Latest / Authentic Living / Gender Parity and the ROR: Return On Relationships (Part II) with Emily Nichols

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Gender Parity and the ROR: Return On Relationships (Part II) with Emily Nichols · Authentic Living

• 0:01
  Welcome to authentic living with Roxanne, a place where we have as conversations about
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  things that really matter in our lives.
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  And now here's your host, Roxanne Derhodge.
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  Our interview last week was so good that we decided to turn it into a 2 part series.
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  If you missed last week, you'll find the link in the show notes.
• 0:45
  It's not mandatory that you listen, but we wanna make sure that you don't miss out on this
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  amazing conversation.
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  Everyone, it's Roxanne Derhodge.
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  Thanks for tuning in again this week.
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  Today, I have a colleague, Emily Nichols, and Emily and I are privileged to be able to the
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  members of the Canadian associates, you know, professional speakers.
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  Emily, welcome, to authentic living with Roxanne.
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  Thanks.
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  I'm so happy to be here.
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  I was actually able to spend some in person time with Emily.
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  This, last weekend where, the we had our social for, caps, like we call it in my backyard,
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  which was amazing just to catch up with everyone.
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  So everybody brings an amazing background and, I often say that It's amazing that we have the
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  younger generation coming up, and some of the things that she may have potentially or we'll
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  be touching on in her career.
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  I've probably lived with, for a lot longer being just a wee bit older than Emily.
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  And today Emily is a professional, a keynote speaker and professional engineer.
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  So one of the the fields that impacts what she does with her speaking today and she's the
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  owner of a company called technical skills for professional people.
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  Am I getting that wrong, Emily?
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  Human skills for technical people.
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  Oh my goodness.
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  I I just said to her, make sure to keep me on track.
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  And, of course, I went off track.
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  You talked a little bit about, the call to action for men in our lives.
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  So what tell me a little bit about what you think would be helpful for men that can kind of
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  move, you know, the the needle around further along in in reference to language.
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  Well, you know, it's like this, Roxanne, when people hear me or see me, a woman in
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  engineering, speaking about being a woman in engineering, they often jump to the assumption
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  that my target audience is women in engineering.
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  And I'm so glad you asked this question because my target audience is is not primarily women in
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  Engineering.
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  Certainly, I'm hearing from some women that this is an empowering message that that it's
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  it's helpful that they can relate, that they feel like they're not the only one, and that's
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  fantastic.
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  But but I really think that well, less than 15% of practicing engineers in Canada are women.
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  So if I was only speaking to the women, I can't move the needle that much.
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  Right?
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  So that's the first thing is that just by sheer numbers, we need we need men to pay attention.
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  We need men to participate in making more gender equal workplaces and making women more
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  welcome.
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  Their words shape our world simply because of numbers.
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  And it's, you know, it's a challenge for men.
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  They they're by and large are in workplaces that work just fine for them.
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  And sometimes I say that when business as usual works well for you, really hard to see how
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  business as usual is not working well for other people.
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  So starting with language is a is a great place to start.
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  Dropping that word, guys, stop lumping the women in with the men.
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  We don't necessarily want to, always just have to fit in and blend in.
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  And let's not forget non binary folks as well.
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  Right?
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  And we're not talking about a gender binary anymore.
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  And I made that point in my in my TED Talk as well because sometimes when people hear my
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  message, they might be inclined to just revert to the old ladies and gentlemen.
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  As a greeting.
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  Right?
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  And so I wanted to remind people that that that's not very inclusive either.
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  And If for a for a demonstration of why, I guess the thing is that I'm advocating for less
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  gendered language because I would love to see a less gendered workplace.
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  You talk about being in this bid meeting and being the only woman in the room.
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  And You know, sometimes I find that if, you know, the only woman in the room at work, you
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  know, we have challenges with that, like you described, but but it's manageable.
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  We can navigate it.
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  Now when the work world intersects with social occasions, now it gets really confusing.
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  One sales trip that, I sometimes tell this story.
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  I went on a sales trip.
