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Maria De Fazio:
Excellent, welcome. Thank you all for joining. We're going to give everybody a minute or so just to get settled and get on the line. Great. Wonderful. All right, well, let me get us started really quickly while we're waiting for the next couple of folks to get all logged in. My name is Maria DeFazio. I am the executive director of the Presidential Management Alumni Association. Thank you all so much for joining us for today's lunch and learn Couchella session Allyship in the Workplace. We are so thrilled to have with us Danielle Carnes from USAID and Eddie Turner. As PMAA, we are the Alumni Association for the Presidential Management Fellowship Program. We are thrilled to be helping support you throughout your career, basically just to keep continuing being awesome. That's what we're here for. So a couple of quick things about how we're going to run today's session and then we will get started. A quick disclaimer. Any of our federal colleagues today are appearing in their unofficial capacity talking about personal experience, personal views. These are not direct edicts from any kind of agency. Additionally, obviously, today we're having a really important conversation. So I just want to remind everyone that we are having a respectful dialog where we're all going to assume positive intent and a desire to learn.

Maria De Fazio:
So we should all be OK with giving correction and getting correction if necessary. We are going to be recording today's session. It will be posted to our training page and in a couple of days, we will also have a fully accessible transcript of today's event posted with it. If you have questions at any time during during today's session, please drop those in the Q&A feature. If you have a technical problem at all during today's session, please put that in the chat and I will try to help you with that as best I can as I am both producer and moderator today. So, again, thank you so much for joining us. Let's get started. I'm just going to really quickly introduce Eddie and Danielle and then we will get underway. So Danielle Carnes joined the USAID as a PMF in 2016 and now serves as a program officer in their Human Capital and Talent Management Office. She's the founder and former chair of the Employee Resource Group for Gender and Sexual Minorities at USAID. And she helps AID achieve its developmental objectives by leading efforts to create a safe and inclusive work environment for marginalized and underrepresented staff. She holds a master's in public policy from UC Berkeley, as well as two bachelor's degrees from UC Davis.

Maria De Fazio:
When not working, she enjoys auto repairs, renovating her house, gardening, eating strawberries and snuggling with her overweight cat. Overweight cats are the best. And we also have Eddie Turner with us today. Eddie Turner is an in-demand, expert in leadership development, a motivational speaker and a certified professional certified coach and trainer, as well as a master facilitator. Eddie has extensive experience working with all levels of leaders in Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, international conglomerates, universities and across the public, private and nonprofit sectors as a leadership and technology consultant. He's a frequent contributor to Forbes, and Eddie has opined and offered commentary on leadership and development in the Wall Street Journal, for CNN, Fox News, and ABC. He's also the author of an international best selling book, One Hundred and Forty Simple Messages to Guide Emerging Leaders and the host of the Keep Leading podcast. So, Eddie, Danielle, thank you both so much for joining us today. We are so thrilled to have you. Let's just dive right in. We're going to kick off by, by getting a little bit more into into your background, so I would love for you guys to sort of share how your careers intersect with the work of inclusion and allyship. So, Eddie, why don't you kick things off?

Eddie Turner:
Well, thank you for having me. What I would say my career intersects with inclusion and leadership from the standpoint that I spent the first 20 years as an information technology professional. And one day an older white man said to me, Eddie, you're not a normal I.T. guy. You've got a personality. He took me under his wing. He taught me the business of learning intel development, and that put me on the path that I am today. And I specify that it was older white man because he had the access to power. He saw something in me and opened the door. Once he opened the door was up to me to perform when I stepped through it. But had he not opened the door, I'd probably still be in information technology today, which I still love. But I'm far more passionate, I believe, about the work I'm doing today in the lives I'm impacting because he took a chance on me. So him being inclusive, him becoming my ally, transformed my life literally.

Maria De Fazio:
Wonderful and Danielle, how about you?

