Diversity and inclusion for your company and community practical steps

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: I'm excited to be here, excited to share and learn as well. And I feel like I'm bridging that gap because for me here, it's in the evening. I know for some of you, it's very early. So there's temporal diversity as well as other things that we'll be discussing. So, yeah, very happy to be here.

Thank you.

Speaker 2: Excellent. And, Luisa, we've had you before. It's so great to see you again. You wanna do a quick intro. You've given talks at DevRelCon in the past on, you know, the importance of, thinking about diversity inclusion during interviews.

What's going on with you now?

Speaker 3: Hi. They, thanks for inviting me to join. I'm just, like, super excited to to hear what happens, and learn from y'all. I yeah. I had been working at Carrot, which was a company that or is a company that specializes in technical interviewing and just in in my work as a manager.

Yeah. I was just very deeply involved in community building, onboarding, hiring practices, recruiting, and trying to make that more inclusive and accessible. I've currently sort of switched through my, pivoted my DevRel community skills towards podcasting. And so I'm I'm currently organizing the the San Francisco podcaster playground. So

Speaker 2: Very cool.

Speaker 3: Career pivots, I guess. Yes. Yes. Still community work.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yes. So I wanted to I just created I'm gonna show here, not the, you know, the slide view. We'll talk about Jonathan's site. I just grabbed a screen grab of that.

Of course, we're gonna be talking about sort of the assumption that community health requires inclusion and safety. And then I just created these slides as reference points as our talking points. Jonathan has a great thing about the three p's. And then we had a great email thread about what community means. And I was sort of breaking down sort of the three categories that Jonathan brings out and, you know, maybe there are areas to discuss.

And Jonathan obviously or not obviously, but if you listen to the podcast series, you'll see that employee resource groups are quite a core part of that discussion. So if I could, do this full screen if this works. So this is a screen grab. Jonathan, you wanna tell us a little bit about element of inclusion?

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Yes. So my my full name is doctor Jonathan Ashong Lamptey. This is why you can see I call myself doctor Jonathan. It's much easier for everyone. I'm the founder of the element of inclusion, and we we're a consultancy.

We work with organizations to make them inclusive. Typically, means research, training, consulting, thought leadership in the terms of the podcast. We today was episode 223. We're in our fifth year of informing and educating using applied research and thought leadership. I take a lot of research from my PhD and apply it here from working with clients and applying it here.

So it's not just academic highbrow information and insights. I use a lot of practical, pragmatic tips, and that's what I really want to share with you today. And, Lucian, you're talking about podcasts. We have to have a catch up about podcasts. I'm the biggest fan.

Most of my episodes are quite short, though, ten to fifteen minutes. So something that you can sort of dip into and get through quite quickly.

Speaker 3: That's perfect.

Speaker 2: Awesome. I will now close this so you can see. Like I said, it won't be elegant, but I'll just move to this if they are useful for reference. So yes, the starting point, and if I'll be monitoring the Discord if people disagree, but, you know, we wanted to sort of say not to speak for the whole, if it it is a starting point that if you, don't have inclusive and safe practices within your company, it's essentially gonna be pretty impossible to make sure that you're extending that out into the community that you're supporting. And in our job, it's, often technical communities or could be extended beyond that.

So, Jonathan, I I'll be honest. Like, we we talked so much in our email thread that, do you have a particular starting point that, you think would

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: be helpful? Let's let's do this because diversity and inclusion are two of the most used and abused words in the workplace today. So let's get a shared point of reference, and we'll cycle back to this as well later because it's a real good strategy that I use when I'm trying to engage and make, make safe spaces in terms of being able to connect with people meaningfully. So when I talk about diversity, I think of it as a management approach. So that recognizes that, number one, we have differences as individuals and that there is value in those differences.

So I'm thinking about it as an approach. So that's a good starting point. Inclusion is a systematic business strategy to ensure that everyone shares the same advantages and benefits. So everyone can perform, everyone can belong, everyone can reach their potential. So when you're thinking of a community, I think it's useful to think about inclusion.

How can we get everyone to perform? How can we get everybody to belong? And how can we get everybody to reach their potential? Now you will have particular ideas about what reaching your potential means, what belonging means, and also what performance means, but that's a useful starting point. So for each of your communities, getting a clear idea about that is a good starting point in terms of moving forward.

