're going to jump right
1:59
in today. And I am super curious, what is
2:03
1 recent moment where your security felt threatened at work
2:08
or perhaps even in the broader world?
2:10
And I'm actually going to start with Lars.
2:14
Yeah, well, first of all, welcome Dalia.
2:17
I'm very excited to explore this big topic with you today, so
2:23
thank you for being with us. To answer your question, it's
2:29
actually personal for me right now.
2:31
Just with this podcast, one of the things I've been feeling
2:36
this edge around work security is talking about the things that
2:41
we don't talk about at work, literally what we're doing here
2:45
on this podcast. And it's made me feel this edge
2:50
around, am I going to lose some kind of security from doing
2:54
this? At least the security that I
2:56
knew before stepping into this. And of course here, my values
3:02
come first. Doing this is in service of
3:05
genuine care and hope that I have for us.
3:08
And that's what we're doing here.
3:10
And it's of course, name and feel when you're doing something
3:14
that is a bigger risk talking it through on what that feels like
3:20
for ourselves and others. So that's what's real for me
3:22
right now. OK, Dalia, what's coming up for
3:27
you? A moment where your security
3:28
felt threatened, either at work or in in our world at large.
3:32
You know, I, I've been through such such work transitions the
3:39
past couple of years, but it's been really interesting this
3:41
past almost a year of being in this organization called the
3:46
Sisterhood Initiative at the University of Washington, where
3:49
I work on a team of women of color.
3:51
And the mission is to support undergraduate women of color
3:56
thriving at UW and the culture that is created on this team.
4:00
And some of the practices are so starkly different than what I
4:04
experienced in corporate America to the point that I've had like,
4:07
such shock. You know, like we have.
4:10
Staff meetings, first of all, that are like 2 hours long,
4:14
which is like unheard of in corporate America to have a
4:17
staff meeting. Like I was on huge teams and our
4:20
staff meetings were like 20 minutes long.
4:23
Like you start at the O 5 and you end at the 25 and like
4:28
you're just getting through the beats of, you know, what is
4:32
business critical and what are we shipping?
4:34
And we spend over 30 minutes at this weekly staff meeting.
4:38
The the director sets the agenda and people share like intimate
4:42
details of their weekends, including like dating updates,
4:46
personal lives and their activism and the marches they've
4:49
been AT. And where I've been, I've had
4:54
these internal moments that almost feel like PTSD, where I'm
4:57
like, is there an HR camera in the room?
4:59
Like are we allowed to share such personal things at work and
5:03
bring our whole selves? And this kind of unsettled
5:07
feeling of what does this mean to be in a workspace and share
5:12
about loss and struggle and what's hard and parenting and
5:18
politics and dating and bring more of our messy and intimate
5:24
humanness into a workspace which is so has been so foreign to me
5:29
coming out of the corporate sector and into this this kind
5:33
of space so. Yeah.
5:36
That's been an on ramp to figure out how much do I share about
5:39
myself for real, for real. Yeah, that's so interesting that
5:44
in an environment where you can bring your whole self, like even
5:48
that can feel a little bit threatening because you're like,
5:50
it's what I'm doing wrong. Like because this, this is not,
5:55
this is not how I've been taught to show up at work.
5:57
I wanted to start the episode with a little bit of data.
6:00
And I am going to ask both of you for your take on how this
6:03
makes you, you know, feel. What make it, what makes you
6:07
think? And so, you know, when we say
6:09
the word worker, a lot of people think for them, a worker is
6:13
somebody who is in a blue collar job.
6:16
Typically, we rarely think of white collar work and think
6:21
workers, but these white collar jobs have been really good jobs
6:26
since the 1980s, right? Like they're the ones with the
6:28
salaries in the four O 1 KS. But I think what all of us are
6:32
noticing is that white collar work is not outside the system
6:36
of security. Great.
6:39
And we see that even in corporations and nonprofits,
6:43
philanthropy, white collar work comes with a really specific
6:48
deal. And that deal often sounds like
6:51
stay in, stay in line or perform loyalty or don't make waves or
6:57
don't complain. And the organization is going to
7:00
protect you, right? And what that protection looks
7:02
like is that health insurance is the salary.
7:04
It's a really great title. Maybe they pay for a membership
7:08
to chief if you're kind of a senior woman in leadership.
7:12
And I know that that deal worked for a lot of us for a very long
7:17
time. I would say like that's true for
7:18
all three of us, is that this deal kind of worked well for us
7:21
for a long time. And then there is a
7:24
restructuring that happens or a layoff that happens, or you
7:28
speak up about your own humanity or the humanity of people
7:32
somewhere else in the world, and something really shifts, right?
7:37
And you have to decide, do I say something?
7:40
Do I protect what I. Have or do I leave?
7:44
And the data that I wanted to bring in today is actually from
7:48
Lars's former employer, Catalyst that's been collecting lots, of
7:52
lots of data about the gendered experiences that we're having at
7:56
work. And in one report, they find
7:58
that 51% of women from marginalized racial and ethnic
8:02
groups experience racism at work, like they're presence of
8:05
the fact that they're experiencing racism.
8:08
And that number jumps up to almost 70% in workplaces that
8:13
have sort of this climate of silence where either employees
8:17
don't feel safe speaking up, or it may be that it's an
8:21
environment where you're not invited to air your dirty
8:24
laundry. We also know that about 80% of
8:27
all employees have reported experiencing burnout at least
8:31
once in the prior year and 40% say that they're experiencing
8:37
moderate to severe burnout, right?