Danielle Carnes:
Sure. So I as your introduction shared, I came on board at USAID, that's the Agency for International Development in 2016. Pretty quickly we came to realize that USAID has some challenges when it comes to diversity and inclusion, but especially when related to LGBTQI+ staff, the challenges that people in that community face across many offices, bureaus and centers. And there's just no structure or individual who is coordinating to measure consistency in results. And so, as an example, LGBT staff are traveling to countries where we work and need to be able to do so without fear of violence, either en route or in that post. But there isn't really anybody in place to help work with that Office of Security to improve those outcomes and to improve the security situation for US staff. There's also other issues beyond security, such as for training or H.R. policies or contracts, policies for communications. There's a whole host of these things and there just isn't any single body that's putting these together and saying we're going to have something coordinated. So I founded GSM Gender and Sexual Minorities at USAID in 2018 to address these disparities in treatment, policy and the emphasis that the LGBT community lacks at USAID. Our founding charter prioritized the needs of our locally employed staff that are non-American colleagues as key and fundamental to improving that USAID work environment.

Danielle Carnes:
Because at the end of the day, if we're improving the outcome for a gay man in Uganda or for a transgender woman in Thailand, then pretty much we've improved it for everybody. So over the past three years, we've had a lot of success and improvements in our security policies that I was talking about, H.R. policies for transgender staff, H.R. policies for critical data gaps in the who is working for us and how we can talk about those issues working for us and then briefing books for overseas leadership. We've also offered numerous trainings for our staff, ranging in size from 15 people to 600. And we've developed USAID specific training materials to help address those sort of resource issues that we've talked about in terms of reference materials being lacking. And I've hosted all of the commemorative events for the LGBT community since our founding.

Maria De Fazio:
Great. That's wonderful. OK, Eddie, I wanted you to also talk a little bit since you spend a lot of time coaching. Now, obviously you're you're a bit of a jack of all trades as you're as you're doing so, so much revolving around leadership and development. But when it comes to coaching in particular, can you talk a little bit about how coaching encourages connections with folks who are different from yourself? They encourage how coaching encourages you to sort of look at someone's experience outside of your own.

Eddie Turner:
Coaching supports leaders in this way, because fundamentally, one of the things that I am doing when I'm working with an executive is removing myopia, allowing them to expand their lens, open up the lens, the frame, so that they're able to see beyond what they would normally see. And we do that as executive coaches by challenging a client's limiting beliefs. Challenging not just a limiting belief about what they think is possible for themselves or for someone else, but also challenging fundamental beliefs and values. And when we allow a client to start to think beyond a place that they have held for a very long time, sometimes certain beliefs, for example, how they may feel about employees who may not have the same persuasion that they do. Well, when we do that, that allows them to be a better person for themself, but also for those who they lead. For example, there was an executive who at a company when they expressed the need to have an executive coach, the company says, well, hey, who do you what do you want? A you have a sexual preference, do you have a gender preference, etc., etc.. And so when the client interviewed me to become her coach, she says, Eddie, you know, I'm an older, older age white woman. And she had crossed 60. And she says, you know, I feel like I'm just out of touch with my increasingly diverse workforce and I'm not really sure I know how to relate to them. So I specifically asked for a Black coach so that I can show up better for my employees. And I applauded her for no one having the self-awareness. So many leaders lack self-awareness. And then those who do have self-awareness sometimes lack the motivation to do something about it. So I commend her for being willing to do both. And that's where his executive coaches we're able to help leaders.

Maria De Fazio:
Sorry, muted. Working with a slightly different set up today. So excellent. So I think what I'd like for us to do is to be able to dig in a little more on the idea of allyship, what it means, what it is. So as it relates specifically to the workplace. What is an ally in the workplace? How do you act as one taking into account that that's a that's a title that sort of earned through action as opposed to just sort of standing up and decided to say, I want to be an ally. So what is it? How do we work towards becoming it? So, Danielle, why don't you start.

