Understanding our Evolution: Why an Adult Development Lens is Critical to Inclusivity, with co-authors Christopher McCormick and Aman Gohal

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Aman Gohal:

What was happening around the pandemic. There was this energy and investment and a lot of talking in the corporate environment, in different industries. Okay, this is front and center again. And now it has only been ... I mean it's 2023. It hasn't been that long. It's been about two and a half, three years and I am seeing trends of DEIB function shrinking, layoffs. And it is these polarity swings of this is so important, put it front and center, or now this is not as important. It's just kind of going to wane behind the scenes. And I think that's a part of where we are collectively is, can we hold this as a consistent, integrated thread?

Doug Foresta:

The Will to Change is hosted by Jennifer Brown. Jennifer is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, bestselling author, and leadership expert on how organizations must evolve their cultures towards a new, more inclusive workplace reality. She's a passionate inclusion and equity advocate, committed to helping leaders foster healthier and therefore more productive workplaces, ultimately driving innovation and business results. Informed by nearly two decades of consulting to Fortune 500 companies, she and her team advise top companies on building cultures of belonging in times of great upheaval and uncertainty. And now, onto the episode.

Hello and welcome back to The Will to Change. This is Doug Foresta. Today's episode features a conversation with Christopher McCormick and Aman Gohal about using the stages of adult development as a framework for expanding DEI conversations. You'll hear about the action logics model, which describes mindsets and behaviors at different maturity levels and how the model can be applied for leadership. All this and more. And now, onto the conversation.

Jennifer Brown:

Christopher and Aman, welcome to The Will to Change.

Christopher McCormick:

Thank you.

Aman Gohal:

Thank you.

Jennifer Brown:

I'm glad to have both of you on here and we're going to tackle a very interesting framework today together and a new paper that you've both written together that I think will be intriguing and will resonate with our audience on The Will to Change because many of us, not all of us, but many of us in the field are really students of adult development. We're students of psychology and students of resistance and organizational change and all of those, the disciplines that make up the discipline of DEI, which is one of those really amazing grab bags of skills and context and all of it. But I love models so much and reading your work has introduced me or reintroduced me to the stages of adult development. And it felt so relevant and so resonant for me and so important I think for leaders as a tool to understand themselves, to see themselves evolving.

And I felt personally, it was really helpful to reflect on my own journey and where I've been and what I've been challenged by and to see myself in the stages and also just to become curious and excited about what's next because I do think that's part of particularly DEI that can feel heavy or difficult or challenging if you can see yourself at a stage of development, I think it very much helps it relieve some of the pressure that we put on ourselves to be perfect, to have arrived, to have completed this task, so to speak, when we three know that there's no such thing as necessarily completion, it's more of a sort of circular shape versus a linear process. And it really resonated with me to kind of have that compassion for ourselves that we are works in progress always at all stages in life.

So with that preamble, Christopher, you are my oldest friend here on this conversation and I've known each other forever and done wonderful work together on the consulting side. And I've spoken for organizations many times that you've been at and it's always a delight, and I was delighted to see you really dig in to this as a co-author. So I know that a lot of The Will to Changers know you from community calls and other things, but give us a context on who you are, where you are at the moment, anything you'd like to share about your diversity story, because we always like to start on a personal note here and then your relationship with Aman and then Aman, we will hear from you.

Christopher McCormick:

Sure. Well, thank you for having us, Jennifer, and it's great to be with you and The Will to Change audience. I have known Jennifer for, oh God, over a decade at least I'll say that. And so it's been great to be in your community for a long time. So thank you for that. Christopher McCormick. I'm currently the senior director of Talent Development and Inclusion for Gilead Sciences Inc. Which is a pharmaceutical company headquartered out of Foster City, California. So in the Bay Area. I've been doing DEIB work for 15 plus years. I've been doing HR work for 20 plus years. I've been in conversations in and around this space for a long time. I would say where I started to become sort of an advocate or person for the underdog was probably really early on in my life. I just remember I grew up in the Midwest and we went to a Southern Baptist church and at eight years old, I remember hearing a sermon and knowing at that moment that Sunday in a cold pew in [inaudible 00:06:03] December of whatever the eighties it was dating myself.