8:40
It's the kind of burnout that's not going to go away if you took
8:42
a week off. We also know that white men
8:46
continue to continue to dominate executive and managerial roles
8:52
in companies with over 100 employees, right?
8:56
So I guess I'm curious, Lars, for you, like when you hear the
8:59
term white collar security, what's the first emotion that
9:04
comes up for you? Yeah, honestly, it's a mix of
9:10
three things. I think the first thing that I
9:13
feel honestly, is a deep breath, Like it's that OK, I have
9:18
insurance, I have steady pay, I have a retirement plan essential
9:24
to surviving as a human in this societal context that we live
9:29
in, in late stage capitalism. Like that, that feeling is
9:31
there. The second piece that comes
9:34
through is genuine heartbreak. Like there's like it feels
9:38
physically like my heart is splitting because it's exactly
9:42
what you're talking about, Aparna, of that security means
9:48
silence. That security means actual
9:52
severing in my own humanity, in my capacity to actually like
9:58
step in the cross class solidarity.
10:01
Like that just doesn't get to happen.
10:03
And I'm still figuring that out in myself.
10:05
So there's this like this real heartbreak and split within
10:10
myself. And then I also feel this
10:13
squeeze in my body like it's a very, it's both like trying to,
10:21
to grip my reality, like I want to grab, go and grab the job.
10:25
I want to get it. Like it has an energy that's
10:27
really tight and it makes it really hard to think about other
10:33
people and think about other contacts, other reality, you
10:37
know, like holding a wider lens, which of course we're going to
10:39
talk about today. So that's what's real for me.
10:45
And I'm curious for you, Doctor Perez, You know, you've worked
10:50
inside of corporate institutions alongside them as ADEI leader.
10:56
What do you see? Why collar workers most afraid
11:00
to name? It's such a good question.
11:06
You know, I think as ADEI person in a corporate business context,
11:12
I also felt like I was sometimes the like unofficial therapist of
11:20
the group. Like so many people scheduled
11:23
one on ones with me to unload the things that they felt like
11:28
they couldn't say out loud about the toxic workplace dynamics or
11:33
one woman was struggling with menopause symptoms and just felt
11:38
like even saying it out loud in a work setting or to her manager
11:42
who is a man. And then his manager was a man
11:44
and his manager was a man. Going up that chain was like
11:48
probably all the way to Satya was like, you know, often times
11:53
in engineering teams, it's the chain of leadership is men all
11:57
the way up. And I'll never forget this
12:00
woman, you know, reaching out and talking about some of the
12:05
things she was going through with energy shifts and emotional
12:10
shifts and really learning about this season in her life, about
12:16
menopause and that she just felt like she could not get the kind
12:19
of support or share about what she was going through and work
12:23
context because of sexism and ageism, right?
12:28
You know, that was like like sort of a whisper chain of women
12:32
in leadership in one business that I was in that literally
12:36
like resulted in that like a giant like 35 play page plus
12:42
report that I think escalated to HR and was part of it was
12:46
published in the Business Insider about some of the toxic
12:50
dynamics of men in leadership on the team.
12:53
But people felt too scared to make direct confrontations or
13:00
were having not not they were feeling pretty gas lit when they
13:04
did make those direct complaints, right.
13:06
So having to do this kind of underground campaign of
13:11
whispering, like are you experiencing this too yummy, too
13:13
yummy too and putting it together in a report, you know,
13:18
principal and above level women in leadership in this business
13:22
before they were before they got the justice that they needed.
13:27
And yeah, and so many other examples of people, you know,
13:36
really coming to me to unload and needing a safe place to be
13:40
listened to about harm that was happening at work and harm that
13:44
they felt would be exacerbated if they took it to the proper HR
13:49
channels, right. And so I think when HR also
13:53
represents the status quo and de risking DEI, people end up
13:59
becoming the pseudo HR therapist that we are not trained to be.
14:04
But we become the safe space to hear the real deal of where
14:08
violence and harm is happening in the workplace, and people
14:12
need safe channels to get support around it.
14:16
What's wild to me in your story is that you said it's women that
14:20
are principal or higher, which means they're not newbies.
14:25
Right. They've been, you know, like you
14:29
rarely are getting promoted to principal anywhere before your
14:31
mid 30s, which means you've probably put in a solid 10 years
14:34
at work in increasingly senior roles to get there.
14:41
And that you, you still don't feel, and I suspect because
14:45
they're also experiencing menopause, like I suspect
14:47
they're really in their 40s on this chain, that they still
14:51
don't feel like the organization is looking out for them.
14:56
Yeah, yeah, right. And then Can you imagine like
15:01
the early and career women you know are, I think some of them
15:09
who who even knows what kinds of experiences were being missed
15:16
because people just don't feel safe or represented, right?
15:20
Yeah, we're just stuck in these cycles of performance.
15:24
Yeah, yeah. Dalia, super curious.
15:28
Like we just, we just talked about, oh man, you know the
15:33
consequences of this group of women at Microsoft building
15:36
solidarity in coalition with each other, right?
15:38
It made it to the news news and I'm sure had some probably
15:41
negative consequences for their careers.
