Finding The Outcomes Of DEI With Lily Zheng (Encore)

Kim Clark: 00:00:00

Hello, and welcome back to communicate like a give

Kim Clark: 00:00:03

a damn. I'm your host, Kim Clark. It's a pleasure to be

Kim Clark: 00:00:06

here. It's an extra special guest that we have today. We

Kim Clark: 00:00:11

have Lily Jiang, and Lily, we're going to talk about this. We're

Kim Clark: 00:00:15

going to talk about their book. We're also going to talk about

Kim Clark: 00:00:18

the article that they contributed in our book, The

Kim Clark: 00:00:21

conscious communicator, the fine art, I'm not saying stupid shit.

Kim Clark: 00:00:25

For some reason, Lilly, I named things with swear words in it. I

Kim Clark: 00:00:29

really don't swear this much. But you know what, I'm

Kim Clark: 00:00:31

passionate about this subject on mocking I apologize for it.

Kim Clark: 00:00:36

Thank you for being with us. And I know you're super passionate

Kim Clark: 00:00:40

about this as well. And we'll talk. That's what we're gonna

Kim Clark: 00:00:43

get into. But please introduce yourself to folks. Yeah,

Lily Zheng: 00:00:46

well, it's a huge pleasure to be here. My name is

Lily Zheng: 00:00:49

Lily Zang, I use they them pronouns. I am a DI strategist,

Lily Zheng: 00:00:54

consultant, and the author of dei deconstructed your no

Lily Zheng: 00:00:58

nonsense guide to doing the work and doing it right. Just a fun

Lily Zheng: 00:01:01

fact. For you, Kim, I was actually gunning hard to have a

Lily Zheng: 00:01:05

swear word in my title. And it turned out my publishers talked

Lily Zheng: 00:01:09

me down from it. You know, sometimes sometimes I wonder,

Lily Zheng: 00:01:13

right? Like about the alternate reality where I did, in fact,

Lily Zheng: 00:01:16

for this one. But, ya know, I am thrilled to have this

Lily Zheng: 00:01:21

conversation with you today, lots to dive into, you know, not

Lily Zheng: 00:01:25

just about the content that I contributed to your book, but

Lily Zheng: 00:01:29

also about this broader conversation that we were just

Lily Zheng: 00:01:32

talking about, before this conversation on dei and

Lily Zheng: 00:01:37

communication, and you know, how leaders can navigate the current

Lily Zheng: 00:01:41

landscape and communicate effectively without being part

Lily Zheng: 00:01:44

of the problem. Yeah, and

Kim Clark: 00:01:46

I found you on LinkedIn, I've read several of

Kim Clark: 00:01:50

your Harvard Business Review articles. I've seen you do a

Kim Clark: 00:01:54

book club for your own book, and do other talks as well. And

Kim Clark: 00:01:59

oftentimes, you're kind of urging communicators and

Kim Clark: 00:02:04

communications to get their act together. And when the I

Kim Clark: 00:02:09

deliberately sought you out, I lost my place in here of where

Kim Clark: 00:02:13

we're at, oh, here it is. It's towards the end of the book,

Kim Clark: 00:02:18

what you contributed was something that you wrote on

Kim Clark: 00:02:20

LinkedIn, as opposed. And it's called diversity, equity and

Kim Clark: 00:02:24

inclusion are outcomes. That's a paradigm shift. For many people,

Kim Clark: 00:02:30

especially communicators who put out diversity reports that list

Kim Clark: 00:02:35

a whole bunch of activities like we're at camp. Yep. Right, like

Kim Clark: 00:02:38

red summer camp. So let's share with us what you're trying to

Kim Clark: 00:02:41

get across with diversity, equity inclusion outcomes. Yeah.