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  I was, a senior leader in manufacturing, and I went with the salesperson to visit a client,
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  and we arrived there the evening before we were gonna have the meeting.
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  So we all went out for dinner together.
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  So now I'm meeting the client for the first time, and it's dinner.
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  So I decided I was gonna wear a skirt that evening.
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  And the assumption of the people we were meeting was that I was the salesman's wife.
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  You know?
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  And that's just that I find that really frustrating that, You're expected to, you know,
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  at work, you can get by.
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  You can dress kind of neutral or whatever, and you're not gonna be wearing skirts in a
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  factory, so no big deal there.
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  But then in a social occasion, you know, the idea of being a woman, people kind of expect
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  you to dress in a certain way, or if you do, then they they decide that you're not part of
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  the business You see what I'm saying?
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  Like, if it's it's confusing to navigate, we just need we just need the men in our lives to
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  to use inclusive language and open their minds to the many ways there are to be a woman or
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  better yet, like, let's leave gender out of it.
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  There are lots of situations where we can leave gender out of it.
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  Not not that I'm saying we should leave gender behind because it's important when we talk
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  about fit.
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  Personal protective equipment and and things like that.
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  But, when we're thinking about a job and who can do the job or who we expect to be in the
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  job.
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  It it doesn't need to be a gendered thing.
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  Well, I remember reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, and he talked about Maestro's.
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  I don't know if you've ever read that particular book.
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  I forget which one it was in.
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  And he talked about with Maestro's, right, and what they did he did did did the social
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  experiments where they actually started to, you know, put the Maestroves behind a white screen.
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  And what happened was that a woman actually was the Maestro behind the screen that won.
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  And even after she won, what happened is every everybody was still referring to her as mister.
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  Even though clearly she had blown everybody out of the water, and she was trying to obviously
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  put that point across that if you see me or you, Emily, we're gonna automatically, you
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  know, make assumptions based on, what we see Right?
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  And, you know, and it it and that and we all have, inbred biases that have come from our
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  socialization.
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  And we're there's so many things, you know, and that experiment was brilliant in that what
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  happened after that, the orchestras implemented that particular strategy so that then it was a
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  blind audition so nobody could make preconceived decisions prior to the Maestro
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  kinda going up there and, you know, doing his or her thing, they just was not able to see,
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  the gender pair, you know, the gender of the individual.
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  And now it's something that's done, globally with Maestro's.
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  So That's an example of a I'm gonna say systemic shifts that, you know, allow people to
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  recognize it's about, you know, who's the best person, with the skill to fit that position
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  versus all these kind of inherent next steps that we go through.
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  Before we kind of get to the point where we get in front of that individual.
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  And I was I found that very, very powerful.
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  I believe it was, his for one of his first books that that particular experiment was in.
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  Yeah.
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  That's that's great.
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  And so let's tie that back to language.
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  Right?
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  It's it's, it's an outcome.
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  And and so this is, again, why I'm talking about languages because it's something that's
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  accessible to everybody.
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  That's a great experiment, but some people will say, well, I'm not a leader, or I don't have a
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  budget, or I don't make the policy.
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  You know?
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  And that's why language is such a powerful thing.
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  Again, going back to the call to action for the men in our lives, what if you start with your
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  words?
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  You know?
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  And by changing your words, you hopefully are changing your thoughts.
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  I mean, usually the thoughts come first and then the words.
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  And so if you're changing if you notice the words, then that kind of works backwards to
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  change the thoughts and then forwards to change the words and then the actions.
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  Right?
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  So, if we if we change our words, then that becomes a signal to other people as well.
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  And that's, you know, what you're talking about with the Maestro's.
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  We say the conductor maybe instead of the Maestro.
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  Right?
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  It's a little bit more gender neutral word perhaps.
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  And, you know, I think it's really fun to figure out what are the words we can use
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  instead.
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  So I said in my talk, you know, most of the time you can just drop the word guys.
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  We we think we need a word to fill in there.
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  Most times you just don't need it.
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  You don't need a word at all, but if you do need a word, and I read at a time, you know, a
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  TED Talk has to be maximum 18 minutes.