Speaker 2: That's great. And, I kind of wanna go also to, you know, how we're not perfect. I'm sure each we're we've all been brought up to have so many biases. So what would be some pragmatic ways in which we're thinking about the strategy for inclusion, but also being aware, okay. What blinders do I have on?

You know? Who who am I still not including?

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Yeah. I I think a a useful way to to think about that, and this brings us back to those three p's, is what's the actual problem we're trying to address? Because we're talking about biases, but the truth is we all have biases. And if we're focusing on the bias, that's important. It's relevant.

But what? Where are we on our journey specifically in my community, in my team with the tasks that I'm doing? So these three p's are really useful. So it's people, potential, performance. People, organizations, communities struggle to engage the people that they want to include.

You will often hear this characterized as being people who are underrepresented, people from marginalized groups, people who are from disadvantaged groups. That's typically the narrative you hear, but it also means people who aren't from disadvantaged groups, who aren't from marginalized groups. That's really important because inclusion means everyone. So we have to get people who are from the minority, so called minority, so called majority, and there's people who don't even acknowledge or accept those terms. So if we're talking about biases, it may be in the context of we're trying to address specific individuals.

Potential is about creating a culture of inclusion where everybody can reach their potential. Once again, we need to be clear in our community what that means, but allowing everybody to perform, belong, reach their potential is at the heart and probably probably one of the biggest issues that we need to address. So we're getting back to your point about bias, creating that culture, and these are the day to day norms, interactions that we have. That's really important. And then the last point, I really wanna pick up on this point about performance.

Excuse me. Because people think when we're talking about performance, there's a very heavy emphasis on metrics. I know that. You know that. But when we're talking about performance, it's more about how does diversity and inclusion show up where you work.

So if I was to say to you everyone says that, oh, diversity inclusion is really great. But if I was to say to you in your community, how does it show up? How is it good for you? That's the real question that you need to address. So if we think about that as a framework, when we're talking about bias, is it about the the performance part?

Is it about the people? And for the most part, it's probably about the people. And so in particular, I've got I've got a way that is really useful for you to think about how you engage with others because we all think and this came up on the thread that we had tomorrow about communication. We all think that when we're communicating with individuals that the way we communicate is the right way. But suppose I was we were sent in an email thread, and I was communicating with you in capitals.

That we know that capitals well, many of us believe that when we're speaking in capitals, we're shouting, but that might not be obvious to everyone. Probably at this stage in your careers, that is obvious. But in my example so you really wanna explore the intention of the person you're communicating with. What is their intended outcome? What are they trying to achieve?

That's really useful whenever you're speaking with anyone. What are they trying to achieve? What's their intention? And that often helps us to overcome some very basic communication biases that we have when we're not face to face with people.

Speaker 2: And does

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: that make sense?

Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. And, we were just in the thread. Right? I like how you call out, you know, we think we assume we're communicating in the right way.

And, that would bring up one. Yesterday, we had a great session on, you know, how we're all in most of what we do, we're teachers. And if you have any kind of educational background, you know, you know that there are people who learn in different ways, the textual learners, visual learners, kinetic learners, oral learners. And so, you know, I shared in a workshop, it's it's human. It's totally fine to feel like I've explained this a million times.

Why doesn't this person get it? Think about how maybe they need to hear it in a different way or through a different medium. Right? Or it's in the docs. Why don't they just read the docs?

Well, maybe they did read the docs, but, you know, they're they need a video or or they need they need some kind of, hands on way. So I think that's a good reminder. Secondly, English. Right? We are using English as a common language within, our communities and at work for the most part that I've experienced.

And I'd say that majority of people are distributed teams. English is not a first language. So I think that comes back to also, like, I as a manager and as a community manager, work hard to create a safe space so that when there is language based friction, you know, we have a sense of trust that I can gently say, oh, hey, you know, recently, you know, someone we were talking about how some people would say like, oh, that makes no sense to me or that's nonsense. And like when you gently go back and say, oh, actually in English, that's highly offensive. The other person actually doesn't know and they're like, oh, you know, so we can suggest, like, you know, maybe say, oh, I'm confused by your comment.

Can you can you tell me more? And then, you know, that can avoid a lot of friction. So really good point.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Tamar, can we can we pick up on that point about safe spaces as well? Because I think this often gets misunderstood. So when I talk about safe spaces, it's really about psychological safety, which is crucial in a community for everybody to feel safe. So when we're talking about psychological safety, specifically, we are saying we we don't want an environment where people will be humiliated, people will be ridiculed for either raising questions, making statements. We wanna create an environment.