Lily Zheng: 00:02:46

So this is, this is a very strong opinion I have and

Lily Zheng: 00:02:50

it comes from, first of all, we need to understand the backdrop

Lily Zheng: 00:02:56

of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts happening

Lily Zheng: 00:02:59

right now, not just in America, but around the world, in the

Lily Zheng: 00:03:02

sense that they are very performative. What that means is

Lily Zheng: 00:03:07

we have a whole bunch of efforts that are predicated on action

Lily Zheng: 00:03:11

and activity, but not necessarily accountability,

Lily Zheng: 00:03:14

impact or outcomes. And so you see, organizations, leaders, and

Lily Zheng: 00:03:20

so on, putting forward these initiatives, they might start

Lily Zheng: 00:03:23

er, G's, employee resource groups, they might invite

Lily Zheng: 00:03:26

speakers in for talks, they might have courageous

Lily Zheng: 00:03:29

conversations. And that's all well and good. Sometimes I in

Lily Zheng: 00:03:33

fact, recommend companies do these exact things. But many

Lily Zheng: 00:03:37

leaders lose track of the fact that these are all

Lily Zheng: 00:03:41

interventions, these are all things that we do in the hopes

Lily Zheng: 00:03:46

of creating greater diversity, greater equity and greater

Lily Zheng: 00:03:49

inclusion. And like all good social scientists, whenever I

Lily Zheng: 00:03:53

see something like this, my first question is not do people

Lily Zheng: 00:03:57

care? The answer is always yes. But does it work? Because we

Lily Zheng: 00:04:01

can't just be you know, throwing things willy nilly at problems

Lily Zheng: 00:04:04

and expecting that just because we're good people, we've solved

Lily Zheng: 00:04:07

the problem. But it turns out when you dig into it, a lot of

Lily Zheng: 00:04:10

these initiatives simply don't work. They don't increase

Lily Zheng: 00:04:13

diversity. They don't make people feel a greater sense of

Lily Zheng: 00:04:16

inclusion or belonging. They don't address inequity,

Lily Zheng: 00:04:20

discrimination, injustice, all of these things. And so we have

Lily Zheng: 00:04:23

an environment where there's a lot of talk. In fact, there's

Lily Zheng: 00:04:26

sometimes a lot of action, but it's not effective action. And

Lily Zheng: 00:04:32

in the face of all this employees, staff members, junior

Lily Zheng: 00:04:35

employees, they're starting to wise up, they might not see the

Lily Zheng: 00:04:40

hard data, but they feel like you know what, we've had this

Lily Zheng: 00:04:42

conversation for the 10th time this year, and I'm still getting

Lily Zheng: 00:04:47

discriminated against. We've had trainings for the fifth time

Lily Zheng: 00:04:51

this year, and my managers still can't get anything right. Is

Lily Zheng: 00:04:55

this dei work? Doing anything isn't working and in The context

Lily Zheng: 00:05:00

of all this we have communicators, trumpeting and

Lily Zheng: 00:05:03

celebrating all of these dei things happening and saying,

Lily Zheng: 00:05:07

we've made so much progress, we're not going to quantify our

Lily Zheng: 00:05:10

progress. We've done these 10 things. And last year, we only

Lily Zheng: 00:05:13

did eight things. So that's an improvement of two more things

Lily Zheng: 00:05:17

that we did this year, none of which actually work. But they

Lily Zheng: 00:05:20

don't say that part. Right. And, and this, this is a, this is an

Lily Zheng: 00:05:24

existential threat to the effectiveness of dei work, if we

Lily Zheng: 00:05:28

just keep spinning our gears, and not achieving anything.

Lily Zheng: 00:05:32

We're steadily draining the trust of the communities we're

Lily Zheng: 00:05:35

working on behalf of, and contributing to this cynicism

Lily Zheng: 00:05:38

that de I work is just hot air. Right. And so this is why I

Lily Zheng: 00:05:43

contributed that post that section on dei as outcomes, we

Lily Zheng: 00:05:48

need to center all of our work on this very simple question.

Lily Zheng: 00:05:51

What is it achieving? What's changed? What has the initiative

Lily Zheng: 00:05:55

that we proposed? Done? What is different? And if the answer is

Lily Zheng: 00:06:00

we don't know, we can't tell or nothing, then it's on us to do

Lily Zheng: 00:06:03

better, and to do different and to hold ourselves accountable

Lily Zheng: 00:06:08

for designing initiatives that work, rather than simply

Lily Zheng: 00:06:12

throwing the kitchen sink at a wall, not even seeing what

Lily Zheng: 00:06:15

sticks and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Lily Zheng: 00:06:18

Right? Like that's not acceptable in this current

Lily Zheng: 00:06:20

climate, we need to be doing effective dei work. And

Kim Clark: 00:06:25

communications folks are contributing to this vague,

Kim Clark: 00:06:30

ambiguous, nonspecific kind of goals. And some of that is

Kim Clark: 00:06:36

because leaders aren't necessarily I have compassion

Kim Clark: 00:06:41

for leaders to a certain extent, because they didn't get to where

Kim Clark: 00:06:43

they are, because they're awesome at di, you know, and so,

Kim Clark: 00:06:49

and then everyone looks at them, especially during at this, you

Kim Clark: 00:06:52

know, they're getting the summer of 2020, saying do something, do

Kim Clark: 00:06:55

something and they're in over their heads are used to having

Kim Clark: 00:06:58

all the answers. So you don't have answers to this. But I

Kim Clark: 00:07:01

would you work with a lot of CEOs and a lot of C suites, a

Kim Clark: 00:07:04

lot of executives. And so what are some of the more problematic

Kim Clark: 00:07:08

areas that you've seen with your clients and how they communicate

Kim Clark: 00:07:12

DEI efforts, especially from an executive level?

Lily Zheng: 00:07:17

Well, the challenge is that most people aren't able

Lily Zheng: 00:07:20

to quantify their progress, that they don't have good information

Lily Zheng: 00:07:24

on what they achieved. And unfortunately, they also don't

Lily Zheng: 00:07:28

have the perspective to realize that they don't have that

Lily Zheng: 00:07:33

information. And so the biggest assumption I see leaders making

Lily Zheng: 00:07:38

is that everything they try is inherently successful, simply

Lily Zheng: 00:07:42

because they've tried it. And that that undergirds every sort

Lily Zheng: 00:07:47

of communications faux PA, right? It's not that leaders

Lily Zheng: 00:07:51

know purposefully that what they're doing doesn't work. And

Lily Zheng: 00:07:55

they're lying. That's not the case. It's that leaders have no

Lily Zheng: 00:07:59

idea that what they're doing works, and more importantly,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:03

don't care. They don't realize it, they say, Well, of course,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:06

starting an erg would help I have no way of knowing what's

Lily Zheng: 00:08:09

changed or what's different. But I'm sure it's doing something.

Lily Zheng: 00:08:13

I'm sure bringing in a speaker helps in some way. I have no

Lily Zheng: 00:08:15

idea how but I'm sure it's working. And that naive

Lily Zheng: 00:08:19

optimism, I'm sure it's working. I'm sure it's done something

Lily Zheng: 00:08:22

actually gets leaders in a lot of trouble. Because it turns

Lily Zheng: 00:08:25

out, the large majority of these naive interventions, these

Lily Zheng: 00:08:30

poorly designed DEI efforts don't work. In fact, sometimes

Lily Zheng: 00:08:33

they backfire and even cause more harm than good. And so

Lily Zheng: 00:08:39

that's a huge misstep, right? Leaders don't understand that

Lily Zheng: 00:08:42

the bar is actually pretty high. It's not that you can do any dei

Lily Zheng: 00:08:45

thing. And at worst, it'll be ineffective, no, at worst that

Lily Zheng: 00:08:49

actually harms marginalized communities and harms women,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:53

people of color disabled folks clear and transpose folks,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:56

right, like, so. That's mistake number one. I think mistake

Lily Zheng: 00:09:00

number two is that leaders put a lot of their personal stock and

Lily Zheng: 00:09:05

pride in these sorts of initiatives. They say, Well, if

Lily Zheng: 00:09:08

I funded this initiative, then not not only does it have to

Lily Zheng: 00:09:12

work, by definition, because I'm a good person, and of course it

Lily Zheng: 00:09:16

works. But anyone who criticizes me, you must have it out for me.