Danielle Carnes:
Well you took my talking points away from me; earned through action? No, it's OK. All right. So what I was going to talk about, I have I have a second talking points so it's ok. Ally's a verb, it's not a noun. It's something that we do. It's not something that we are. And so we have to practice ally ship. It a state of doing something for your community or for another's community. And it's not a state of being neutral. So it is earned through action. And I would just say in the workplace, what do allies do? Being an ally is about looking out first and foremost for the people who are around you. And if you see someone being hurt in the workplace, check in on them, make sure they're OK, ask them what they need you to do, offer suggestions if they don't know, because it's really important when we're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion issues, that these are things faced by real people and that keeping real people at the center of the equation is the most important priority.

Maria De Fazio:
Great, and Eddie, can you build on that a little bit?

Eddie Turner:
I concur with Danielle's definition. The Wall Street Journal called it in July 2020. They called it when a white person or a person otherwise in the majority helps a person who is black or otherwise is the minority, through workplace development or helps them when they're being discriminated against or receives unfair treatment. Now, specifically, they called it that that because at that time they were focused on what the what had just transpired with George Floyd. But it says not just white, but otherwise in the majority. So in the case of if it's a an LGBTQ person that's experiencing mistreatment, well, that's where the heterosexual is...heterosexual is the majority. And they will want to stand up. If it's a case of a female who's being mistreated, then any man can stand up and be a spokesperson and be an advocate and taking that action. And so it depends on the context. Right now, we have a lot of things happening to Jews, unfortunately, or in the last month it was Asians our...our Asian-Pacific colleagues. So at any point in time, as as the dynamics are changing in the world, in the workplace, all of us have a chance to be in the majority and speak up for that colleague who's in the minority.

Maria De Fazio:
Great. So I think how does allyship and inclusion work change depending on who we're trying to bring in, sort of building building off what you were just talking about, Eddie, how it you know, it seems like almost like every month we're dealing with something new. But I think it's more just like it's more just a matter of what has our attention at the moment. But when we're trying to bring in different communities, how do we do that, say if we're trying to make the workplace more inclusive for our disabled colleagues, how does that differ from trying to make the workplace more welcome from colleagues who are in a racial minority? Is there a difference?

Eddie Turner:
Do you want me to take that? Sure in some ways, there is no difference, and in other ways there is. For example, the 1964 civil rights legislation has benefited, it was primarily meant to help black people in America get the rights they had been promised. But that civil rights legislation has benefited people with disabilities, people who are LGBTQ. So by helping one, we helped all. Now there's a debate, obviously, about those the strengthening of those rights and how they've been kind of fighting to survive because they've had to be renewed every year or every twenty five years to have adaptions every year has to be renewed every twenty five years that those rights. And will those rights be renewed? They've been renewed each time. Will they continue to be renewed when they're up for renewal next time. So yes, by helping one we help all. But then there are times that we need to give special attention because it's easy to say, hey, I'm inclusive, but we look past those who are different from us. I myself thought I was inclusive. I interviewed a woman on my podcast. She was deaf and blind. Her name was Haben Girma. She said Eddie, I can't access your show. I said, what do you mean? And I'm saying this, everything's through transcription. I didn't have a transcript of my show. And so Haben challenged me to transcribe my show so that she and other people with disabilities could have access. And I thought, wow, here I am. I think I understand diversity and inclusion, and I, according to Haben, was ignoring the largest minority group in the world, people with disabilities, one billion people. And so the simple act of having a transcript. But it's heightened my attention in other areas. If I don't see a stair, a ramp someplace or a railing, I'm more sensitive to, what do people with disabilities need? Because Haben came into my life.

Maria De Fazio:
Danielle, how about you?

Danielle Carnes:
So how does allyship and inclusion change, depending on who you're trying to bring in? I think that it's good to remember that diversity, equity, inclusion seems to kind of focus on the next shiny thing. And it's very short term memory sort of topic. And we really need to remember that like these communities and these issues that are being brought up are not you and the people who are experiencing these things probably didn't suddenly start experiencing them when it came to your awareness. And so recognizing that and coming at it with humility, but then also paying attention to what's not in the public discourse, what's not on the radar or radar at this point in time, because those things matter, too. And it's not like whenever we're talking about like we're going to prioritize this, we're making a decision that this is a greater priority than something else. And so we're weighing those options and just be aware of those decisions that are being made. Also, just listening and understanding, usually with groups. This is something I know that Eddie you mentioned that leaders seeking self-awareness. This is this is another one of the things that I was going to talk about is that know what you don't know and seek out those resources that will create inclusive spaces. Usually when there's something new and there's something that you don't understand and or when there's somebody who's not at the table, it's because there's something keeping them from being at the table. And a lot of times that's centered that's rooted in ignorance, because before you've dealt with that ignorance, you won't even know what might be the barrier to that person being there. A quote that I like to say is, a fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. Start with the belief that you're probably a fool and take the steps that you need to mitigate that.