And let's be clear. Sometimes, I I wanna draw a difference between psychological safety and feeling uncomfortable. So we're not overtly trying to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but we are making sure that whenever we're communicating with anyone, any engagement that we have, if someone asks what you think is a stupid question or something that you would expect them to know, we wanna create an environment where everybody feels comfortable enough to share. And, also, that means they may get feedback part of the process. In a community, you're all focused on a particular technology.

You're all developing and learning at different rates, but you're contributing to this particular goal. It may mean that you need feedback, And being able to get that feedback in a way that is psychologically safe for the person receiving the feedback as well as the person providing it is really important. So I wanna draw that distinction because discomfort is often part of what what we're doing when we're growing.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Can I ask can I ask you a question on this that that I've seen people struggle with, especially with with COVID bringing things online is how do we how do we scale psychological safety or, you know, or, you know, build that especially, you know, the Internet is sort of an unsafe place in some ways, you know, for for people or it's just intimidating? Yeah. How do how do how do organizations scale that in an inclusive way? You know?

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Yes. Yes. Yes. So I I think one of the ways is, like, social media in particular can be quite it doesn't feel safe because you feel as if you're gonna get trolled or you ask a question. There are assumptions about what you're thinking and how you're thinking.

So I think you just need to have a very particular set of standards, really important standards that are crucial in and and one of them could be we always speak with respect. Right? We always assume that the intention behind anything that's being said is reasonable and, for the most part, is very useful. I use here's a phrase I always use. So what kind of?

So if someone asks a question, you say, what kind of x? What kind of y? And they will normally clarify that for you. That's a really important trick, and it's it's a hack that you can use all the time. If you think that someone is this person serious?

What kind of whatever? And then they'll give you a response, and that will give you a better way of doing it. So I would say the more people use that, yeah, that would make it a lot more scalable.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I wanted to, return to the so the three p's, the people, potential, performance. So for the performance part, Jonathan, you gave a great breakdown on, you know, how we're thinking through the biases. Because, yeah, right now, especially in the public conversation, we think, oh, minorities or certain groups. But, those are assumptions too.

Right? Like, and in in our conversations we've had in our tech areas, I heard yet another sort of blanket statement, but someone I could understand, which is that, it was a conversation in which it's so important, whether you're in the community or as managers to have proactive appreciation. And then if it can be afforded, you know, raises and promotions in the sense that, someone said, oh, that's it feels like engineering culture in the sense that, you know, you have a lot of people who don't wanna have to argue for a raise. They're not comfortable with combative what feels like combative negotiations. And so, I thought, within a community, right, that's why we talk about champions programs.

Like, there are people doing all kinds of stuff, and it's really important for us, as community managers to be proactively noticing and thanking. Rewarding is a kind of a side conversation where there might not be agreement, but the thanking just means so much. Right? And then in the workplace, similarly, you know, if you're in a company that maybe is a startup and can't afford to do raises at the moment, still having that feedback loop of appreciation and and, you know, communication is really important because, you know, at least in a company, I said, don't wanna work in a company where the only people who stick around or get raises are the ones who were comfortable to aggressively ask for that. And then the other people who aren't comfortable with that, regardless of, you know, how they might be tagged or what they might look like on the outside.

There are many, people that I know haven't gotten well deserved raises or promotions because it's, you know, it's just easier for them to avoid that. And so I was thinking, you know, how do we take that back into, actual pragmatic exercises like like I mentioned champions program in the community and hopefully proactive management. But are there other things that you've looked at to make sure that you have a diverse group and not just lose all the people where it's just easier for them to just look for another job than negotiate with their boss for something that they well deserve?

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Sure. And I I think there's probably a couple of points in there in terms of because, you know, you you that phrase, was it the squeaky wheel gets the oil? Right? Yeah. And so I suppose the real question is who's being rewarded and why?

And if if we're talking about a raise, a pay raise. Because if the people who complain are the only ones who get a raise, that's an approach that needs to be changed. Mhmm. We need to actually look at what is it we want, what are the characteristics, the behaviors, outcomes of the people who deserve a raise, and then we proactively look for those behaviors. So even if you're not raising your hand metaphorically or physically, then you will be identified.