Since I'm your oldest friend, I'll just date myself. But I remember hearing the sermon knowing that I was going to die. And not only was I going to die, I was going to get really sick, die and then go to hell because AIDS and boys who were interested in other boys or liked other boys. So I remember going home that night and praying to God, and I prayed to God every night before I went to bed, and I remember getting on my knees to pray, and I used to say this prayer, it was very rote. It was like, dear God, please forgive me of all my sins and [inaudible 00:06:40] expressions, and thank you for the context in which you provide. I don't think I said context, but thank you for giving us everything that you give us and all that. And I started to pray that night. And I didn't say the usual prayer.

That night I started to pray and I said, dear God, please fix me. And I remember saying some version of that prayer for almost a year, and after a year of saying that prayer, I realized God doesn't listen, he doesn't answer prayers. And I've sensed, reconciled myself with that conversation, but as a hurt eight-year-old, nine-year-old, that was what I made up. And so it was really for me at that point, who can I fight for that's being bullied? Who can I help? Who's being underrepresented or being picked on or misjudged or miss ... I don't know, just abused in some way, shape or form, providing some level of trauma. So that's sort of where my origin story comes from. So I didn't mean to start out on such a really somber note, but that's kind of where it started.

Jennifer Brown:

It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing and I'm so glad that you are here and with us and doing the work you do and lending your strength to strengthen others knowing you didn't feel that supported at all and frankly, terrified of what your life would be and how you would live and continue to exist and look at you now. So just celebrating you and appreciating you, Christopher, and also your transparency and vulnerability. It's beautiful.

Christopher McCormick:

Thank you.

Jennifer Brown:

Thank you so much.

Christopher McCormick:

And then with me and today is Aman and Aman and I met just recently, but I feel like we're fast friends, Jen. It's like when you and I met years ago, just hit it off and started riffing on all things DEIB. Aman and I met in March at a workshop in conjunction with Global Leadership Associates and Gilead Sciences was hosting on our property in conjunction with Walmart, I think at the time. And so we were doing some work together with others in this space. And so that's where Aman and I met, and literally one of the facilitators asked me to help facilitate the discussion around DEIB, given my background. And Aman and I were literally cast together, and here we are now eight months later.

Jennifer Brown:

Oh, [inaudible 00:09:14]. Love it. Aman, yes, I would love Aman. I'd love to bring you in and hear from you, and wow, you all churned out a lot of great work in a very short amount of time. That's cool.

Aman Gohal:

Yeah, it's really remarkable. And I would just also add, thank you, Christopher, for sharing that the vulnerability and the insight into your early shaping is really, really powerful. So thank you. I would say that my experience with DEIB, I grew up in an immigrant household. So my heritage is Indian, I'm Indian American, South Asian descent, and from the perspective of experiencing sort of otherness at a very young age. So I remember, it's kind of a funny story, kind of not, it's when I was around five years old and I was in elementary school, it was not a very diverse school. I think I was maybe the only brown kid in that school. And I remember going to school and one of the kids asked me, "Oh, you're Indian? So where are your bows and arrows?" And I didn't know I'm supposed to have bow and arrows, so I'm this little innocent five-year-old. And I go home to my parents and I'm like, "I need to know where my bows and arrows are because they're asking me."

And then I went to the teacher and said the same thing. And then the teacher pulled out a map for the kids and said, Aman is Indian from India, not Indian American, Native American. And then I realized, "Oh, I'm different. There's an otherness here." And I really felt that as a kid and growing into adulthood, there was constantly really the social constructionism of DEIB that was created is continued to be reinforced and is a really strong structural dilemma with all of the painful history for various communities. And from going to college to entering the workforce to continue my career, it has continued to be this sort of underlying thread of otherness that is just felt that is just experienced. And why I love this work is creating a conscious conversation for what is happening versus the unconscious conversation that is happening in the shadow of our systems anyway.

Jennifer Brown:

Beautifully put. Conscious conversations. I love that. And I think we can pick up on that and move into what you wrote about making the unconscious conscious and kind of tracking our own development and the development of our, I think you called it something beautiful, the structural conundrum, the sort of contradictions at the heart of it all and the contradictions in ourselves and in the life stages that we're in. So tell us in brief about the topic of the paper. I mean, it sounds like it deeply resonated with you both personally to begin to lay down the theory of change that you share and the reason that you think that this model really resonates with our times and also personally resonates. But could you say a little bit about the model? At a high level, what is it, how long has it existed, who has used it, what has it been used for? And I know your paper endeavors to give it a different treatment, if you will, contextualize it differently, but if you could take us back and explain what is adult development and your connection to it?