Maria De Fazio:
I think you've also touched on something that's very important, particularly in the workplace, in moving from a more sort of passively accepting what goes on to more actively, to more actively standing up for other types of coworkers is that if things aren't, a lot of it does come from ignorance. We're not necessarily making a hostile workplace on purpose. We're not trying to be terrible people because I think a lot of times we get the divide of, like, either you're an awesome ally or you are literally a terrible human. And that that sort of black and white definition of whether or not you're inclusive is helpful to precisely no one. So can we talk about how, and I'm going to like because this is a really great point that came up, I'm going to move on from my pre-prepared questions just a little bit. Can we talk a little bit about how we can address that sort of that level of of sort of painful ignorance or those things that would sort of get put under the heading of micro aggressions, they're not I'm not intentionally trying to discriminate. I just don't know. How can allies step in in those situations and sort of be the person to put the flag on the play rather than always leaving it up to the person who's affected? Go ahead, Eddie.

Eddie Turner:
Here's the challenge. We don't know what we don't know. It's only it's only when an event or person comes to our life that helps us. I had the privilege of studying at Harvard earlier this month under Professor Robert Livingston, and Professor Livingston wrote the book called The Conversation. The Conversation. And it's a powerful book. And he said he'd named it that because we can only begin to heal when we begin to learn and we don't learn until we've talked to people. The problem is he takes a step further by saying there's data about the reality of mistreatment, discrimination, whatever the subject is in this area of diversity, inclusion. But some people have their own belief system in spite of data. They don't accept the data and it only changes through, I believe Bryan Robertson calls it, I forget his book...Just Mercy. Proximity. Proximity we have to approximate, and so when someone who was different from us becomes our friend, we develop a relationship. We'll now accept the data and reality that that person is sharing with us that we wouldn't have accepted otherwise. And through that, we can expand our lens. There was a gentleman who was in our program who's a police officer. Thirty-eight years old, he did not know who Emmett Till was. And he was willing to admit that to us. So what does that say, Emmett Till? Every black person knows who Emmett Till is. They know the story. It's legendary. And the professor asked a profound question not to embarrass a police officer, but to make a point.

Eddie Turner:
How is it possible that a man is thirty-eight years old, has lived this existence and does not know this? Who this man is? And the answer is very simple, if you've only lived in a certain town, a certain part of the country, you've not experienced anything else. You only know your circle, and here I live in the state of Texas, the laws are being written now to to keep out even race being taught anymore. I'm sorry, the race theory starts with a C, I can't think of what it is right now, but it's being, we're going to take it out all together. So if you live in a place it's not talked about, it's not in the school books, it's very easy not to know. And that's the challenge that we face, the ignorance comes from not knowing what I don't know, but then, hey, it doesn't come up. Some people don't even know, they don't meet their first person of color until they go to college. That's the first interaction they've have had with a person, and they say "Oh, this person isn't so bad." All up until this time they had, they had one narrative. And so it is exasperated by the fact that, hey, everybody didn't go to college and that's OK. But everybody also doesn't leave their hometown. And so that's that's where we have some of the problems that may occur. And so it's through having a conversation, it's through proximity that we can begin to become more aware and have and learn.

Maria De Fazio:
All right, so, Danielle, can you build on that a little bit and talk about what we need to combine with proximity in the workplace to make that happen? Because obviously we have all encountered folks that it's like how have you worked side-by-side, along side people who are so different from you and have not encountered and have not challenged any of these beliefs and have not sort of at all understood that your view may not actually be based in reality? It's based on a perception. So how do we how do we take it from from there?