Lily Zheng: 00:09:21

And so there's this inability to take feedback or criticism, even

Lily Zheng: 00:09:25

if it's like, you know, not malicious at all, even if it's,

Lily Zheng: 00:09:29

Hey, you know, this initiative that you started, we collected

Lily Zheng: 00:09:32

data on it. And it turns out, it's not actually moving the

Lily Zheng: 00:09:35

needle. A lot of leaders take that personal, instead of

Lily Zheng: 00:09:39

saying, Wow, I had no idea let's retool this initiative to make

Lily Zheng: 00:09:43

sure it works. They say, Are you challenging my commitment to

Lily Zheng: 00:09:47

Dei? Are you saying I'm a bad person? Are you saying I don't

Lily Zheng: 00:09:51

care. And so they double down on their ineffective initiative,

Lily Zheng: 00:09:55

they double down on their communication, and it turns into

Lily Zheng: 00:09:59

a sort of PR Our exercise of you know, you versus the leader who

Lily Zheng: 00:10:04

now has a personal stake in in this, this initiative that isn't

Lily Zheng: 00:10:08

working, being seen as positive. And to bring it all back to

Lily Zheng: 00:10:12

communicators, right? Because that's where we started this

Lily Zheng: 00:10:15

conversation. I think, oftentimes communicators are

Lily Zheng: 00:10:18

caught in the crossfire. They also don't have the data, which

Lily Zheng: 00:10:22

we can talk about that being a problem. But as a result

Lily Zheng: 00:10:26

communicators who are doing their jobs, which are, you know,

Lily Zheng: 00:10:29

there's a message that they need to get out and they do a great

Lily Zheng: 00:10:32

job communicating it can inadvertently become essentially

Lily Zheng: 00:10:36

Dei, money launderers, right, taking the complete lack of

Lily Zheng: 00:10:41

progress and laundering it into a nice, shiny set of

Lily Zheng: 00:10:45

communications, which on its own, it's a brilliant, you know,

Lily Zheng: 00:10:48

work of comms work, but in the broad scheme of things,

Lily Zheng: 00:10:53

contributes to the problem and allows leaders to avoid

Lily Zheng: 00:10:56

accountability. And in some ways, that even gaslights, the

Lily Zheng: 00:11:00

marginalized communities that are continually not seeing

Lily Zheng: 00:11:03

progress, because how might it feel like to be a junior

Lily Zheng: 00:11:09

employee, a woman, person of color, a disabled person, a

Lily Zheng: 00:11:12

queer trans person, continually getting discriminated against

Lily Zheng: 00:11:16

week after week, month after month, see nothing change, only

Lily Zheng: 00:11:20

to see your company put out this shiny report saying we've made a

Lily Zheng: 00:11:24

strong stance against discrimination it discrimination

Lily Zheng: 00:11:28

doesn't live here, diversity is woven into the fabric of our

Lily Zheng: 00:11:32

DNA, and we add blink company are proud to be champions of dei

Lily Zheng: 00:11:37

and will continue pushing our industry for like, oh my gosh,

Lily Zheng: 00:11:41

like that. That just makes me feel awful. I mean, it makes me

Lily Zheng: 00:11:45

feel like shit, right? Because I'm here having these awful

Lily Zheng: 00:11:48

experiences. And meanwhile, the only thing my company says about

Lily Zheng: 00:11:51

it, is this laundered PR sounding communications. Yeah,

Lily Zheng: 00:11:56

right. And, and communicators don't want to be part of that

Lily Zheng: 00:12:00

problem. But I don't think enough communicators realize

Lily Zheng: 00:12:03

that, that's on them to speak up and to say, look, I'm not going

Lily Zheng: 00:12:09

to write nice copy for you, unless you are absolutely

Lily Zheng: 00:12:13

certain that the things you're telling me to make good, you

Lily Zheng: 00:12:17

know, to make shiny, are actually real, and you have hard

Lily Zheng: 00:12:21

data to back it up. Comms people need to be accountability

Lily Zheng: 00:12:25

workers, right? Like they they need to be people who are able

Lily Zheng: 00:12:28

to hold the leaders who are giving them things to buff and

Lily Zheng: 00:12:33

make shiny. Yeah, there, they need to be able to hold those

Lily Zheng: 00:12:37

leaders accountable.

Kim Clark: 00:12:39

I agree with everything you said. And thank

Kim Clark: 00:12:41

you for really, you know, just exposing the situation and, and

Kim Clark: 00:12:46

putting the accountability in there. One of the things that I

Kim Clark: 00:12:48

talk about is visibility drives accountability. And that's could

Kim Clark: 00:12:51

be a secret, you know, like a super strength of communicators

Kim Clark: 00:12:54

saying, I'm not going to put out this diversity report, because

Kim Clark: 00:12:58

it's these activities, and there's not these outcomes. And

Kim Clark: 00:13:02

the kind of language that we're using is not how we talk to

Kim Clark: 00:13:06

another human being. It's not even conversational, but it's

Kim Clark: 00:13:09

it's really, really missing depth, which is why my co author

Kim Clark: 00:13:15

and I, you know, talk about the framework of depth, like we have

Kim Clark: 00:13:19

to get below the surface. It's like I can understand if that

Kim Clark: 00:13:22

was like step one years ago, but post George Floyd, unacceptable,

Kim Clark: 00:13:29

not okay. And it also gives leaders this excuse to say CDI

Kim Clark: 00:13:33

doesn't work. Yeah. And that's very frustrating. You know,

Kim Clark: 00:13:39

because communicators. My thing with communicators is, hey, we

Kim Clark: 00:13:44

don't ask communicators, and many of them look like me.