Aman Gohal:

Yeah, I could start off. I wanted to also add that I think that for both Christopher and I being DEIB practitioners as well as doing other work within HR, whether that's organization development, leadership development, executive coaching, I didn't really introduce myself. So I'm an executive coach and I have an independent practice in executive coaching leadership development and DEIB, social justice. And as part of that, I'm a developmental coach with Global Leadership Associates. And I think that because we both have carried that thread and have been working on this for decades, there's a real shared sense among practitioners that this conversation is stuck and it's been stuck for decades. And we've been seeing the same pattern of behavior no matter what organization we're in, no matter what industry or sector, there's a particular mindset around this conversation that's continuing to create some of that stuckness.

And the adult development framework or constructive development theory is a very powerful frame to really understand maturity and the maturity of mindset. So ego development or adult development really integrates multiple lines of development. So cognitive, social, emotional, and you can really see the threads of how an individual who profiles at different stages will start to expand in their perspective taking as well as in their self-reflective capacity and capacity to make greater meaning of themselves and the world around them. And a beautiful way that Elaine Herdman-Barker, who is chairperson of the Common Good for Global Leadership Associates and one of the founding members who actually helped to develop the global leadership profile, her very simple and elegant way of talking about this model is that it is the unfolding of the psyche.

So we see the unfolding of the ego and the capacity to navigate greater complexity, but also see more nuance and beauty within ourselves and the world. And as a progressive stage of development model, it's very easy to see it in a linear and hierarchical way. And that is one thing that really attracted me to the Global Leadership Associates is how adult development is held as not so rigidly linear or hierarchical, but really progressive stages kind of like rings on a tree, that there is a natural maturity that is noted in the research. And yet every action logic, every stage of development has a beauty and a great value to it.

Christopher McCormick:

And the other thing I'll add too, because I think the lovely thing about the action logics is that you can use them versus them using you. There are times when I don't want to be in a redefining mode when I just need to shut off my alarm. There's certain things and things that I need to be thinking about or doing, and that is opportunistic for me just to hit the button and turn it off versus let me think about why is the alarm ringing. So there's certain things around, we traffic in the action logics in different ways throughout the day, and so there's a fluidity to it that's very natural.

And to Aman's point, from a growing or maturing perspective, you do tend to find yourself in where you are naturally tending to go more often than not in how you're thinking about problems and complexities and time and space and paradigms, et cetera. And where you're sort of thinking about going forward or where you fall back to in a state of crisis or urgency, where do you tend to traffic back and go, this is where you kind of center of gravity versus fall back versus moving forward.

Jennifer Brown:

I love that. I mean, I love stuck, Aman. We're so stuck not getting the results we thought we would be getting. And in fact, I think really painfully so this year particularly the sort of proof of a lack of impact or the impact that we desired or the place we wanted to be is really kind of in our face right now and it causes a lot of self-reflection, Christopher, to your point around what have we used and when and how strategically and how aware are we of the various tools that are available to us and what is needed for what purpose versus the blunt instrument versus the way my go-to, my way of solving things. This sort of versatility that I'm thinking you're referencing is a sign to me of maturity. And it comes at a certain age when you've kind of gone through these different stages, used them in different things, realized what is my go-to? What is hard for me? What is my growth edge? What does the situation need versus what am I comfortable doing all the time?

And the action logics you're talking about that I've learned about at reading your work, things like opportunist, diplomat, expert achiever, redefining, transforming, and alchemical. So they seem to sort of track in a linear way. They track a bit of life because I think you're in expert mode, for example, when you're building, building, building your expertise as somebody who writes a lot as I do, I can feel that, it's very present and achievers very present in certain times of our lives. And then there are other times in our lives, which I think a lot of us find ourselves in where we are in sort of this, what does it all mean stage and sort of really questioning what we achieved, what our expertise is. It's very interesting to think about it. I'm feeling a lot of change this year for a lot of people that I know and also in myself to wonder what do I want to be spending my time doing? What's going to be the most meaningful for me?