So that's one way. Actually need to address that process. Another thing is to actually reconsider the concept of rewards anyway. Because if you're particularly in a voluntary group, it's not always about the money or the rewards status, recognition. You spoke about appreciation.

These are really important points. What I find when I work with communities, specifically the ERGs, we and we define them as groups, voluntary groups with shared interests, shared values, or shared identity. So if we if we focus on shared interests and values, what we find is the people who leave, they tend to leave because, one, the actual goals, the purpose of the group isn't aligned with what they thought it was going to be. So they came in thinking it was one thing, and they're not actually doing it or achieving it. And then the other thing is because of individuals within the community.

And, specifically, they may feel and you've you also heard this. People don't leave the the company. They leave their boss. Right? So in a community, people would be leaving, not necessarily the community as a whole because they they're no more longer aligned with it, but maybe it's the people they're interacting with.

Maybe those individuals aren't appreciating them, way they speak to them, and there's two two really interesting things to consider. You so when people talk about fairness, like, we're talking about inclusion, for the most part, we're always talking about fairness. Now pretty ambiguous term. There's a form of fairness called interactional justice. Interactional justice related to fairness in organizations.

And there's two things that come up that I think are really relevant for your communities. Number one is that it is informational justice. How is information being shared? So going back to your point about getting the raise, is it that only some people hear this information or only some people get that tap on the shoulder? If that's the case, we need to address that directly.

And then the other thing is interpersonal interpersonal justice. How am I treating you with respect? When you do a task or complete a task, am I ridiculing you? Am I being rude to you? These are things in a community that the people on the margins who are experiencing this and may not be comfortable talking about, they're the ones who are going to leave, and it's really difficult to engage with them once they've left.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I was also looking at my notes from one of your podcasts. I liked how you were, kind of defining also maybe a different way of, how we see fairness is that you said that we want this idea that people have the same advantages and benefits to reach their full potential. I really like that. Do you wanna share a little bit more on that?

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: And when when I say the same advantages and benefits, I don't mean identical. It just means that it's it's this idea almost of equality of opportunity. We've got the same shot. Right? You've got the same shot.

You've got the same chance to be hired, to get that raise, to get that opportunity. And so it's useful when we're thinking about inclusion. It's kinda like freedom. You know, you've got this idea of liberty and freedom, freedom to, liberty from. Yeah?

It's really useful when we're thinking about inclusion. What is what are the processes, procedures, what's standing in the way of people actually moving forward, and what are the things that are in place that are holding people back? And so if it is the way we communicate, the times that we meet, the the people who are favored, who we normally get into the community, these are things that we really need to think about. And so on a practical basis, I don't know if do you have a practical example of where someone isn't or or you or common example of the way you think, actually, how can we address the advantages and benefits? Have you got an example that we could explore?

Speaker 2: I don't know. Lucien, you turned on your rock. I have an example, but do you have a thought?

Speaker 3: Oh, go for it. There's so

Speaker 2: many examples. Go for it.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Yeah. Give us one. I I wanna get more practical and more deep for the audience. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I I'm gonna go more for I don't know if the word is systemic, but if anybody has observed, you might you know, you've worked enough in an industry, you might notice that in some fields, you might see that the people who tend to get the VP jobs or are close to that, They might be a similar height or skin color or have a a certain complexion. And when you notice that, you're like yeah. And you talk amongst your your friends in the industry, have you noticed that? They're like, oh, yeah.

Isn't it funny that, like, so many of the people who have that same title across many companies have these very similar physical attributes? There's you know, we feel that that seems indicative that there's some kind of belief that you have to look like that to be successful or to be seen as a leader. And then you also hear stories who of people who don't look like that and, you know, have struggled to get that promotion to be at the top. And so I joke that if I find out that, like, suddenly developer relations is just littered with people with my same kind of job title and they all kind of have my look and skin tone, then I'll wonder, did I get this job because of my qualifications, or did I get this job because somehow they just said, that's what a head of developer experience looks like. Right?

So So guess that's my example.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: So that's a great point, which is there's an established archetype of success. Right? That's what success looks like. And for us in our communities now, that may feel like something that's difficult to address, but what could we do where we are is look at the archetypes that exist for success in your communities, and how can you present new ones that are genuine success? So we're not talking about lowering standards or, you know, moving the goalpost as we say here, but how can we present success, but actually it looks different to what's already there?