Kim Clark: 00:13:48

Statistically, they look like me. So they don't have the lived

Kim Clark: 00:13:52

experience. They don't have professional experience. They

Kim Clark: 00:13:54

don't have the experience in general to really truly

Kim Clark: 00:13:57

understand what diversity equity inclusion work actually is. So

Kim Clark: 00:14:03

it's like a goodwill thing. That's how, you know some of us

Kim Clark: 00:14:06

were introduced to it as this goodwill thing like for pride.

Kim Clark: 00:14:09

We're recording this in May. It's, you know, how do you call

Kim Clark: 00:14:14

this heritage month? What term do you use? Personally,

Lily Zheng: 00:14:17

I call it Asian heritage month, but there are

Lily Zheng: 00:14:19

lots of acceptable titles. Right now the the US official title is

Lily Zheng: 00:14:25

Asian American. Oh, no. Okay, now I'm going to get myself in

Lily Zheng: 00:14:30

trouble Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander

Lily Zheng: 00:14:34

Heritage Month, I believe right now.

Kim Clark: 00:14:37

And with pride coming up, we have these opportunities

Kim Clark: 00:14:40

as communicators that are kind of these external factors to

Kim Clark: 00:14:44

recognize when there's these three C's that I use, celebrate

Kim Clark: 00:14:48

crisis and consistency. A lot of communicators just stick at the

Kim Clark: 00:14:53

at the celebrate, right? They just stick with the rainbow

Kim Clark: 00:14:55

washing and let's change our logo those kinds of things. But

Kim Clark: 00:15:00

If we don't go any, any, any deeper than that we're missing

Kim Clark: 00:15:03

the historical and social context of why we have these

Kim Clark: 00:15:05

heritage months in the first place. What do you think about

Kim Clark: 00:15:08

all that? What should people be doing differently?

Lily Zheng: 00:15:10

I absolutely agree. And I think it's because a lot

Lily Zheng: 00:15:13

of communicators that I interact with are really scared of

Lily Zheng: 00:15:17

negativity in any form. They're scared to talk about things that

Lily Zheng: 00:15:21

are bad or harm that's happened, whether it's in the past or the

Lily Zheng: 00:15:25

present. There's this very antiquated notion that the only

Lily Zheng: 00:15:29

acceptable way to talk about dei issues or racism or sexism is as

Lily Zheng: 00:15:35

a celebration that we've solved all the problems. And that would

Lily Zheng: 00:15:41

be all well and good if we had actually solved all the problems

Lily Zheng: 00:15:45

that day. If we solve racism, like hell, yeah. And you know,

Lily Zheng: 00:15:49

talk about how we solve that. The problem is, we haven't in

Lily Zheng: 00:15:53

fact, a lot of challenges are getting worse. And so again, I

Lily Zheng: 00:15:56

go back to this idea that communicators fear or discomfort

Lily Zheng: 00:16:01

with talking about the hard stuff results in laundering

Lily Zheng: 00:16:04

essentially, of real time harm into this, this very sanitized

Lily Zheng: 00:16:10

story of, you know, progress and triumph and celebration and

Lily Zheng: 00:16:15

stuff that looks great on social media, until your employees call

Lily Zheng: 00:16:18

you out on Twitter for the umpteenth time. And then there's

Lily Zheng: 00:16:21

another social media controversy and communicators are stuck

Lily Zheng: 00:16:23

scratching their heads like, what went wrong, we did all the

Lily Zheng: 00:16:27

right things we talked to only about the positive things.

Lily Zheng: 00:16:31

Here's the truth. People don't just want to hear about that.

Lily Zheng: 00:16:35

Now. In fact, more and more people are waking up to the fact

Lily Zheng: 00:16:37

that things are not all sunshine, and rainbows and dei

Lily Zheng: 00:16:40

land, like racism is not over sexism is not over. In fact,

Lily Zheng: 00:16:44

there are increasing attacks on people of color and women's

Lily Zheng: 00:16:48

reproductive rights. And LGBTQ plus folks, trans folks, Muslim

Lily Zheng: 00:16:52

folks, like it's a rough time. And people who are who are very

Lily Zheng: 00:16:58

aware of that reality are looking for organizations that

Lily Zheng: 00:17:02

get it and realize that we're living in troubled times right

Lily Zheng: 00:17:06

now. They're looking for communicators, who can, you

Lily Zheng: 00:17:09

know, nonetheless, represent a brand but still be real

Lily Zheng: 00:17:13

represent reality also. And that, I think, is a skill set

Lily Zheng: 00:17:17

that a lot of communicators just haven't built? They've they've

Lily Zheng: 00:17:20

been trained in this era where, you know, talking about good

Lily Zheng: 00:17:24

news is is your job and making things that are rough look good,

Lily Zheng: 00:17:29

is also your job. But now, now, there's a huge hunger for

Lily Zheng: 00:17:34

realness, and honesty, and embedding that especially when

Lily Zheng: 00:17:39

it comes to social issues, inequality, racism, sexism,

Lily Zheng: 00:17:43

transphobia, you name it, is I think the the frontier of

Lily Zheng: 00:17:47

effective dei Communications.

Kim Clark: 00:17:51

Thank you. Thank you, Lily, and thank you for this

Kim Clark: 00:17:54

book. This book, I know has gone long and far, and people are

Kim Clark: 00:18:00

loving it and using it and putting it to practice. Talk

Kim Clark: 00:18:05

about why did you write the book? What problem are you

Kim Clark: 00:18:08

solving with the book? And then you have in here the four levels

Kim Clark: 00:18:12

of achieving di, what are those four levels?