And it may not look like what was meaningful, and it can feel really, really disorienting to realize that. But then having a model says, "Hey, everybody else is having this human experience that's probably cycling through some of these same things in the same way." So can you tell us more about the action logics? Am I understanding them in the right way? And I love that, Aman, you made the point, the hierarchy of better or worse, right? The hierarchy of more mature or less mature. I love that you're like, "I don't want that because there's a beauty." One of you said there's a beauty in each of these stages and there's also the tools inherent in each one of these that may be needed for us. And it's really the mastery and the ability to perceive what's needed and when is really what makes the maturity that we're talking about.

Christopher McCormick:

One of the things we ask in the preface of the paper is what resonates and what shakes discomfort as you journey with us? And I think that you're speaking to that, right, Jen? Is really what is discomforting and what is challenging. And sometimes we don't want to do that to ourselves. We want to go to where we're naturally comfortable or feel like the expert or feel like we're in our zone, if you will, versus asking different questions or thinking about things from a different vantage point. Aman, I'll let you ...

Aman Gohal:

Sure. I wanted to frame up the action logics for listeners. So the action logics, what I appreciate about just that terminology for these stages of development is that it is not just the cognitive complexity and the mindset. It is also the behavior and action and how a person is showing up and how the mindset or the way of making meaning is coming through in terms of how we engage others and live our lives. So that's the appreciation that I have for action logic, that it's not just logic and it's not just I have answered these sets of questions or the sentence completions test, which is what we use to profile individuals and their action logic is, "Oh, okay, I haven't just answered in a very complex way. I'm also embodying that stage of development." And what I would say to frame up each one very quickly is that starting at opportunists, there are stages before the opportunist action logic, and there are stages after alchemical.

And because this is the curve that is most notable in working with organizations and people, these are the action logics that are often used front and center as opportunist through alchemical and opportunist is really centered on the eye. So it is about me. The time horizon is very short. It is about self advantage as well as self-preservation, moving toward that next opportunity that will advantage itself. Diplomat is the departure, and these are big leaps in between each action logic for the ego. Diplomat is departing from the eye to now I identify with the group or the group that I am connected with. And so now my identity, my values, my purpose, my worth is very much tied to whether I am identifying with a workplace, a religion, a sports team. But I am very much in that groupthink, and that is something we write about in the paper is that diplomat is about the identification with the group. It is also about the conformity with that group.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah, fitting in.

Aman Gohal:

Fitting in. So it's very easy to look at diplomat and go, "Oh, don't we all belong at diplomat?" And isn't diplomat sort of this polite action logic? And it sounds like that sort of to be diplomatic, but it's really about conformity and just as other people I can belong, other people can also not belong or not fit in. So it can be a very exclusionary stage as well. Then the next is expert, which is sometimes referred to as a self-conscious. It is the emergence of self-awareness, just starting that emergence and starting to notice a different perspective from the group.

And there can be the conflict as well as this sort of strong righteousness that no, actually, groupthink is potentially harmful or damaging. And that's another thing we see at each action logic is a pushing away from the previous one, really pushing that away to open up and examine or experience a new way of seeing. So at expert, it's really about, well, where's the data on this? Can you show me the numbers? And what is our representation? And there's a real sort of challenge of that groupthink at diplomat and a sense of-

Christopher McCormick:

It's like prove it, prove it, prove it, prove it, yeah. Yeah.

Aman Gohal:

Prove it, prove it, prove it. Where's the evidence? Is this evidence-based? And sometimes that right, kind of a clear sort of right versus wrong efficiency and then an achiever, this greater awareness of self and a greater sense of EQ, a greater sense of looking at short-term and long-term time horizons of looking at groups and the complexity of teams and a sense to achieve and drive, and also a new value for ethics and justice, and how do we carry the torch on this and how do we light a fire under people and ensure that we have achieved results at that achiever action logic. And we have the board member and the sponsors and the people in place to show the impact that's being had, but still very hierarchical at all of these action logics opportunists to achiever. And then it redefining a huge, huge change for the ego that can cause a lot of crisis once someone who profiles that achiever might burn themselves out, start to question, well, what am I really doing? And what's really going on in the system?