Danielle Carnes:
So sort of like in high school, someone told me that when you're uncomfortable, you're learning because growth is uncomfortable. And I definitely like having those people, having people who are different from you and being around that is important. But we also need to recognize that we're going to make mistakes, that we're going to mess up and it's going to be uncomfortable. But there's like there's there's, of course, the discomfort that is purely from a place that isn't helpful. But there is also this discomfort where we are growing and developing ourselves. So seeking those spaces where you can make mistakes and challenge yourself is really important and not relying on the minority to be the one to educate you because they probably have this every other vector as well. And then also just recognizing blind spots, I mean, that that is the first thing that we talking about going back to all of this. Like we all have blind spots and they are just part of our existence. And there's something that we all need to take steps to address. I think it's interesting to talk about ignorance. I like to kind of dive into this and disaggregate ignorance into ignorance and negligence, because this is also important is that people are often in these places where they are working alongside someone and they know that this person probably has a different experience and probably has different needs. But then they don't take the steps that they need to do to create that safe work environment for that individual. And that's really where you're moving from, a place of like, well, you didn't know any better to where you should have known better.

Danielle Carnes:
Is that difference there. And so, I mean, I compare this with homicide, like homicide versus manslaughter. You know, in the legal definitions. One thing you intended to kill someone. The other thing, you just happened to kill someone. Either way, someone's dead. Does it really matter whether you meant to do it or not. Somebody is still dead and that person is still suffering the consequences of that action. An example of this around gender topics is in grad school. My first day. A statistics professor was teaching; older, white cis gender straight man, and was give an example of a binary. And he was like, well, a perfect binary is male and female because there's only two categories. And so then you went off and taught the lesson afterwards. Somebody brought it up to him and was like, you know, this really isn't a perfect binary, like male and not male, that's a binary. Male/female, not really binary. So he came in, he had time to think about, came in to class next time and he was like, somebody brought up to me that male and female. Is it a real binary? And my first thoughts were, this is UC Berkeley. What did I expect? So pause right there. What he's saying is that he had time to think about this, he had time to learn to do better. And now he's dismissing it as being some sort of a liberal notion about equality that is pushing him too far. That's...The first time it happened, that was ignorance, the second time it happened, that's negligence. Because he had the opportunity to grow and he chose not to.

Maria De Fazio:
Right. I think one of the things that I'm I'm hearing or that I will sort of state from from what we have just said, is that when someone tells you something, you should listen. When someone shares an experience with you, particularly where it is one where they might have been vulnerable or hurt, you should believe them, right?

Eddie Turner:
Absolutely.

Maria De Fazio:
Excellent. So great. So then the next thing I want to cover and we'll open up for questions from the audience soon. So if you guys have questions, please do drop them in the Q&A function. I think since since PMFs and alums tend to be a very like, "OK, well, how do I fix it?" group. Sometimes to the detriment of everything else around them. Like this is the problem. How do I fix it? Let's use that energy. Right?. What are two or three specific things that someone could do in a work situation, whether it is a specific situation or a general situation, what actions can someone take to move them along on that journey of allyship to act like the ally they would like to be? So, Danielle, why don't we start with you and then we'll go to Eddie.

Danielle Carnes:
So first idea is learn what the community needs and then advocate for those issues, whether, and advocate for issues that somebody else might face, even if you don't face them yourselves, without displacing their voices. But oftentimes with marginalized groups, those folks aren't even in the room. And that's when you really have to step back and ask yourself, why are there people who are in the population who aren't here? What are we doing that might be proving a barrier to that? And then also recognize that, I think we talked I talked about it earlier. We're going to make mistakes. We need to fix it and move on. But if you make the mistake more than once, then you need to do your homework and then fix it and then move on, because I give this advice to people and then they'll be like, great, so I can just continue to make mistakes in perpetuity. No no no no. The awareness is, is the knowledge that you need to then know that you need to fix it. So those are just the two ideas. I think there's other ideas. So feel free to call me later.