15:43
But I'm curious, like in your experience, what are some of the
15:48
like really specific behaviors when you think of competition
15:52
over collaboration? What does it actually look like
15:55
in real life? Yeah, I mean, you know, in my
16:00
first week working on this product team at Microsoft, my
16:05
manager was like, hey, I want to send you into this like core
16:09
engineering meeting. I want you to learn a little bit
16:11
more about like what's being built, what's the what's
16:14
happening on the products stack. Like you'll be in the room with,
16:19
you know, some of the, the leadership team and the XLT and
16:24
just get a sense of what's happening on the product side of
16:28
the house, which I think will help inform the culture.
16:30
And, you know, it was such a high level of technical
16:34
language. Like I would say that I
16:36
understood maybe 15% of what was actually being talked about in
16:39
the meeting. Like it was total and
16:41
engineering jargon that and super technical.
16:45
And so I started just keeping a tally of who was speaking and I
16:50
started timing for how long. And this was virtual, so I
16:53
wasn't doing this in front of people in a room, but it was
16:59
really amazing to. And then I started tracking
17:02
like, OK, who are the repeat speakers?
17:04
How much time are they speaking? And I was like, Oh my gosh,
17:09
there's first of all, so few women in an engineering space
17:13
and in a leadership space. So many of them get literally
17:17
cut off in the middle of something that they're saying.
17:21
And like, I, I watched like the time stamps and the amount of
17:26
times that women were able to even hold the floor with
17:31
interjecting, with speaking, with not being interrupted was
17:34
so disproportionately less than the men.
17:41
And some of that was just like numbers of who, how many women
17:45
engineers and women leaders are there, which is pretty abysmal.
17:47
And that was, I shouldn't have been shocked by it, but I think
17:52
I was surprised, you know, as someone who like has been a
17:55
community organizer and done a lot of racial justice work, I
17:58
was ready to come into DEI in 2020 and do some work that felt
18:03
a little bit more liberatory or like that people were ready for
18:07
some more radical racial justice or equity work in the workplace.
18:10
And I was like, oh, the bar is like really on the floor.
18:12
Like this is there are so few women here, much less women of
18:17
color. Like even like, you know, I
18:23
would say the majority of women in leadership were white women.
18:26
But you know, even the cards were just stacked against them
18:30
in some ways. So and then the competition
18:35
within the marginalized communities is real.
18:38
It's really hard. I like again, in my role, I
18:41
stepped into kind of bizarre mediation roles.
18:44
That was like a conflict early on in my time between two women
18:49
that were having this conflict about leadership in like women
18:53
ERG space. And I was like, this is so this
18:58
is kind of heartbreaking. This is like, this is supposed
19:02
to be the space where we lift each other up.
19:04
We find ways to shine, to elevate each other.
19:09
This. Is, but they become fiefdoms,
19:11
right? Like, Oh my.
19:14
Gosh, it was really, yeah, it was really hard.
19:17
Like they were in a a total confrontation about like one of
19:24
them sort of threatening the other's leadership and wanting
19:27
one of them was trying to sort of share the platform.
19:30
And the other one was like feeling like it was getting
19:33
stolen from her. And it was a, you know, and
19:41
these were these were they were comrades and they were at each
19:45
other's throat. It was a really hard situation,
19:47
right? So yeah, these are, yeah, the
19:56
ERG community, sometimes I'm like, these are, this is where
20:00
they want DEI work to be relegated to.
20:02
It's sort of like, let's provide some funding and some of it is
20:07
meaningful so that ERG underrepresented communities in
20:12
corporations and in white collar spaces can have their pizza
20:15
parties and their swag and their T-shirts and feel some sense of
20:19
recognition or and. The EI people get hired as kind
20:23
of camp counselors to lead. The wrong one.
20:26
That's my that's my crude interpretation.
20:31
And, you know, and then there's real like, inequitable politics
20:37
that happen even in those ERG spaces, right?
20:42
Yeah, what, what do you like? What is the reason for the
20:47
competition? And I like the thing that I
20:51
remember the most from my own corporate experience was just
20:55
the necessity on an annual or biannual basis to come up with a
21:01
story of why I was better than everybody else I've worked with.
21:06
You know, like, what about me was the most special thing so
21:10
that I could get a better raise, you know, or I could be at like
21:15
the top of Box 1 instead of somewhere in the middle of the
21:19
pack, which quite frankly, most of us are in the middle of the
21:21
pack anyways because that's how stats works and that's how a
21:24
bell curve works. And so what's.
21:27
Yeah, like what do you know to be true of the the story that
21:31
companies tell us or the sort of corporate world of work tells us
21:35
about why it's important that we compete?
21:38
I mean, first of all, the what you're saying about employee
21:41
resource groups like I think camp counselor, while it feels
21:45
like and edgy read in ways is also really true of how identity
21:51
politics creates like a parental parental fication of employees.
21:58
And I think that there's something when we like blend
22:03
that in a bureaucratic environment, when we're putting
22:07
people in working conditions where you are having to prove
22:13
yourself against other people. All of that is grounds for
22:17
dishonesty. All of that is grounds for
22:21
having to put aspects of who you truly are aside.
22:26
And then you're creating, you know, to, to that example that
22:29
you're giving, you know, to people who are comrades like you
22:31
have all of a sudden you're fighting for resources and
22:35
you're going to, you know, there's repercussions on your
22:37
body, on your sense of self for having to make those sacrifices.
22:41
I think the, the story of why competition is good is at least
22:45
what I've been told for 15 years, is that it's innovation.