So that distancing and questioning that emerges at the redefining action logic and the pivot from pushing and telling or advocating to moving into inquiring and another big pivot of power, of power being very hierarchical and linear to now power being mutual. And so a lot of the collaboration and power with, that we start to see again, an expansion of social justice, of time horizons, of starting to look at polarities and the complexity that polarity thinking might offer, which becomes very fascinating. I have noticed at this action logic. And then the move, the pivot into transforming, which is taking a lot of that inquiry and that wider perspective from redefining into developing a frame of strategically holding content or framing out ways of seeing through a more principled approach.

And through that framing, being able to make decisions a lot more clearly and to move back into action. So at transforming, there's that integration of the achiever and the redefining of advocacy and inquiry of expanding perspectives. So zooming out and then moving back in with very clear, timely action, and then all of that unraveling at alchemical and a fourth perspective opening up of holding self other context, which we see it transforming to self other context, heart or deeper mystery. So the poetic simple elegance that unfolds at alchemical that we may not often see, but really disturbs the paradigms that we live in. So I know that was a little bit lengthy, but I just wanted listeners to have a framing of each action logic.

Jennifer Brown:

That's incredible. Oh, there's so many examples of folks, the dear folks we coach and support through all of these. They're all over the place. Christopher, I mean, you and I are in the push and pull of the specific work that we do in organizations, but I wonder for you with your leaders and the folks you are nurturing through growth, where you see folks in each one of these where you see maybe the majority of people that we are shifting.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah. And I think it's also where do you see the organization? Because I think that becomes ... My late mother would say, "You're a product of the conversations you're having." And so I think oftentimes it's about what conversations are you having and who are you having them with? And then you become in that circle, it also points to some of the things we said in the beginning of the preface, which is sometimes as DEIB practitioners or as adult development practitioners or as leadership development practitioners, we end up talking to the same people over and over again. We go to the same conferences, we see each other at the same things. We don't expand outside of our purview. And so you get sort of stuck in a conversation that you become a product of, and how do we break out of that cycle or force ourselves to break out of that cycle?

So if I work in an organization that's at achiever, I know that results are important and achievement is important, and proving stuff is important and I have to be or expert, if I work at a scientific company, of course expert's going to show up a lot. I need to be an expert in this science, and it matters to people's lives. And so you have to also look at, when you're looking at leaders, where's the organization trafficking? Because that's also going to pull them in a way that they may not naturally traffic in, their center of gravity may be at redefining or transforming. But if the organization's that achiever, I may be acting on a daily basis more in an achiever frame than really pushing myself to ask the right questions because I want to fit in, I want to conform. It goes back to sort of that diplomat. So that's where the fluidity of the action logics I think comes into play.

Oftentimes what I see with leaders is we have to look at where the organization is and then we have to allow them to see, okay, you see that that's where the organization is. You're normally here. Where can you bring this redefining or transforming thinking or ego status or the way of being into the conversations that you're having so that you're freeing yourself up from doing the same things over and over again. I also think the beauty of action logics is to help us explore where we don't explore. I think we get really stuck in exploring within the confines of where we're comfortable. And again, we ask at the beginning, where does it shake discomfort? And if it doesn't shake discomfort, then chances are you're not probably doing the work. And it's okay if you don't want to. If you want to sit in comfort, fine. There's nothing wrong with being comfortable. And this work, I think requires if we want to ever move the dial or the needle to be discomfort uncomfortable and deal with some really challenging things and ask questions that are different from the ones we've been asking.

Jennifer Brown:

That's right. And our times really call for it. If you're not uncomfortable, you're not leading today more than ever, I think because the skillset that's going to be needed, we've been talking about this a lot on The Will to Change. The skillset that's going to be needed is so different than it's been. And so necessarily, I think the achievement and the expert is grounded in what is, and measuring what is, and incentivizing what is, and what has worked in the past. And I think rewards people based on past successes, both of themselves and others. And so that's the benchmark. But I think we're living in times when if you're using an old benchmark, I'm concerned both for you as a leader, but also for the organization.

Because literally in the VUCA world, the Volatile, Uncertain, Ambiguous, Complex world that we live in, asking the right questions, sitting with the deep redefinition of things, the kinds of people that can hold space for that and transition from what's before the big change that happens at redefining and somehow sit in and help other people sit in the redefining, which is super uncertain, super ambiguous, and scary. I think a lot of leaders are not finding that their tools aren't working anymore. Their frameworks, their mindsets, their resilience is not as strong as they thought it was. So there's a lot of soul-searching around what is going to work for me and how do I want to show up?