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  I so much more to say about this, but the kinds of words you could use instead, the ways you
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  can be creative, in terms of referring to people as a group by where they're from or what
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  job they're doing, you know, hey, podcasters or, you know, something like that.
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  There are lots of lots of fun things we can do.
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  But, yeah, it's it's it's great to start with the words, and it's a signal to everybody
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  around you that you really are thinking about it.
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  And this concept didn't come to me accidentally, you know, Roxanne.
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  It's, my husband is an engineer as well.
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  And, for gosh.
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  We've been together 20 years anyway.
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  And, I've been correcting him for a long time.
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  Anytime there was a a generic, like, anytime he was referring to somebody who was not
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  physically present, like, you know, the the delivery guy, the whatever, the landscape guy
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  or something.
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  You know?
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  Well, are you sure?
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  It's a guy?
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  I would always ask him this.
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  Like, anytime it happened, did you see the person?
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  Do you know for sure?
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  So this is a neat way to kind of disrupt people's thinking without being, you know, too
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  critical because, you don't want I like to do it as an invitation, right, and that's I don't
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  wanna go around shutting on people.
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  I like to do it as an invitation.
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  So so you know, adding little humor, asking people, are are you sure that was really a guy,
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  then it kind of works.
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  Talk a little bit about, the different places that you speak and if there are senior, level
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  leaders with the capacity to make, strategic change within their environments.
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  What kind of things should they be thinking about overall, Emily?
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  As they, you know, and some people are gonna go, woah.
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  Where do you want me to begin miss Nichols?
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  Because that could be overwhelming.
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  It's kinda like the flood gates.
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  What kinds of things might you tell them to start to consider, about some basic thought
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  patterns around making some of the shifts that you suggest same.
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  Are you're referring to the shifts in language to begin with?
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  Yeah.
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  The shifts in language or if they do have, you know, policy that might come about with time,
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  what kind of things should they be think?
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  Let's say they are in a you know, manufacturing plant for for instance, what might they be
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  considering versus, you know, maybe it's you know, hydro, right, which again would be mostly
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  male environments.
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  What kinds of things should they start start to think to start to think about in order to
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  implement some of the things that you're suggesting, which is I'm gonna say the first
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  step into an overall change that we're hoping that, you know, as we go in 5, 10, 15 years,
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  there's gonna be more of that neutrality or disparity less disparity and more equality.
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  Sure.
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  Well, I mean, I think that pay equity is one of the most basic things that someone who's able
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  to set policy, can take care of right away.
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  You know, that's a study across the company to see who's doing what jobs and who's getting
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  paid what for those jobs.
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  And let's make sure that women are getting paid equally for equal work.
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  That's That's an important start.
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  Now some of these other things are capital investments.
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  You know, I've worked in factories where, like I said, there wasn't a change room for women.
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  They didn't have shower facilities for women, but they did in the men's locker room.
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  So I think companies see that as kind of a big hurdle.
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  Right?
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  You need to make space for it.
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  You need to invest some capital dollars in it.
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  And I've heard, people say, well, you know, we we ask the women who work here, and they don't
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  wanna shower at work.
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  Well, okay.
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  But what about the next woman who walks through the door?
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  You know?
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  So so I guess my next, piece of advice or my next invitation would be, like, Let's think
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  about the people who do not work for you yet.
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  How do you entice them in?
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  How do you bring them in and make them feel welcome on day 1?
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  Because I tell you, when you walk into a place on day 1 and it's lacking the basic facilities
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  for you, it's clear nobody has been thinking about you.
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  Before you joined.
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  Right?
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  And and, so so that's really important.
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  Let's make sure that there are facilities there.
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  It seems a little bit surprising to me that we have regulations for how many bike racks we
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  need to put outside of a new manufacturing plant.
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  But there's no regulation in terms of the facilities we need to put inside for the people
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  who work there.
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  You know, in terms of of providing for for all genders.
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  Now the other thing we wanna refer back to these stories told earlier, me about the the
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  dinner before the sales meeting and and you at this this, with this bid team.