22:48
Like, let's build stuff fast. Let's have the little explosions
22:52
and we can innovate together. And again, like I, I just keep
22:58
coming back to the simplicity of when we are dishonest with each
23:02
other about who we are and what we care about, we are going to
23:07
cause harm. That's it.
23:12
And we've created entire systems in large corporations to let
23:18
that harm happen and then push it somewhere else and pay it off
23:22
or whatever. You know, like the system is
23:24
designed around that. And, you know, we say we compete
23:29
so we can innovate, but there's a really, really big cost on us
23:33
that we don't talk about enough. Yeah, Dahlia, what's going on
23:38
near your face? I mean, I think that there I
23:44
really appreciate what Lars is saying.
23:45
I'm I'm like, I think there is this spirit of innovation and
23:52
fail fast, fail forward, fail often.
23:54
Let's like, yeah, let's go for it.
23:57
Let's like innovate, let's try, let's ship, let's test this fast
24:03
moving. You know, you're measured on on
24:06
deliverables like what are you producing at the end of the day,
24:09
right? And I think some of it is
24:12
exciting, some of it's thrilling.
24:14
One of the things that coming from the world of academia
24:17
before the corporate sector that I appreciated about it was there
24:22
was a fluidity and leadership that it results in.
24:25
That can be interesting, where I would meet people who were like,
24:29
oh, yeah, I'm reporting to this person who was my manager, but
24:32
years ago he reported to me. And there's this world in which
24:37
depending on profit and depending on where the business
24:40
directives go, that somebody who was your manager become somebody
24:46
who reports to you. And I was like, that's so
24:48
fascinating, right in the world of very stodgy academia.
24:52
That would never. Would never happen, right?
24:54
There's like never a world where I will will be like in any kind
25:01
of leadership above my dissertation advisor, like he is
25:05
tenured. There is like a very specific
25:08
rung of hierarchies that are totally stodgy and unbreakable
25:13
and you have to climb this slow one directional mountain.
25:18
And so I think that there is this like interesting kind of
25:22
fluidity around hierarchy and leadership that that on one
25:28
hand, I do appreciate. I think that it can it, it's
25:33
humbling. It's like I might be driving a
25:38
product or a feature in a product that for whatever reason
25:43
has a lot of customer stickiness.
25:45
And suddenly I rise to the top of something and then three
25:48
weeks later we realize it's something else.
25:51
And so I'm reporting to that team now like the the tides, the
25:56
the sort of agile nature of we we move in corporate sector with
26:02
like where the money moves and where the people move means the
26:07
leadership and hierarchies sometimes are very fluid, but it
26:13
also can breed toxicity. And people can, yeah, be, can be
26:19
really sheisty can steal from one another, steal ideas, steal
26:23
the microphone. Certain personality types can
26:25
dominate spaces. Like it can just, it can turn
26:29
really quickly toxic and sour. And, you know, sometimes people
26:37
who are collaborating on something are like confronted
26:42
about doing duplicative work from each other.
26:45
And that's where you see like layoffs happening and people
26:48
being trimmed out. And you know, you know the it's
26:53
a double edged sword, right? Yeah, something that I used to
26:55
ask people when they would come to me with complaints, right?
26:59
Like something isn't working, they're not getting along with
27:01
somebody off of their manager. I would say figure out whose
27:05
promotion you're working towards and that's going to help you see
27:11
the root of the problem, right? Because whichever director's
27:15
promotion you're working towards, those priorities are
27:19
going to win out. And if you want to protect
27:22
yourself in an organization flow with that person because what
27:28
they want like even if it is duplicating some other right
27:33
team's work, that's what's going to fly.
27:35
And I think about that a lot, like, especially in a moment
27:38
like right now where we're just seeing seeing such massive
27:43
layoffs, not just in tech, but like across all sectors, but
27:47
possibly the exception of healthcare that, yeah, who's
27:51
like, who's ready to move up? Like if you're not on their team
27:55
and if you're not in the current with them, you're not you're not
27:59
rising in the organization. One of the things that I'm sure
28:03
all of us have heard people say is, you know, I can't afford to
28:07
speak up. I can't afford to speak up.
28:09
I have a family. I'm the breadwinner.
28:12
I have a mortgage. I'm a caregiver.
28:15
I can't afford to speak up. What do you, what do you think
28:18
of that? Is it, is it a real excuse?
28:21
Is it a real constraint? I mean, it's a choice, right?
28:25
It's, you know, I think about this with, you know, in October
28:31
of 2023, when, you know, the genocide of Gaza began, there
28:38
was like a community, Palestinians at Microsoft
28:41
community that were trying to come together and do even
28:48
something as benign as like a cultural awareness of like
28:51
here's who we are as Palestinians.
28:53
Here's what the symbolism of the material is on a kufia, like it
28:59
represents fishing line, it represents olive trees.
29:05
Here is our history, here's our story.
29:08
The conversations that I was Privy to in those like the
29:14
amount of ratification they had to go through with HR telling
29:19
them what they could say, what they could not say.
29:23
And then some staff members who are like, I, I'm scared.
29:28
I've got team members who are Israeli.
29:31
I've got, you know, I'm going to get dragged for this or I'm
29:36
going to lose my job for speaking to this.
29:38
And, and I'm supporting my elders and I'm sending money
29:42
back to Palestine. And I'm like, I have a real
29:47
choice to make about whether I want to be vocal in this moment
29:50
or not. And, you know, respect, I think
29:55
it's a really, really impossible, hard choice to make.