And by the way, I've maybe also been uncomfortable with the dominant kind of culture that I'm working in. That's the other kind of disconnect I think, too. And when you have that moment, when you realize you're really out of sync with where an organization is or where your team is or where you said you are the conversations you're having, Christopher, the first thing I thought is, what if you don't feel like you're really a part of those conversations and all of a sudden you're saying, whoa, I'm exhausted. I'm fatigued. These aren't the conversations I want to be having. I'm bored. I am not challenged. I don't feel seen and heard. Everyone's an opportunist and diplomat and I'm over here trying to redefine and we're just not-

Christopher McCormick:

That gets really frustrating, can get really frustrating if you're in that-

Jennifer Brown:

It's super frustrating and it leads to people leaving organizations obviously and teams and not being successful, not being seen for their real brilliance because we don't reward it. We don't look for it. We don't even know what it looks like in action.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah.

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah. Lot, lots.

Christopher McCormick:

Going back to what you were pointing to Jen, it's like you're looking at past performance, right?

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah.

Christopher McCormick:

Looking at the potential of the future, what's possible. And when you look at the potential if I think about ... And I'll put it in a business context or a business frame for our Will to Change listeners. I work at Gilead, which is a biopharmaceutical company, and we're mostly known for virology, HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis. We started out as virology. We're now going into more of an oncology arm as well. But from an HIV perspective, if you've got HIV, we give prep as a preventative solution. And we also have a one daily pill regimen for people who have contracted HIV to help them become undetectable and untransmittable. It's a daily pill regimen. And we're now getting into the point where we're now getting two shots a year. We're getting to a point where you can get two shots a year versus a daily pill reminder, two shots a year.

So think about the potential versus what's right now and what we've been rewarding people for. And then the think about the future of what the product could be or at the end of my lifetime, HIV and AIDS showed up in my lifetime, and I think by the end of my lifetime it will be eradicated. And that's looking at the potential versus just the performance of today. And if you're not looking to the future and looking for what are the skills and capabilities I'm going to need over there in critical roles for the future, we're missing something.

Jennifer Brown:

Yes. I mean, I think that's true for the person too. The curiosity, I like to think of it with being gentle with ourselves and being compassionate to say that I will and I can learn to be and work differently that I might've been ... I might go back. I think you said Aman, there's a moment in the later stages where you can go back to achiever expert, you build a new expertise, you achieve a new thing. But I don't know if we can all see in this VUCA world, I don't know if we know what's ahead and we don't know what will be an expert again on or achieve again, on life is long and getting longer for some of us. And the world is as we speak right now, just in horrible pain and agony. And it's such a privilege to think about life even being long.

I mean, may we all have many opportunities to pivot through these life stages because we have so much to contribute that is yet dormant even in ... I'm in my fifties, so much more to give and grow into, but it can feel like an ending of sorts. And there's probably a grieving and a struggle going on at that critical moment between achiever and redefining where there has to be surrender, there has to be sitting with feeling. The scarcity I know is really high too. I mean the scarcity in the DEIB conversations, I think for how we support leaders, they're feeling less than, they're feeling unsure, they're feeling there's going to be less for them. You speaking of opportunist, the I focus, it just reminded me so much of the argument we always end up being in, which is there's not going to be enough. Jennifer, if we sort of expand the pie, there's going to be less pie for me. Or if we sort of begin to recognize all of these social issues, where does it end is a slippery slope.

We don't have the bandwidth, all this sort of, there's not going to be enough just over and over again. That is what I hear underneath it all. And we've done great things, Christopher, what you just said, it is possible, and within our sites, not only organizationally and for society, but for ourselves, we are sort of limitless, but I just feel like the reaction to DEIB is so sort of weighed down with scarcity and it's so tough. You talk about stuck, Aman, that is just feels so, so stuck. People don't see the potential for their own transformation.

And I find myself, I don't know how to lead people to a place of uncertainty because there's such an amazing thing on the other side of it all. But if you can't pick up your head and take your blinders off and say, "I could be different. I could lead differently. I could be more expansive. I can hold more. I have more capacity and capability than I think I've ever had. I could be an inclusive leader. I might've resisted something, and now I embrace it because I understand it." That whole progress to me feels like we are limited by our ability to perceive what's possible for us also in the context.