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  We need to think about our ideas of what a leader looks like or what our next principal
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  engineer looks like.
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  Doesn't even necessarily need to be a leadership as But when talking about
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  opportunities for promotions, you're absolutely right.
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  We have these ideas in our minds of who we expect to be in a job and what that person
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  looks like.
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  And so this example you gave about the Maestro's and it being a blind audition, know,
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  we can't we can't always do that in the workplace.
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  We know who the people are, who are up for promotion, but I think it's really important to
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  self reflect and ask ourselves.
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  Am I leaning towards this person because they fit my preconceived idea of what a leader looks
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  like or what a good fit on this team is because it's easier to hire somebody who looks like us
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  and sounds like us, and I agree with our ideas, then then somebody we might not feel like we
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  understand as much or somebody we might not hang out with outside of work.
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  And, so I think that's something important to reflect on.
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  Yeah.
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  Because familiarity, does not take the entire picture into account.
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  Right?
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  So I think you're so right.
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  In that, you know, I know with me and and this is talking about, you know, of course, of
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  course, the racial identity.
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  Back in in the, mid nineties, I was one of the only non white female executives in that role.
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  And, you know, and then, you know, I thought nothing of it.
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  So I grew up in Trinidad and, you know, my you know, president was black.
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  My dentist was was Chinese.
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  You know, I had everything around me, and I grew up very cosmopolitan.
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  Even though I would say there was a backdrop of colonialism that was inherently there, but I
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  kinda, you know, grew up with any insurance, and then I came to North America.
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  And then it was like, wow.
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  They're, you know, I heard the languaging, and I'm, you know, I'm gonna date myself when I was
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  in grade 13 people going, well, you know, well, I'm not, you know, people not thinking about
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  that they could do different roles when they were female.
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  And I'd be like, like, this is me.
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  I'm like, well, why?
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  I I I didn't get it because I said, why can't you go on to, you know, you know, go on to be,
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  you know, the the male nurse or whatever because, again, I had had a different frame
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  with my upbringing, coming in, and I heard a lot of people even talking about they weren't
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  going to go on to further education.
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  And I'm like, oh, why not?
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  If you're, you know, if you're smart enough and you're at this level.
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  So it it sometimes you're so right when you talk about belief systems and the space that we
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  all get exposed to.
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  And for me, when I was an exemptive, I I thought nothing of it, but then I realized.
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  When I looked around, I went, oh, I'm kind of in here.
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  Right?
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  And it didn't deter me.
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  I think because of some of the, obviously, the my different upbringing, but for for someone
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  that was more, say, brought up in gender specific expectations or roles or racialized
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  kind of environment.
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  Different mindset.
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  So I think we have so many things that we could be doing around, like you said, capacity.
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  Right?
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  Like, what is someone's ability?
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  What is their capacity?
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  And, yeah, like, to your point, what what is a what is a leader?
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  And what what are they in whatever realm supposed to look like other than, like, you
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  know, I talk a lot about, capacity and leadership and, knowing yourself as a leader,
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  but it's it's a thought internal space that you go into.
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  To be able to connect and do the best that you can with whatever whatever that gift is that
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  you have, right, whether it's an engineer or a nurse or receptionist or, you know, the
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  personnel of the oil rigs, like, you know, all those things, because then the possibilities
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  that we would open up for, our younger generations are are amazing.
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  Mhmm.
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  Yeah.
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  Luckily, I know that everybody's gonna wanna you know, see this TED Talk.
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  So, we will put a link, but there's a is there anything else before we wrap up?
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  Because we've talked a lot about language.
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  But is there any actual, like, words of wisdom that you wanna leave behind for people that are
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  listening to this, whether they're on the whether they're in a frontline capacity or
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  whether they're in leadership that you'd like to kind of leave a message behind before we
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  kind of wrap up today.
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  Sure.
• 20:26
  Well, so Roxanne, first of all, I I just want to make an offer that, you know, this this TED
• 20:34
  Talk is an invitation.
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  Right?
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  It's an invitation for people to re examine their own words.