29:58
Like a lot of us, you know, as Lars said, sometimes those white
30:02
collar jobs do feel like game changing.
30:04
Like that relief of I've got a security net for my family.
30:09
And so many of us in this sandwich generation are
30:13
caregiving, caregiving our kids, caregiving our elders, you know,
30:18
living in cities where mortgages are outrageous.
30:23
And so the cost. Of.
30:26
Being outspoken or taking a political stance publicly that
30:32
could cost you could put you on a risk list for a layoff, even
30:37
though the company would probably never say that.
30:40
That's the reason right is a is a liability.
30:45
It's really hard. And we saw a lot of that, right?
30:48
Again, I think we've seen consistently over the last 2 1/2
30:51
years that that is the real reason why people have lost
30:54
jobs, not just like Palestinians or Arabs, but at their allies as
30:58
well. Like, you're not even safe
31:02
wearing a watermelon pen at an ice cream shop, right?
31:05
Like you can get fired there. Where the stakes?
31:08
Are. Negligible.
31:09
Like, what are the stakes? You know, it's not like you're
31:13
doing that on the CES stage. You're just working at an ice
31:17
cream shop or a cookie shop, and we've seen that in our
31:21
community. Yeah.
31:22
And I want to speak to like, maybe the person who is not even
31:30
seeing work yet as a politicized place, like like isn't even yet
31:37
there and saying, you know, family comes first.
31:42
I'm here for my family so I can put bread on the table.
31:46
And so I put up with small, small interpersonal harms to
31:53
harms happening a cotton continent away because family
31:56
comes first for me. And I think that that that
32:00
rationality is, you know, without going too far into the
32:05
rabbit hole, is truly the system, the family system that
32:08
we're in in the United States right now today.
32:12
Family systems haven't always been this way, but the way that
32:14
we are structured in particularly the white collar
32:20
worker who has likely moved away from friends, family, whatever
32:25
that community core unit was that can provide additional
32:29
support to your family. You're expected to pay for the
32:33
services in the absence of other people who would otherwise be
32:37
providing you direct support. And you're, you know, you're not
32:43
only keeping your, you know, the, your capacity to, to be
32:46
able to support your family members in multiple generations,
32:51
but you're also trying to maintain the safety and promise
32:55
of the upper middle class corporate worker.
32:58
And those are really tough conditions, obviously not for
33:04
all workers on a material safety sense, but rough because you do
33:09
have to sacrifice your morality or your values or your capacity
33:14
to care, feel and act on behalf of your own safety or the safety
33:18
of others from that. And I just want to talk to, you
33:22
know, the folks who might be there that.
33:26
Yeah, like, that's that these are the conditions that we're
33:29
in. And it takes it takes education.
33:34
It takes a lot of conversation with other people.
33:37
It isn't just you and your family making a decision about
33:40
do I take risks? Like that actually is untenable.
33:44
That's why we don't. But when you start to hold a
33:47
wider lens of care, when you start to see that your family is
33:51
also impacted by this, that you can see that there's a real
33:56
constraint and pull your lens a little bit further out of just
34:01
family 1st and start taking responsibility for what's
34:04
happening. And that includes widening your,
34:08
your concept of, of what safety looks like with other people.
34:12
And yeah, it's really tough. It's a really, and I think it
34:16
ebbs and flows in life as well of when we can take that risk
34:20
and when we can't. And obviously today we're trying
34:23
to find and offer ways to help people take that risk, but we're
34:29
just deeply in it. What would?
34:33
OK, I'm so curious because I actually haven't spent a lot of
34:38
time inside corporations. I've been an entrepreneur for
34:43
most of the last 1213 years and I've had lots of corporate
34:48
clients, but I think it's very different.
34:50
The two of you spent a lot of time inside corporate America.
34:53
And what would you say? Like what's the invitation for
34:58
somebody who feels like, well, I can't afford to say something
35:02
And you know, 2 1/2 years ago there was genocide starting to
35:06
happen in Gaza. Like now we're we're kind of
35:11
looking at Poly crises. There's another war that's been
35:14
started in Iran. There continues to be just
35:18
catastrophic living conditions in places like Sudan and the
35:22
Congo, right? Our climate like it's, it's a
35:24
lot. And every single day you're just
35:26
like, oh, and here's another drop of the Epstein files and
35:29
what other really gross man that is helping run some big
35:34
corporation or a big department or a country.
35:38
And So what would you say at a moment where it feels important
35:42
for people to actually speak up and at least.
35:44
Start to fix their organizations, their
35:47
institutions. What would you say to invite
35:49
people to find their courage? I think, you know, everyone has
35:55
to like these are these are deeply personal choices.
35:58
And I think some people, you know, it's like code switching.
36:02
I think some people figure out how to keep their head down and
36:08
do the function of their job and separate out what their personal
36:13
politics are in that space. And then they do their activism
36:17
and, you know, have their like reveal what their full value set
36:22
is to community outside of that. And I hope that and I think
36:25
that's basic. I think that's basic survival
36:27
that there is some level of like when you ask Lars that initial
36:32
question of like, how do you feel?
36:33
Like if you imagine the feelings of what does it feel like to
36:37
have this kind of security of a white collar job?
36:39
Like there is I think some level of numbness that I was thinking
36:45
about like a non feeling of this.