Lily Zheng: 00:18:16

Yeah. So di deconstructed, I talk about as

Lily Zheng: 00:18:21

my tough love letter to the DEI industry, because the same

Lily Zheng: 00:18:27

problems I'm pointing out here and talking specifically about

Lily Zheng: 00:18:30

as they relate to communicators, actually relate to dei

Lily Zheng: 00:18:33

practitioners as well. We've had the same long problem in our

Lily Zheng: 00:18:39

industry, where we have practitioners who will go into

Lily Zheng: 00:18:42

corporations and you know, will tell their story of being a

Lily Zheng: 00:18:46

marginalized person and not being treated well in the

Lily Zheng: 00:18:49

workplace. And sort of say, now, you know, this is why empathy is

Lily Zheng: 00:18:54

so important, we all need to see each other, you know, let's all

Lily Zheng: 00:18:58

agree that like racism is bad. And then you know, people will

Lily Zheng: 00:19:01

applaud, they'll collect their paycheck, they'll leave. And the

Lily Zheng: 00:19:04

challenge with these sorts of initiatives, again, isn't that

Lily Zheng: 00:19:07

they're coming from a bad place, or that they're cynical, but

Lily Zheng: 00:19:09

that they just don't work on their own. We have a lot of

Lily Zheng: 00:19:12

research showing that these sorts of one off initiatives,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:15

not only don't work, but sometimes can actually cause

Lily Zheng: 00:19:18

more harm than good. But we as dei practitioners, and also, you

Lily Zheng: 00:19:23

know, the leaders who sometimes work with us and bring us in,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:26

don't have a good understanding of what outcomes it is we're

Lily Zheng: 00:19:29

trying to create. I try to work with all my clients to identify,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:34

you know, this is our point A, this is where we're at, this is

Lily Zheng: 00:19:37

what we're doing well, this is what we're not. This is our

Lily Zheng: 00:19:40

point B. This is who we want to be this is what we want to

Lily Zheng: 00:19:43

achieve. This is how we know we've gotten there, and then to

Lily Zheng: 00:19:46

dedicate all of our effort from getting to point A to B. Right,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:51

that's that's effective dei work making your organization better,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:55

more diverse, more equitable, more inclusive, measurably, so

Lily Zheng: 00:19:58

trying to measurably Improve the experiences of not only

Lily Zheng: 00:20:02

marginalized groups, but everyone. Now, this book is

Lily Zheng: 00:20:06

essentially the How To Guide on one, how the industry sort of

Lily Zheng: 00:20:11

lost its way and some of the challenges that we're facing,

Lily Zheng: 00:20:14

and then to how we can really find our way how we can we can

Lily Zheng: 00:20:19

find a new north star to guide our effective DEI efforts. It's

Lily Zheng: 00:20:23

sort of the crystallization of everything I've learned from the

Lily Zheng: 00:20:27

last seven or eight years doing dei work, and trying to hold not

Lily Zheng: 00:20:31

only my clients, but also other practitioners accountable to

Lily Zheng: 00:20:35

achieving real impact achieving real outcomes. And not just

Lily Zheng: 00:20:40

coming in collecting a check. And not knowing whether we've

Lily Zheng: 00:20:44

actually succeeded, it's actually a very parallel problem

Lily Zheng: 00:20:46

to the one that communicators face. Right? Because I think

Lily Zheng: 00:20:49

every communicator, wants to know that because of their

Lily Zheng: 00:20:53

efforts, they have helped their client or their company talk

Lily Zheng: 00:20:58

about something or an issue or a success, more positive, right?

Lily Zheng: 00:21:03

Like they want to feel like they're doing good and effective

Lily Zheng: 00:21:07

communicators who are able to be honest and center outcomes, do

Lily Zheng: 00:21:11

you in fact, do a lot of good. It just takes a different skill

Lily Zheng: 00:21:14

set than simply applying your communications degree without

Lily Zheng: 00:21:20

any criticality and just laundering whatever comes in

Lily Zheng: 00:21:23

front of you, right, dei is very similar. We can't just go in and

Lily Zheng: 00:21:27

use a one size fits all approach and throw unconscious bias

Lily Zheng: 00:21:30

training at everyone, or tell the same sob story to everyone.

Lily Zheng: 00:21:34

And just assume, because we know in our heart of hearts, that

Lily Zheng: 00:21:37

somehow we're making some difference that we can't

Lily Zheng: 00:21:39

measure, right, we need to be much more accountable than that.

Lily Zheng: 00:21:41

And the book is the roadmap for how personally I think more

Lily Zheng: 00:21:46

practitioners can be acting and working to achieve that.

Kim Clark: 00:21:53

Amazing, and there's, there's the four levels that you

Kim Clark: 00:21:56

speak to here, right?

Lily Zheng: 00:21:58

Oops, I forgot your question entirely. In just four

Lily Zheng: 00:22:01

levels, if

Kim Clark: 00:22:02

you don't mind tying in, like what the communicators?

Kim Clark: 00:22:04

What's their role in these four letter levels?

Lily Zheng: 00:22:07

Yeah, so the four levels of the EI pertain to the

Lily Zheng: 00:22:11

impact of the initiatives that you do. On the very, most basic

Lily Zheng: 00:22:17

level, these are initiatives that anyone can start, they

Lily Zheng: 00:22:21

require very little trust built up to do them. And so there are

Lily Zheng: 00:22:25

great starting points for Dei, there are things like putting

Lily Zheng: 00:22:29

out a dei statement, making a new dei mission starting a dei

Lily Zheng: 00:22:34

Council. The thing about this very basic level of initiatives

Lily Zheng: 00:22:39

is partially because they're so easy to start, they require very

Lily Zheng: 00:22:43

little sort of resources banged up, they don't necessarily

Lily Zheng: 00:22:47

achieve much on their own, they lay the groundwork in the

Lily Zheng: 00:22:49

infrastructure for more impactful things down the line.