Maria De Fazio:
Great, and then, Eddie, what would you recommend as steps that folks can take?

Eddie Turner:
Well, I would I would say that sometimes when I'm talking about this subject, I will have very commonly a white person who's been successful, say at the end they'll ask me, why should I care about this? They're not saying that to be flippant, they really want to know. Things are great in my world. Why should I care? And so we'll say this by extension, if you are one of the other groups, right? If you are not LGBTQ, if you are not disabled, why should you care? And I love this poem. I just like to read these couple of sentences verbatim from Pastor Martin Niemöller. First they came. First, they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. The first thing we do is speak up when we see a woman who every man is talking over in a staff meeting, ignoring her idea, stealing her ideas, speak up for her.

Eddie Turner:
Don't just let her be her voice be ignored when we see that a person with disabilities, we see we have menus in the cafeteria that don't have a Braille version. Speak up for that person who's blind. Whatever it is, speak up, say something. And then also when someone tells us, as Danielle alluded to, believe them, don't tell them to just get over it. Oh, it's 2021. Get over it. It's not imagined. People are dealing with, and there's a lot of stress. In fact, New York Times calls it the the the allostatic load, the measurement of the amount of stress people are under having to pretend that I'm not something that I am. That I'm having to pretend that oh yes, this doesn't anger me because I don't want to be called the angry black woman at work. People need empathy, they need care. And then I go back to what I said earlier, Dr. Livingston's book, The Conversation, have conversations in our places of employment. This is an example of a way of helping. Just getting it out there. This is a sensitive topic. People don't want to talk about it. But giving people the space to have the conversation. Is one of the best ways we can help.

Maria De Fazio:
Fantastic. So with that, I think. Eddie, I've got one more question for you, I want to make sure that we're we're sort of we're coming at the next topic from from the outside the federal government and within. What what's the biggest challenge in moving away from words to actions in the corporate world?

Eddie Turner:
I chuckle because it's always great to have conversations, to talk about, but then you have to do something. So one of the things we saw at the after the George Floyd incident last year is, wow, almost every single company, all the major companies came out with a statement about how they feel about racism and how they feel about diversity and inclusion. Beautiful statements. And it was great to see people speak up. And some of these companies had never spoken up on this before. But the challenge has been, when you look at the board of directors of those organizations, when you look at the leadership teams on the websites, does the rhetoric match the actions? So the biggest challenge is bringing those two into sync. And to that end, a lot of organizations have started employee resource groups, they have started, you know, the Chief Diversity Officer, you know, that's just a kind of a Band-Aid. You know, we have one. We put a person there of color or a woman there. We say, great, all right, we're done. No, it goes further than that. In fact, The Wall Street Journal called allyship the true way to move the barometer because of what we said earlier, allyship is about behavior. So really making sure that we're not just doing a check the box Band-Aid solutions out of organizations, making sure that it truly is about changing behaviors is what corporations are saying they need to really do if they're going to take this serious.

Maria De Fazio:
Great, and then Danielle, from coming at it from the the sort of government agency side as you were creating the ERG, and then the work that the ERG has done, can you talk a little bit about some of the difficulties of doing that within the sort of standard government hierarchy, which I think everybody on the call will know doesn't love to change quickly? The government is not generally known for being super agile about HR or representation. We talk a good game, but. How do you work through some of those, whether they're speed bumps or actual brick walls, like how do you work through some of that?

Danielle Carnes:
Organizational resistance to change. I think building on Eddie's point, change is hard. And I actually think that my first comments are about one of the things, one of the challenges that we've had to navigate in founding GSM and in leading it for these past three years is actually an answer, like answers one of the questions, or two of the questions, actually, that have been proposed already around disability specifically, and how to recognize like how do we approach things that are not yet widely considered to be relevant? And in this case, LGBTQI+ rights are pretty abstract for people outside the community, and there's very little media interest or knowledge on the impact of that inaction has. People are simply not aware. When I've shared my experiences at USAID by other employees to me, like I've had coworkers would tell me time and time again, like, oh, I'm so surprised that would happen at USAID. I never would have thought that would happen here. And it's like, time out. That's why it continues to happen here. Because you didn't think it would happen. You didn't think that this applied to us. And it's just, it's getting people past that where on other diversity topics, it's just assumed that this is important and that this matters. But when it comes to LGBT rights, for whatever reason, before I can put forward a solution, I have to first prove that there is even a problem.