36:49
And I mean, I think some people call it also the golden
36:52
handcuffs. Like there is some part, there
36:56
is like a contract that you sign literally and figuratively to
37:03
separate out like courageous revolutionary values from like,
37:09
you know, when you're working for a corporation at the end of
37:11
the day, and it's like you are partaking in like capitalist
37:16
patriarchal structures that are often perpetuating harmful
37:20
things. And there's nothing there's and,
37:23
and so few of us are like, there's no such thing as like
37:25
being completely pure from that, right?
37:28
Like we all like exist in this system and shop at certain
37:35
stores or go certain places or have jobs that have some funding
37:40
or have not divested from certain things.
37:42
Like I can't think of a place that's off off this grid or.
37:47
Like well, you would have to live off the grid entirely in
37:51
Alaska without a government Rd. Right.
37:55
Yeah, right, right. So I think, you know, where can
38:01
we where can we be courageous is such a good question, Aparna.
38:05
And I think there's so many ways to take those steps, like first
38:09
of all, making sure that you have your community that you
38:11
feel safe and building and learning with and, you know,
38:17
practicing mutual aid where you feel like there are spaces where
38:22
you can take up space and make noise about the current systems
38:27
and structures. I think there's always
38:29
boycotting. I think it's effective, it's
38:32
powerful. If you don't feel safe marching,
38:35
like not everyone is an activist that marches in the streets,
38:38
right? But you can make choices around
38:41
where you boycott and divest personally.
38:46
And then my favorite recently and what I have been also really
38:49
excited to activate with my students is around civic
38:52
engagement. And this world of, you know,
38:58
electoral politics is not the most revolutionary as we know.
39:03
But I think it's so important and I wish I had discovered it
39:07
earlier in my life that you don't have to be a lawyer or
39:11
like a policy expert to go down to Olympia or to go walk into
39:16
City Council and to look your elected in the eyes and say, oh
39:21
hell no, not with my tax money. And to be an influencer around
39:26
how policy is made. And I think it's powerful.
39:30
It's important that we know we have access to that and that we
39:33
can, that our voices matter. And so I think there's so many
39:40
channels, right, for people to exercise their civic engagement.
39:46
And I know Aparna, you are also like a part of so much movement
39:49
building and boards and there's so many different ways people
39:54
can plug in if doing it in the workplace doesn't feel safe or
39:59
like the way that people can do it.
40:01
Yeah. Well, and I would say that
40:03
everybody needs to find one or two things that they care about
40:06
deeply, whether that change making is happening at work or
40:09
not, it can happen in community. And then like we we have like
40:13
this is kind of a all hands on deck time and you get to choose
40:17
your ship, right. You get to choose your ship, but
40:20
you cannot choose to just, you know, put the blinders on.
40:24
And that, yeah, that's the piece that I have really, really
40:29
struggled with. I, I would say especially in the
40:31
past year where I've seen a lot of people really lean into
40:36
phrases like, oh, I'm protecting my piece or, you know, like, but
40:40
I'm really up for a big promotion.
40:43
And I, you know, I don't want to jinx it by saying anything
40:45
publicly. And I'm like, yeah, but you
40:47
could still go to City Council. You could still vote.
40:50
You could still knock on doors. You could still, you know, bring
40:54
food to a shelter. Like there's 80 other things
40:56
that you can do that shows other people what your values are,
41:00
even if in this moment you feel stuck about not saying something
41:04
specifically in and around your job.
41:07
I also want to just touch on like this, this idea of saying
41:11
the thing at work, like if if we're feeling like that's not
41:15
that you can't do it. The very first step before you
41:19
even decide that you're going to say anything is to take whatever
41:24
that feeling is that you're having and talk to other people
41:27
about it. You know, the first thing you
41:30
need to do is talk to your Co workers about what they actually
41:34
care about and listen to it. And to your point around the
41:38
numbness is unnumbing yourself around the fact that Co workers
41:43
are going through some form of harm and that harm matters that
41:48
I am responsible and responsive to someone who's experiencing
41:53
harm. And that could be happening
41:54
interpersonally or it can be no Azure for apartheid as a
41:58
campaign, right, which started with just a few people talking
42:02
to each other about the impact of their company perpetuating
42:07
genocide and mass surveillance. Like.
42:09
But the very first step that we can all do, whether you're ready
42:14
to make a move or not, is build the skills around talking to
42:17
you, your Co workers around what they care about.
42:20
Build the skills to listen and practice saying what you care
42:24
about too. It's not a conversation with HR.
42:27
It's a conversation with your neighbor.
42:29
And for someone, for me personally, who it has taken me
42:36
years to unnumb myself, you do get to a point where not acting
42:44
on that care becomes untenable. Not because you as an individual
42:49
have gotten to some place of righteousness or bravery, but
42:53
because you're starting to actually see that your
42:56
experience is collective. You know that like, if it hurts
43:01
you, it hurts me, period. And it takes time to get there,
43:07
but if you're having that that itch or that feeling, just start
43:11
with the conversation and just listen and practice.
43:14
See how you could start to develop that care in yourself.
43:18
OK, it's not going to surprise either one of you.
43:20
But whenever somebody tells me that, you know, they can't
43:24
afford to talk about XYZ, whatever The thing is at work,
43:28
I'll just ask them. I'll say something like, oh,
43:30
what does it feel like to work inside an authoritarian regime?