Lily Zheng: 00:22:53

Right. If you don't have a dei statement or a dei mission,

Lily Zheng: 00:22:56

it'll be harder to legitimize what happens in the future. So

Lily Zheng: 00:22:59

of course, that mission, or that statement, is very powerful. But

Lily Zheng: 00:23:04

if you stop there, what have you achieved by making a dei

Lily Zheng: 00:23:06

statement? Zilch, nothing, nothing at all, right? That's

Lily Zheng: 00:23:11

like putting a couple of bricks down and calling it a house,

Lily Zheng: 00:23:13

that's not a house, you're you're laying part of a

Lily Zheng: 00:23:16

foundation. If you leave out the bricks, you're not going to have

Lily Zheng: 00:23:19

a good house. But don't mistake it for a house. The further up

Lily Zheng: 00:23:23

you go in the level. So we're doing things like investing in

Lily Zheng: 00:23:27

dei professionals resourcing dei work creating a DI strategy,

Lily Zheng: 00:23:33

collecting data understanding what's what your workforce is

Lily Zheng: 00:23:37

experiencing, looking into your policies and practices. And then

Lily Zheng: 00:23:41

further up from that, drawing on demographic data, split by by

Lily Zheng: 00:23:47

level and tenure, and all of that to make effective decisions

Lily Zheng: 00:23:51

in your organization. holding yourself accountable to external

Lily Zheng: 00:23:56

community members, boards of directors, labor unions, using

Lily Zheng: 00:24:01

dei related information to make decisions. These are all far

Lily Zheng: 00:24:06

harder initiatives that build on the foundation you've created,

Lily Zheng: 00:24:10

but take a lot more gas in the tank, they take more resources

Lily Zheng: 00:24:14

they take, having built up a foundation of trust to do right.

Lily Zheng: 00:24:19

So the further up you go into levels I that's you know, that's

Lily Zheng: 00:24:23

a quick cliff notes version of them. We can talk about that for

Lily Zheng: 00:24:25

a while. But the further up you go, the harder the initiatives

Lily Zheng: 00:24:29

get, but the more payoff, they they they get you. Now for

Lily Zheng: 00:24:33

communicators. Why is this good to know? Because I see way too

Lily Zheng: 00:24:37

many communicators pointing out the level one or level zero

Lily Zheng: 00:24:40

activities and saying hazhar We've done it, our organization

Lily Zheng: 00:24:45

is a huge success. You know, we started an erg group, we started

Lily Zheng: 00:24:50

an employee resource group, we created a dei statement our

Lily Zheng: 00:24:53

leader posted on Twitter. And again, that's the same as

Lily Zheng: 00:24:57

pointing at a stack of bricks and going look at this beauty

Lily Zheng: 00:25:00

The full three storey Victorian house, isn't that beautiful and

Lily Zheng: 00:25:04

incredible, right. And at some point, at some point, someone

Lily Zheng: 00:25:07

will point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes, some

Lily Zheng: 00:25:10

people will point out that you're kind of talking out of

Lily Zheng: 00:25:12

your ass. Because you haven't achieved anything, you're

Lily Zheng: 00:25:15

pointing at these very initial foundational efforts and

Lily Zheng: 00:25:20

mistaking that for real success, right? So what communicators

Lily Zheng: 00:25:24

need to do is to get curious, like, you're, you're not just

Lily Zheng: 00:25:28

passive communicators, you should really be more like

Lily Zheng: 00:25:30

investigative journalists. Yeah, you should, you should look at a

Lily Zheng: 00:25:34

situation and say, I'm not going to just take the sentence you

Lily Zheng: 00:25:38

gave me and make it look good. Like, tell me more what's going

Lily Zheng: 00:25:41

on, like, help me tell the story that is both accurate and

Lily Zheng: 00:25:45

compelling. Right. And I don't have the information, I need to

Lily Zheng: 00:25:49

tell that story. So give me information. I want information

Lily Zheng: 00:25:53

on how this initiative started, who would impact what problem

Lily Zheng: 00:25:56

it's solving for, what it's achieved, and how you know, it's

Lily Zheng: 00:25:59

achieving that, once I have all that information, I can work my

Lily Zheng: 00:26:03

magic as a storyteller, to help you get this really compelling

Lily Zheng: 00:26:08

narrative of what's happened and why. But I'm not going to tell a

Lily Zheng: 00:26:11

story with incomplete data. Or worse, I'm not going to

Lily Zheng: 00:26:14

fabricate data to tell my story. And if you the client don't have

Lily Zheng: 00:26:19

that data, or you're unwilling to provide that data, then it's

Lily Zheng: 00:26:24

only natural that I as a principled communicator, am not

Lily Zheng: 00:26:28

going to do your dirty work for you. And I'm going to sit here

Lily Zheng: 00:26:30

and wait on you until you can give me what I need to do a good

Lily Zheng: 00:26:33

job. Right? We need more principled stances like that

Lily Zheng: 00:26:37

from communicators. Mm

Kim Clark: 00:26:39

hmm. Oh, my gosh, thank you. Thank you for that.

Kim Clark: 00:26:42

And I couldn't agree more. You know, it's something I've been

Kim Clark: 00:26:46

doing a lot of coaching on with my communication clients is,

Kim Clark: 00:26:50

well, my leader is very hesitant. They're telling me

Kim Clark: 00:26:53

they don't want to do too much too soon. And I'm like, so did

Kim Clark: 00:26:57

you take that as a decision as like, you know, you put your

Kim Clark: 00:26:59

tail between your legs and you walk out of the room? She's

Kim Clark: 00:27:01

like, Well, yeah, you know, and I've heard this in a very

Kim Clark: 00:27:04

variety of instances across clients. And I said, Well, why

Kim Clark: 00:27:09

is that the end of the conversation when it should be

Kim Clark: 00:27:11

the beginning? Right, so what is too much? What is too soon?