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  And what I have found as I do this talk in person is that it seems to me that the changing
• 20:44
  of hearts and minds often happens in the Q and A afterwards.
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  So many times we see a great TED talk online.
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  We don't necessarily think about having a conversation with that speaker, right?
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  But I just want to let people know that certainly they're welcome to to get in touch if
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  they'd like to bring that conversation into their organization, and we can do that.
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  But what I really want to leave your audience with today is how this connects with with your
• 21:08
  latest book, the return on relationships, because this is this is a really key point.
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  You know, we're not we're not just talking about changing our words so that we can be
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  politically correct or changing our words so that, it sounds right.
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  This is really about relationships.
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  Words, I think this is a I think this is a Steven Pinker quote words don't just point to
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  things.
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  They're saturated with feelings, and they don't just move ideas from one head to the next.
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  They help us navigate the relationship.
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  So really this is the power of words to bring you a return on your relationships.
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  Because your words are a signal to the people around you about whether you're truly thinking
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  about their experience.
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  And so let's think about why it's so important to pay attention to our words and also to feel
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  comfortable to ask people because so many people are afraid of getting it wrong.
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  So let's be honest, so many men are afraid of getting it wrong, and I would just like to make
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  it more okay, to make mistakes and ask questions.
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  You know, even after giving the TED Talk, I'm sometimes surprised that people are hesitant
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  to, you know, to come up to me afterwards and ask a question or say, what about this
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  situation?
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  You know what?
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  We're only gonna move this needle.
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  If we get it all out in the open, we have conversation, we make mistakes, we screw it up,
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  we we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and and get back to making change.
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  Absolutely.
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  And I I often say with the ROR, it's it's about connecting to that deep internal space, heart
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  to heart, right?
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  And once you're able to do that, it it it, you know, it kind of separates the white noise and
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  you get to know that individual, at a fundamentally deep level that allows you to,
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  seek capacity in each and every person versus gender or you know, racialize elements, all
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  those, you know, if I'm able to connect on a deep level, the possibilities are endless with,
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  with others.
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  And as a leader, if when when, I don't say it, but when they do, what beautiful things can
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  happen regardless of whether it's a, you know, you know, a manufacturing plant to, you know,
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  kind of the boardroom.
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  It doesn't matter.
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  That's something that's, it's a beautiful gift about that we have as as, human beings to be
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  able to connect.
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  So Emily, This has been amazing.
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  Please, please, please check out the TED Talk.
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  We will put the link in the show notes.
• 23:46
  Reach out.
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  Have conversations.
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  Get them comfortable.
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  Step into it because, you know, the possibility is endless because I often say, you know, when
• 23:55
  we create the spaces for conversations.
• 23:57
  There's no, you know, we we we might step into it for a little bit, but we learn so much even
• 24:04
  when we make a mistake.
• 24:06
  So I invite individuals, have the conversations about the things that are uncomfortable because
• 24:10
  you might actually find, the person on the other end has a so much grace to be able to to
• 24:16
  afford you the space to learn a lesson.
• 24:19
  So again, thanks for tuning in.
• 24:21
  And what have I been up to?
• 24:22
  I've launched my book.
• 24:25
  ROR like everyone's calling to return our relationships.
• 24:28
  If you'd like to learn a little bit about how you connect at home or at work, What I'd
• 24:33
  suggest is just go to my website roxanderhodge.com forward slash quiz.
• 24:38
  Just you'll get a link.
• 24:39
  You can assess your capacity to be connected and we'll send you a little mini report and,
• 24:45
  next steps for where if you wanted to enhance things further.
• 24:49
  Again, Emily, take care and everyone We'll chat with you again next week.
• 24:53
  Bye bye.
• 24:54
  Thanks for tuning in to authentic living with Roxanne.
• 24:58
  Crew the space for positive, healthy change.
• 25:01
  Roxanne is a keynote speaker, psychotherapist, and coach to work with Roxanne, visit
• 25:07
  roxannederhaj.com/blueprint.
• 25:11
  We'll see you next time.
• 25:13
  An authentic living with Roxanne.