43:34
And and like the look, the shock on people's faces, they're like,
43:40
no, no, no, but that, but that. But that's not what I mean.
43:42
I'm like, well, tell me what you mean because I just heard you
43:45
talk about how you can't talk about whatever world event is
43:49
happening at your work, right? Like you, you're not putting it
43:54
on slack. You're not, you know, texting
43:56
your Co workers about it. So what does it feel like to
43:59
work inside of an authoritarian regime?
44:01
And I think that that alone is just like pretty eye opening for
44:06
folks in terms of the values of the organization that they're
44:11
embedded in. But don't do it, folks, if you
44:15
don't feel comfortable doing that.
44:16
I think Lars is right though. Like I think so much of this is
44:21
also like, how do you find, how do you find your people?
44:26
How do you find, how do you create culture and workplaces
44:30
where you can speak in an uncensored ways about how you're
44:37
doing, which the personal is political, right?
44:41
And I do feel like, you know, we're in such an unfortunate
44:46
moment. I mean, I think I came into
44:47
corporate DEI, you know, in the wake of George Floyd being
44:51
killed, of Brianna Taylor being killed, when all of my C-Suite
44:57
leaders were like, help me write a statement to the team and like
45:02
sort of announce my human empathy for what's happening for
45:06
Black employees and that they should, can and should take all
45:09
the time that they need right now.
45:11
And there was this wave of kind of normalizing some basic
45:16
humanity, I think around racial inequities in that moment, even
45:21
though it was so basic, right? I think that's the these lessons
45:25
we're learning right now in this like peel back and revoking of
45:30
DEI is that like DEI was such a baseline.
45:35
It was like, we know the bar is on the floor and we're like
45:38
lifting an inch. Yeah.
45:42
And now we're in these times, right, where you're not, you
45:45
know, you're not supposed like the list of words you're not
45:47
supposed to say and which includes women, which includes
45:51
women federal. Government, which includes
45:53
women. Girl, don't even get me started
45:58
on the words, right? And you know, like gone, even
46:03
though I was rolling my eyes at like, the industrial complex of
46:06
statement writing, Like I would rather have the attempt at
46:11
statements than the silence that we're in now, right?
46:16
And the chill around what we are allowed to say and not say.
46:24
And what does it mean to find your people to talk to at work,
46:32
you know, in these times where also campuses and universities
46:37
are being policed for having, I mean, people are being punished
46:41
for having kind of like equitable DEI programs, right?
46:47
Like federally audited? Yeah, yeah.
46:50
Well, I saw in the news last week that big Seattle area
46:55
philanthropist had actually asked the University of
46:59
Washington back a gift that she had given the Israel Studies
47:04
program because the endowed chair took a position, a pro
47:11
Palestinian position. Not an anti Israeli position,
47:16
but a pro Palestinian position. And this philanthropist asked
47:21
for $5 million back like I and I think that happened five years
47:24
after she had made the gift and the university did.
47:29
The university returned it. And that is such a concrete form
47:35
of policing because we're literally being told that your
47:39
assets are going to be taken away from you if you say
47:42
something that's counter to not what the status quo thinks or
47:46
believes, but what the people with power and wealth think or
47:50
believe. We've been talking about a lot
47:53
of really heavy things. I want to switch gears and I
47:57
want to meet him with us to a more hopeful place with some
48:00
rapid fire. So we're going to try and go
48:02
through this pretty fast. I have a couple of questions for
48:05
both of you. Doctor Perez Dalia, you go first
48:09
and then Lars. And so the first one is this.
48:13
Finish the sentence. The white collar workers
48:16
greatest superpower, if they choose to use it, is what
48:24
Flexibility. Flexibility, Lars.
48:35
Verbal influence. Verbal influence.
48:38
OK, second prompt. What is your favorite corporate
48:43
phrase? Ours is obviously.
48:44
Let's circle back. Dalia, what's your favorite
48:48
corporate phrase? I mean.
48:57
Is it teamwork? Doesn't seem work.
49:06
So cheesy, So cheesy. That is my first time hearing
49:09
that. Teamwork makes the dream work.
49:13
Yeah, there's a couple versions of it.
49:14
Teamwork. Does it work?
49:15
Teamwork. Productivity hack?
49:19
Wow, oh wow. Can you even go after that?
49:27
Well, I just like as a also like learning and development
49:31
leadership development facilitator.
49:33
I love when we put things in the parking lot.
49:37
I love the parking lot. Let's let's parking lot this I
49:41
just it's a full parking lot too.
49:43
We're really. It's an overflow.
49:46
Parking lot and cars. OK, the third prompt, what is a
49:50
corporate phase that why Co workers say that actually means
49:55
I'm scared or I'm worried. What's the stand in?
50:02
OK, I'll tell you mine. Mine is.
50:05
I want to be strategic. About this, I mean my rapid fire
50:13
answer was I'm going off camera. I'm going off camera, Lars, what
50:19
do you have? We need leader buy in.
50:22
Let's get some leader buy in on this.
50:24
Let's get some leader buy in, OK?
50:27
What's one thing the system never told white collar workers
50:31
about their own power? One thing the system never told
50:43
people. I think it would have to be.
50:51
I don't know how to sum this up, but that we sometimes our
50:56
everyday knowledge, especially as people who don't come from a
50:59
background of white color work, is like the brilliance that
51:03
white color spaces actually need.
51:06
Yes, 100%. Beautiful.