Kim Clark: 00:27:17

Let's play this out. Like let's let's engage in that

Kim Clark: 00:27:19

conversation, like you're mentioning the investigative

Kim Clark: 00:27:22

reporter like that, the sources and the questions, and, and the

Kim Clark: 00:27:27

quality of the questions and being able to get to a place

Kim Clark: 00:27:31

where you we can learn more, and to be able to your point be

Kim Clark: 00:27:35

principles and saying, I can't go out there and say that look

Kim Clark: 00:27:39

at all the rivers that we cleaned up and all of the, you

Kim Clark: 00:27:43

know, in all the communities that we wrote checks to and all

Kim Clark: 00:27:46

this without any kind of shift or change, you know, that we do

Kim Clark: 00:27:50

have to push back. And we have to have that kind of

Kim Clark: 00:27:52

conversation. Right? Thank you for saying that. And I And

Kim Clark: 00:27:56

another thing that that is something I want folks to take

Kim Clark: 00:28:00

away is that Lily is coming from as a DI strategist, I'm coming

Kim Clark: 00:28:05

from a DI communications strategist, you know, we're both

Kim Clark: 00:28:08

about implementation, we're both about outcomes. In our

Kim Clark: 00:28:12

organizations, we need to have this kind of partnership and

Kim Clark: 00:28:14

collaboration between the office of the DEI as well as

Kim Clark: 00:28:18

communications, there has to be this collaboration in this in

Kim Clark: 00:28:22

this partnership, this, this transparency, and have these

Kim Clark: 00:28:28

hard conversations and then come up with a plan together to go

Kim Clark: 00:28:31

and work with the rest of the stakeholders to bring them along

Kim Clark: 00:28:34

in the work so that we have, we're achieving our dei goals.

Kim Clark: 00:28:39

And the communications part of it is is part of that momentum.

Kim Clark: 00:28:43

Right?

Lily Zheng: 00:28:44

Something I I was thinking about as you were

Lily Zheng: 00:28:46

sharing that is that I also do some di comms myself, mostly

Lily Zheng: 00:28:53

from the viewpoint of someone who does a lot of di survey

Lily Zheng: 00:28:58

assessment, I end up assessing companies and writing reports on

Lily Zheng: 00:29:02

what I find, and sending that to usually the senior leadership

Lily Zheng: 00:29:07

team, the executive team, whatever. And I always, always,

Lily Zheng: 00:29:10

always get pushback on the language I use on my reports,

Lily Zheng: 00:29:14

because in my reports, I'll find very, very solid things like, I

Lily Zheng: 00:29:19

don't know men in this workplace have 90%, belonging, and women

Lily Zheng: 00:29:23

will only have 30%, belonging. And so there's a 60% belonging

Lily Zheng: 00:29:27

gap that's largely driven by an old boys club, for example,

Lily Zheng: 00:29:31

which I've assessed qualitative data to identify. And leaders

Lily Zheng: 00:29:35

will say, Keynote call it that, like, can you not use that kind

Lily Zheng: 00:29:40

of language? Because I always push my clients, I send these

Lily Zheng: 00:29:43

reports to the entire company. Like it's not just to the eyes

Lily Zheng: 00:29:47

of the senior team. I'm like, No, this is what I'm finding.

Lily Zheng: 00:29:50

This is my investigation. This is what I found. And this is

Lily Zheng: 00:29:54

what to call it. And leaders will always say I feel like

Lily Zheng: 00:29:59

that's just a little forceful that's that's a little

Lily Zheng: 00:30:02

controversial language. What else would you call it? Can you

Lily Zheng: 00:30:04

please use nicer language or something different? And I push

Lily Zheng: 00:30:08

back I say, then what is it? Like? Help me find better

Lily Zheng: 00:30:14

wording to describe a systemic pattern where men are excluding

Lily Zheng: 00:30:19

women because they are supporting other men. And they

Lily Zheng: 00:30:24

have a fraternal community of boys. That is predicated on

Lily Zheng: 00:30:31

pushing women out helped me find another word for that. That

Lily Zheng: 00:30:34

isn't old boys club, right? Like, frat, you want me to call

Lily Zheng: 00:30:39

it a frat party? Like, would you rather use that language? And

Lily Zheng: 00:30:42

they're like, Well, no, but like, and it turns out their

Lily Zheng: 00:30:45

quibble is with the facts, not with the communication, right?

Lily Zheng: 00:30:48

Like they're, they're so scared at the facts getting out there,

Lily Zheng: 00:30:54

that they're asking me as the communicator to try to muddle or

Lily Zheng: 00:30:57

change the facts, it was never a comms issue. Right? It's not

Lily Zheng: 00:31:00

about whether I call it a frat house, or an old boys club, or

Lily Zheng: 00:31:06

exclusionary behavior from them. They don't even care about me

Lily Zheng: 00:31:11

playing with the words they want me to not say. Like, they just

Lily Zheng: 00:31:15

don't want me to talk about the facts. Right? Yeah. And this is

Lily Zheng: 00:31:20

where I think principles communicators need to really be

Lily Zheng: 00:31:23

thinking about ethics, because you're not just wordsmith, like

Lily Zheng: 00:31:27

you are folks who are trying to understand the truth and portray

Lily Zheng: 00:31:30

it, and in a compelling, powerful way. And if you're

Lily Zheng: 00:31:34

being asked to portray it powerfully, but to hide the

Lily Zheng: 00:31:38

truth, then it's on you to say I'm not going to do that, again,

Lily Zheng: 00:31:42

I go back to this investigative journalist metaphor, right? If

Lily Zheng: 00:31:47

you're not willing to do that, then you will be used to launder

Lily Zheng: 00:31:50

hard truths into nice sounding things. And then I hate to say

Lily Zheng: 00:31:54

it, you will be complicit in workplaces continuing to cause

Lily Zheng: 00:31:58

more harm. I know, communicators don't want that. Right. It just

Lily Zheng: 00:32:02

requires that you stand up and push back against these sorts of

Lily Zheng: 00:32:05

requests. It's, it's hard, right? And it's certainly not

Lily Zheng: 00:32:09

what a lot of people were taught to do as communicators.