Christopher McCormick:

I'm waiting on Aman to react I think she's-

Jennifer Brown:

I know. I know.

Aman Gohal:

Yes. Well, as you were talking, this just reminded me of the conversation that Christopher and I were having, and we've continued to have for several months, is watching these really strong jerky polarity swings with the DEIB conversation where we write about this. It is very reactive to whatever is happening. So the murder of George Floyd, the hate crimes in the Asian community, what was happening around the pandemic, there was this flood of energy and investment and a lot of talking in the corporate environment in different industries. Okay, this is front and center again. And now it has only been ... I mean, it's 2023, it hasn't been that long. It's been about two and a half, three years. And I am seeing trends of DEIB function shrinking, layoffs of chief diversity officers. And I'm going, what has happened in just two years or three years? It's not a very long amount of time, and it is these polarity swings of this is so important, put it front and center, or now this is not as important.

It's just going to kind of wane behind the scenes. And I think that's a part of where we are collectively is can we hold this as a consistent integrated thread? There is the othering of DEIB as we don't want to talk about that. We don't want to go there or that shakes too much discomfort. And I think that I am curious about when this will just be an integrated part of the conversation and we can start to move from checking boxes and doing the EEO, the Equal Employment Opportunity work of do we have the representation? Check, check, check. What is the data showing us? Have we hired the diverse talent that we need to hire to, are we really creating an inclusive workforce? And are we really questioning the structural ways that our systems are set up to privilege certain demographics and to hold back other demographics? And with these really strong polarity swings, what we have observed is it just continues to remain reactive and that reactivity is reinforcing a stuckness. What would you say, Christopher?

Christopher McCormick:

I would say that DEIB work, it needs to stop being DEIB work. And it needs to just be leadership. Literally, it needs to be integrated into why are we having separate conversations. If you're not an inclusive leader, you're not a leader. Period. Sorry. You are just not, you can't lead and not be inclusive. I mean, again, I'm getting into my right mode for a minute, but there is a level of ... Let me check. Where am I coming from right now?

Jennifer Brown:

It's okay. You can be wrong and honest.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah, yeah. But there is a level of, to your point, there is a reactionary element to all of this work that happened over the past three years. And again, I think in the DEIB space, there were some opportunistic times there. "Oh look, I can make more money now. I can get more work. I'm being asked to do these things and I'm going to all these things because getting so flooded with requests and things, I have to rely on all the things that are around me that I know and can pull on really quickly," which may not have helped us move the dial as much as we wanted to because I don't know that we were asking the right questions versus we were reacting to the reactivity as DEIB professionals. So I think that's where we also have to go and look at ourselves and say, "Where can we do better? Where can we ask better questions? Where can we challenge corporations, or systems, or structures, or government, or institutions, or criminal justice systems to really think about this work differently and to explore where they haven't explored?

Jen, you and I have talked to Susan Mason about the formerly incarcerated, and it was a Will to Change podcast during the pandemic and the formerly incarcerated and the bank on a hundred million. And that whole system of people being released from jail by 2030 will be a hundred million formerly incarcerated talent in the workforce ready to go to work, but can't get jobs because of background checks. So again, it's like where can we start exploring where things have stopped us in the past? Where do we get contextualized background checks? Where can we think about this differently? And from ways of being ... And mostly in our criminal justice system, you see people of color, women, trans, LGBTQ, marginalized groups, Black, brown, indigenous people are more incarcerated than any other group. So the marginalized community. So Again, it just goes back to where can we start to ask different questions? Where can we really challenge ourselves and our thinking to bring new light to conversations that get us stuck back to Aman's point from earlier.

Jennifer Brown:

This is really feeling like we need a second episode of it. There's so much more I want to dig into with both of you and Christopher, you just made me think about, you're so right that we might've felt like we made a great leap forward in 2020 and 2021, but the way you just characterized how we managed it, what we did with that moment. I've been wrestling with, did we miss, dd we miss the really important conversations that should have been having? Did we go towards the reaction and the reaction to the reaction? Did we back up or did we go for, I don't know, the visibility, the attention, the-

Christopher McCormick:

Achievement, the achiever?