51:16
They don't want you to know that saying no actually does impact
51:22
the company's culture and trajectory.
51:26
OK. Yeah, you can.
51:28
Actually does change things. OK, saying no matters.
51:32
All right, here's the last one. If you could say one sentence
51:35
directly to every white collar worker listening right now about
51:39
what's possible on the other side of having a scarcity
51:43
mindset, what would it be? I would say that at the end of
51:53
the day, you are valuable, you are brilliant and even if they
52:02
lay you off tomorrow, there is something else waiting for you
52:06
on the other side of this. Yeah, thank you for that.
52:10
Yeah, there's something else waiting for you on the other
52:12
side of it, and it might not even be something that you
52:15
thought was possible. And Dahlia, you're the living
52:19
proof of that. Here you are on the other side
52:24
of it. OK, folks, we're coming to an
52:28
end of this episode and we and every episode with a take away
52:32
and a call to action. And the call to action is
52:35
something anybody can do if they decide to do it.
52:38
What would it mean if white collar workers saw each other as
52:43
the bridge, not an obstacle to collective liberation?
52:48
What's what do they need to let go of to get there?
52:53
And we'll start with you, Dalia. Yeah, I think.
52:56
I'm building off something that Lars was talking about earlier
52:59
about how can you take rearrange time and space in your
53:07
interactions in the white collar world to have more humanity.
53:13
So whether it's building in 5 minutes at the beginning of a
53:17
brand new one-on-one with somebody to ask them about their
53:21
origin story, who are you, where are you from offering up things
53:25
about yourself. I'm the daughter of immigrant
53:27
and refugee families. I grew up in the Pacific
53:29
Northwest. Things, really simple things.
53:33
I remember making space for that in my initial one on ones and
53:38
hearing feedback from people that they were so happy to have
53:43
this kind of human centered conversation and they hadn't had
53:46
a conversation for a while in the workplace that was about
53:50
kind of their roots or their origin story rather than the
53:53
bottom line of what we have to get them together.
53:56
And I think that can really bridge into building more
54:00
authentic friendship and relationship in the workplace
54:02
and solidarity when things happen that you really need to
54:06
speak out. About.
54:07
Thank you, Lars. Do you have one for us?
54:12
I do stop making your career about you as an individual
54:19
person, which feels kind of weird for me to say because I
54:26
don't know. Just it's, it's hard for me to
54:28
say because I think I have to. I'm learning this too.
54:30
But the reality is that your career, your sense of safety is
54:35
not individually yours. Everything that we have is
54:41
because of the relationships that we have with other people.
54:45
And so when we start to think about how we survive in this
54:48
world as a shared experience, then I think we're can start to
54:53
create more room to be creative and more caring about how we see
54:57
our own career. That squeeze might look a little
55:00
bit different. So an action would be get a
55:04
group of friends together, like 3 people, whatever you want to
55:07
do, and just literally play it out.
55:09
You're just in like play space where you ask each other, if we
55:14
looked at our financial security and our careers all together,
55:19
what kind of different moves will we be willing to take?
55:23
If we expanded the collective responsibility of how we support
55:28
each other, how would our lives look different?
55:31
And just be in that dreams dreamscape and see what comes
55:35
up. And you might be surprised what
55:37
you actually want in your life. You might be surprised what you
55:40
actually might think is possible in your life.
55:43
Doesn't mean that it can be a reality tomorrow, but widen a
55:47
little bit and see what it feels like.
55:50
That's so beautiful. And from the top of it, I like
55:55
my first instinct was like, am I going to pay for somebody else's
55:58
rent? Like is that the ask?
56:01
Is that what me suggested? And by the end of it, I was
56:06
like, yeah, why not? Why not?
56:10
If I'm making gobs of money, like, why not?
56:13
I mean, yeah, of course I would buy somebody else's groceries
56:18
because it's not somebody else. Like, it's a person that I love
56:21
and care about and want thriving in this world.
56:24
That was OK I'm going to try this exercise, Dahlia.
56:29
Maybe we'll try together on Sunday when we gather with our
56:32
little kids here. OK, folks, that was episode
56:37
number 3 of the Circle Back Club.
56:40
Today we talked about the fear of losing it all and what we as
56:47
workers do and don't do in service, protecting what we
56:50
have. We talked about competition.
56:52
We talked about silence. We didn't have a chance to talk
56:57
about what happens to our bodies when we're making those choices.
57:01
So we're going to save that for another episode.
57:03
And we invited you to ask whether the thing that you're
57:09
protecting is actually protecting you back.
57:12
Thank you so much, Doctor Dalia Perez.
57:17
Before we really end, where can people find you if they want to
57:22
find you? You can find me at Doctor Dalia
57:24
Perez. On LinkedIn.
57:26
OK, great. All right, folks, find her on
57:30
LinkedIn. And next week, we're going to go
57:32
deeper into what corporations and organizations don't want you
57:35
to know and how they shape expectations, design cultures.
57:40
We're going to talk a lot about social contracts at work.
57:44
And if this episode landed for you, send it to one person at
57:48
work who needs to hear it from you.
57:50
Leave us a review. And if you want to bring this
57:53
conversation into your organization, you can reach out
57:56
to us at Hello at Circle Back dot Club.
58:00
And if you have a story you want to share with us, you can send
58:04
us an e-mail or a voice memo as well.
58:07
I'm Aparna. I'm Lars.
58:09
And we'll be circling back with you.