Kim Clark: 00:32:13

Really, that was exactly what communicators

Kim Clark: 00:32:16

needed to hear. Tough Love. Right? And I want to respect

Kim Clark: 00:32:23

your schedule and your time. So I'm gonna wrap up with this one

Kim Clark: 00:32:26

last question. What does communicating like you give a

Kim Clark: 00:32:30

damn. What does that look like? What does that sound like? What

Kim Clark: 00:32:35

do you want to see different? What do you want to see happen?

Kim Clark: 00:32:38

I

Lily Zheng: 00:32:38

want to see communicators recognize that

Lily Zheng: 00:32:40

everything they communicate, by by definition will have an

Lily Zheng: 00:32:46

agenda. It has an impact, right? There's no values, neutral

Lily Zheng: 00:32:49

communication, everything you do, and the way you say it will

Lily Zheng: 00:32:53

always affect the outcome. You can communicate to shed light on

Lily Zheng: 00:32:57

injustice, you can communicate to cover up injustice, you can

Lily Zheng: 00:33:01

communicate to change systems, you can communicate to uphold

Lily Zheng: 00:33:05

systems, right? Everything you do as a communicator, embeds

Lily Zheng: 00:33:09

your intent, or if not your intent, someone else's intent.

Lily Zheng: 00:33:13

So don't be scared to have an opinion. Right? Don't be scared

Lily Zheng: 00:33:19

to try to uncover the truth and find out what's actually

Lily Zheng: 00:33:23

happening. Because unless you absolutely make sure that your

Lily Zheng: 00:33:28

communications reflects the truth, the actual truth, your

Lily Zheng: 00:33:33

communications will always be used as a tool to advance

Lily Zheng: 00:33:37

someone else's agenda, if not your own. And you want to be

Lily Zheng: 00:33:40

sure that the agenda you are advancing is one that you are

Lily Zheng: 00:33:44

comfortable with. And that feels ethical to you. To me, that

Lily Zheng: 00:33:48

means making sure you are always accountable to the truth. First

Lily Zheng: 00:33:51

and foremost, not just what your boss tells you to do.

Kim Clark: 00:33:55

Yes, yes. Okay, rewind, hit the little 15.

Kim Clark: 00:33:58

Second thing, listen to all that again, listen to that, until it

Kim Clark: 00:34:03

really sinks in, take a deep breath. And just know that

Kim Clark: 00:34:07

you're not alone in this work. There's a lot of communicators

Kim Clark: 00:34:10

going through this work. There's a lot of di practitioners that

Kim Clark: 00:34:13

need you to do this work, Lily, your book is incredible. And I

Kim Clark: 00:34:18

encourage all communicators to pick it up because you need to

Kim Clark: 00:34:21

know what the work actually is what actually is dei so you can

Kim Clark: 00:34:26

write about it more accurately. So you get it. So you know what

Kim Clark: 00:34:31

you're talking about, and you can understand you right, then

Kim Clark: 00:34:33

you read our book, and learn more about like, Oh, that's

Kim Clark: 00:34:36

pretty performative. That's what Kim and Lily were talking about

Kim Clark: 00:34:40

that podcast. Lily, it was such a pleasure to hang out with you

Kim Clark: 00:34:44

and have this conversation and I hope it's first of many to come

Kim Clark: 00:34:47

any last parting thoughts and how can people stay in contact

Kim Clark: 00:34:51

with you?

Lily Zheng: 00:34:52

Yeah, I'll just say The pleasure was all mine. I

Lily Zheng: 00:34:55

think this is a really critical conversation. I want to add to

Lily Zheng: 00:34:59

that. It's not just that communicators can learn more

Lily Zheng: 00:35:02

about dei so that they can write about it. It's that writing

Lily Zheng: 00:35:05

effectively about this work is Dei, like you are dei

Lily Zheng: 00:35:11

practitioners, you are dei communicators if you're able to

Lily Zheng: 00:35:15

understand this content, and to write about the truth, what's

Lily Zheng: 00:35:19

happening or what isn't happening, right. So, so I

Lily Zheng: 00:35:22

encourage you not to see yourself as as fundamentally

Lily Zheng: 00:35:25

separate from dei work like this is dei work, you are doing it

Lily Zheng: 00:35:29

every single time you hold yourself and your employers

Lily Zheng: 00:35:32

accountable. And it's, it's, it's hard, but it's not as hard

Lily Zheng: 00:35:35

as you might think. Right? It just requires a different way of

Lily Zheng: 00:35:39

going about this work and holding yourself accountable. So

Lily Zheng: 00:35:43

myself in my work, I think the two places you can learn most

Lily Zheng: 00:35:48

about me are LinkedIn, you can find me at Lilly Zang, on

Lily Zheng: 00:35:51

LinkedIn, or my website, www dot Lilly zang.co. You can learn

Lily Zheng: 00:35:57

more about me and my work and my books. Yeah, and and I just want

Lily Zheng: 00:36:03

to thank you, Kim, for inviting me to have this conversation

Lily Zheng: 00:36:06

with you. And I want to thank all the listeners who have tuned

Lily Zheng: 00:36:09

in up until this point. I truly believe that all of us who are

Lily Zheng: 00:36:15

having this conversation and listening can become more

Lily Zheng: 00:36:18

effective communicators and can make sure that we hold ourselves

Lily Zheng: 00:36:22

and our clients accountable to the future we deserve right

Lily Zheng: 00:36:26

instead of upholding and a problematic past or present,

Lily Zheng: 00:36:32

right like we can do so much better.

Kim Clark: 00:36:34

That serve someone else. Thank you. Thank you so

Kim Clark: 00:36:38

much, Lily. It was a pleasure. It was an honor.

Lily Zheng: 00:36:42

Thank you for having me.