Because we wanna create an environment where, as we said, everyone shares the same advantages and benefits. So everybody feels as if they could get there, but we need to present more than one path of getting there, one person who has achieved that. And so that's a really quick and easy thing that we can do in the communities. Over time, that will affect everything above. But as you said, you talked about systemic issues.

I don't want to try and task everybody here with fixing that immediately.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 3: You know, the typical

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Did you have an example?

Speaker 3: Oh, yes. I just wanna say the typical practitioner concept is, like, very you know, it's a problem with with how, with a lot of recruiting and hiring and even with performance management for raises. And so what I think one simple thing is don't just have one when you think of what it takes to be successful in a role, don't just have one. You know, we we we know conceptually we wanna build these heterogeneous teams. Like, mean, I just know from experience as a manager, wow.

My teams are better when people are filling in in different ways that that that is stronger. So really, like, writing down and saying, actually, there's three ways someone could be successful a a success looks like and keep trying to sort of extend that. But, yeah, typical practitioner. I mean, it's just it's it's it's almost like this natural thing we do as humans to like, okay. What is what is a tree?

You know, it it it is a thing that looks like this instead of, you know, the categorization.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Millions. Yeah. It could be. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. I have a thought here, which is also actually, this might sorry. This is not another example. I'm trying to think, okay.

Introductions are something I just want to add this to the mix. I've been I guess my post COVID hobby has been extroversion professionally and personally. And so I just noticed the way a group the way I interact with a group, ERG or otherwise, is often almost, like, so dependent on how they handle introduction, like, directly introduction and just that the concept of how we we meet each other and show up for for these, you know, identities and and and the things you have listed and how how people get reintroduced and how people are encouraged to step forward or step back. So I've been really intrigued by this lately and trying to figure out the difference between, you know, cultural policing or or identity policing or gender policing, for example, which I encounter or, you know, the like, the policing that is negative and the and the and the step forward, step back that is that is positive. Sorry.

I could come up with a specific example here, but I just wanted to throw this into the mix because I'm interested if what you think about this.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: So so tell me more about the idea of policing in terms of, let's say, gender policing. Let's talk about that. What what do you mean? So actually well, remember what I was saying earlier? What kind of gender policing?

Speaker 3: Great. Oh, we're doing we're doing the example live. So for example, I use they pronouns. And for some people, that is not something that they want to do. Or or the concept of non binary gender or changing gender, you know, they have a a different view of that than me.

And, you know, so it's in I just seen that that's an interesting thing that I think is is like, they pronounce, for example, there's this huge rapid social and language change that's happening right now. And so how do we I just you know, I don't think we can just set a rule. So there's this concept sometimes, you know, we have to negotiate what we're gonna do as a group, and that's affecting even just intros and how we're gonna relate to each other, you know, from this from step one.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Great. And and do you know what? That's a great example. And let's so I think the answer to that is socialization. How do we socialize people over time with inclusive behaviors?

So if you think about when you join a community, when you join any organization, your induction process, however that looks like, that's the socialization that they're trying to do. They're trying to tell you the values, what's acceptable, what isn't. This is the way things are done. So you may be part of a community, but over time, it's changing. So we need to, o on over time, socialize people to think differently because the gender gender pronouns is a great example.

Some people, when it's presented, because they haven't been socialized, it's alarming. Like, what do you mean? I don't understand. So we need to go through what I would say is gentle socialization over time. And and this brings me back something that I like.

We call it the same page strategy. Right? And and this is if you notice at the beginning of this conversation, I basically said, this is what I mean by diversity. This is what I mean by inclusion. I got everybody onto the same page.

Now Yeah. We don't have to disagree. It actually doesn't matter if we agree or disagree, but we've got a shared point of reference. And from that, we can start to have a meaningful conversation. You can understand what I mean.

I can understand what you mean. So when I'm saying socialization, great example is to pick a term, a phrase, an article, podcast, anything, Have that as a point of reference. This works really great in a community where you're gonna have regular contact over time, and you use that as your point of reference to speak with people. So if we're going back to gender pronouns, we if have, like, an article or something about gender pronouns, hey. Did you know this was a thing?

Like, some people will say, no. It's not. Some on one side, it's like, no. This is actually this is necessary. This is how things need to be.

On the other side, some people will be like, I never knew anything about it. Yeah. We've got this shared shared retch point of reference. We can now start to have conversations about that. And that's really useful for those introductions and getting back into the groups that you said.