Jennifer Brown:

Definitely. Definitely. Did we go for that big statement by companies we're going to reach X by X year? Did we achieve, achieve, achieve? And in many cases, by the way, we didn't achieve because now we're sitting here in the aftermath and not seeing numbers that have improved and we're sort of back where we started. And so that kind of to me points out that there was a flaw, I think. And you know what? I'm not being hard on anybody because it's intense times. So this is not a criticism, it's just more how we shepherd change.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah. [inaudible 00:49:11].

Jennifer Brown:

Yeah, yeah. And what we focused on and what we participated in. That kind of led us down, I think some of these earlier, the first couple stages, I think of the model here perhaps versus being able to sit in the ambiguity to think about the future, to encourage our organizations that love to measure things, what gets measured, gets done, and sort of what's short-term thinking that the business world tends to really love and giving into that and participating in that just creates more of that and not that real kind of deeper change that we need in order to really tackle the big, hairy complex things and our role in them.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah.

Jennifer Brown:

Wow. Well, I think I have to wrap us up. I'm so sorry both of you. I'm not kidding. I think we need a secondary where we go into each of these stages for The Will to Change listeners, there is a wonderful paper that these two have written and we will make sure that you have access to it and where to find it. But Christopher and Aman, what would you share about the easiest way to track you down to find out more about the model and the work that you both have written about and also to maybe even consider this for a workplace, if you are feeling stuck and a lot of what we've tried to introduce hasn't really gotten traction, or you feel that you need to tackle it in a different way, I personally would recommend this is a great investment, but where can folks find more information on it?

Aman Gohal:

I can start with that. The paper is adult development, how can adult development lens expand the DEIB social justice conversation? What does this conversation look like at various action logics and how do we really start to look at where we are and open up the aperture? The paper is available on my website front page, which is wateroflifecoaching.com, and I can be reached at aman@wateroflifecoaching.com or aman@gla.global, but I have put the paper right there so that people can see it, read it, download it, share it. It is something that we are openly distributing, and it is a scholar practitioner paper. It captures a conversation of practitioners, and really our intention is for people to just be having the conversation to let this percolate and bubble below the surface again, so that we can see new cycles and new waves with DEIB work in the future.

Jennifer Brown:

Thank you, Aman.

Christopher McCormick:

Brilliant.

Jennifer Brown:

Yes. Christopher, anything to add?

Christopher McCormick:

I love working with Aman, it's just so great. Yes, so go to Aman's wateroflifecoaching.com, and you can also find it on both of our LinkedIn profiles. If you want to find us on LinkedIn. It's on a highlight page for my LinkedIn profile, so you can find it there. You can find it on Aman's LinkedIn profile. Did GLA publish it? I think they did.

Aman Gohal:

Yeah. GLA also published it, so there is a link on the Global Leadership Associates LinkedIn page as well.

Christopher McCormick:

Yeah, so you can find it in multiple places, but if you can't find it, please feel free to reach out. You can reach me at christopher.mccormick@gilead.com. Happy to send it out to folks as well.

Jennifer Brown:

Thank you so much, both of you. Thank you for writing this. Thank you for bringing it to our field, hopefully, and I'm really excited to have a second part of this conversation to really go into some of the particular action logics. We started to touch on it. I hope folks are intrigued, but it definitely requires and needs a deeper conversation that I think, I feel like there's something really powerful here and another tool in our arsenal that is particularly speaks to the complexity of this year in particular. So I really thank you both and Will to Change listeners, please track down these two amazing folks and you're going to get pinged, Aman and Christopher, but thank you for everything and thank you for joining me today.

Christopher McCormick:

Thank you.

Aman Gohal:

Thanks for inviting us.

Jennifer Brown:

Hi, this is Jennifer. Did you know that we offer a full transcript of every podcast episode on my website over at jenniferbrownspeaks.com? You can also subscribe so that you get notified every time a new episode goes live. Head over there now to read my latest thoughts on diversity, inclusion and the future of work and discover how we can all be champions of change by bringing our collective voices together and standing up for ourselves and each other.

Doug Foresta:

You've been listening to The Will To Change: Uncovering True Stories of Diversity & Inclusion. If you've enjoyed the episode, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. To learn more about Jennifer Brown, visit jenniferbrownspeaks.com. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back next time with a new episode.