Speaker 3: I love that. And I think it's I I it's it's become in you know, it's one of those things that organizers and and managers and people now who are in a position to be explicit about what is or isn't going to be in an introduction or to to you know, we have to now learn and say, like, okay, are we gonna put are are pronouns gonna be part of intros? And like last night, I was at a place and and by the way, just want to say, you know, I'm not even sure. I think there are cultural and religious reasons why like, it's not even clear to me what the right outcome is here, especially in an international organization. But it's like the the the sort of the moderators or the managers, you know, have to make a decision and then be explicit because otherwise something is going to happen, but it won't be intentional.

I was at an event last night where this is very common, of course. You know, we do intros at the beginning. And for me, what I've noticed, this is the first year where, like, everyone is giving pronouns. To me, this is like this remarkable thing is happening. So interesting.

And but then, of course, people forget and, you know, is you know, how how do we then reintroduce ourselves and and, you know, handle changes over time? The the organizer, like, stepped in and corrected people, which, you know, I I don't even I don't even mind that much, but it it actually meant a lot to me. It was really it was really interesting. Yeah. Anyway, I'm always feeling like, I making it difficult for people to connect with me because I'm different?

So it's it's super interesting to see how this is getting negotiated. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: I hate to I hate to jump in. Perfect.

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Do you know do you know why? Can I jump in? Because this brings back what we said at the beginning about the psychological safety. Right? So we know it it may have been uncomfortable for some or others, but we're not going to ridicule anyone.

We're not going to call people out. We're setting this standard. So what you've said there really ties together the socialization, the psychological safety, and also the intention. You said the organizer actually said, well, we're going this is how it's going to be. So we're socializing, setting a standard, and everybody understands what's going on.

So I think that was a great way of kind of wrapping up several things that we discussed earlier.

Speaker 2: Yes. So I know we're pushing its time, but I do wanna get this one question. So they asked, can you talk a little bit about the business case? Since we're gonna get through this really quickly. But can you talk a little bit about the business case for increased diversity inclusion for improving results, especially in an international context?

And by this, I mean, the differences of x number of people in diverse US based teams versus the same number of people spread across different parts of the world, like one in each country of, like, US, India, Japan, Latin America, etcetera, which team distribution will yield better results and why?

Jonathan Ashong Lamptey: Great question. I've got a very unpopular answer to this. You hear a lot of people making these claims. Diversity leads to greater innovation, greater creativity, and stuff. If you actually look at the body of research, the business case for diversity is inconclusive.

That upsets a lot of people when they say that, but the people who make these claims haven't read enough of the research. So what I do want to tell you is it's not you have to find if you remember the three biggest problems, performance, they're unable to articulate their own business case for diversity. So what I want to leave you with is there are three three useful business cases for diversity, and you should explore them for yourself. So number one is this idea of discrimination and fairness. You know the whole social justice argument that it's the right thing to do?

And you'll hear people use that phrase. It's good for business, but it's the right thing to do. So that's one thing, discrimination, fairness. The second one is access and legitimacy. So if we think of the biggest tech company that you can imagine, right, who's serving a global global audience, they want access to that global audience.

So if we were gonna launch in China, would it be useful that we understood Chinese business practices? Maybe we've got people who are Chinese who can actually communicate in a way that I can't because I'm not Chinese. Yes. That would be useful. That gives us access.

Then there's also legitimacy. If we are serving the world, then perhaps we should represent the world. And if we don't, that kind of undermines our legitimacy. This is why about it's about ten years ago, all the big tech companies, they raced to put out all of their diversity and inclusion data even though it was really bad because it didn't matter. What mattered is was they were claiming to be legitimate because they were global players.

So that those are two. So we've got discrimination and fairness, access and legitimacy, and then the third one is called integration and learning. Right? If this is the one where people say, well, because we think differently, we're able to collaborate. We are going to get better results.

So there's three business cases, and so this is what I would challenge and invite you to do. Whenever anyone either likes diversity, dislikes diversity, they always speak in one of these three ways. It honest it you'll be amazed. If you push them and say, why don't you like it? Why aren't you interested?

Why is it a waste of time? They will always point to one of these things, and so I would engage with them on that and try to further understand it. But that's my toolkit for how you can explore it yourself. But the unfortunate answer is there is no tried and tested consistent answer for a business case with diversity being consistently the best way to have to run a team. There there there just isn't one.

And that's the unpopular truth, and you don't hear many people say it.