Danielle Carnes:
And that is exhausting, and so I think one of the questions is specifically about how to deal with it. You have to start from that like you're starting from not from zero. You're starting from negative one and trying to work from there. And it is exhausting. I mean, you you can document that it's a problem with the ERG, we have interns who are working on white papers based on survey feedback, based on like we're documenting the challenges that career staff face when they're traveling. We're documenting the challenges that LGBT people face in health care disparities on the federal plans. But we have to document them first to prove that we have an issue before anybody is even going to consider fixing it. The second challenge that I would say is turf wars, I don't know how other agencies are structured, but we have like little feudal states where people control like you have the feudal lord and the serfs that are working poor. And so like USAID is structured in this like feudalistic society of territory. And either people feel like they own a topic and other people are threats to that territory and therefore they want to keep anybody out, or people who should be responsible for the topic

Danielle Carnes:
they own it, but they don't feel like they have the need to care. Going back to that first point where like, yeah, this is this is my topic. These are my job, like I do diversity, but yeah LGBT rights aren't a priority for us right now. I think the biggest challenge for GMS, the LGBT group that I started, has been figuring out what our role should be. Our first two years, we served more to advocate internally for change who would do the work when it was essential to the agency. So in cases where we would have to work with security to make sure that we are giving LGBT-specific country briefers to our staff so that we're not sending people into countries where they're going to be put at risk. Or where we organized our pride events because the agency needs to recognize pride and it wouldn't have happened otherwise. So we did it. But as it kind of became clear that organizational structures weren't interested in pressing for change and weren't interested in taking up that mantle, we really shifted entirely in terms of structure. And we've developed working groups to develop committees of staff volunteers to actually just get the job done.

Danielle Carnes:
And the goal shifted from trying to motivate and compel others to be inclusive, to developing best practices in the hope that eventually, someday, somebody will be able to pick this up and they'll have a functional scope of work when other people are ready to take it. The last challenge to DEI, develop--diversity, equity, inclusion, sorry development headspace, is, accountability. And we have plenty of accountability mechanisms for the work that we do. If we're handing out textbooks in Kenya, then we know how to count the pages in those books, but we don't know how to do that for our operations. And so the topic has languished. Diversity has languished because there are few people who are willing to hold those people and systems accountable. It's a lot of work. It's really not easy, but it's necessary to continue to demand accountability and transparency. And it's important to remember that those who are resistant to change are playing the waiting game. All that they have to do is to wait you out. And things will continue to be the status quo. And so if you're going into this and you want to actually make a change, this is a long-term commitment and it's going to be investment over time.

Maria De Fazio:
So I think a lot of what we're talking about, too, is folks who are in the majority, whatever that majority is in a space saying what can I do to help? And I think that that's that's a really important first step in advocacy and allyship, because you're not coming in with a preconceived solution. You are asking the people there what they need. And that's that's sort of my go-to way for for trying to be useful as an ally in a situation. What do you need? What can I do? What can I say that you can't? And those are really great ways to to start those kind of conversations. So I did want to circle back to some of the questions we have sent in in our Q&A. They both revolve around the disability community, so I'm glad that we're we're getting them in. What advice would you have for someone with a disability that is not yet widely considered one, at least in the US, and wants to spread awareness within at least their own government workspace? We've also got a question about how to how to be a support or how to be an ally for a colleague who has one of those invisible disabilities like a chronic illness. Are there particular programs or policies that we can advocate for? Are there things that we can do as coaches and supervisors? So Eddie I'm going to have you kick this one off. But as as someone who wants to be an ally for those with an invisible illness around them, what can you do?

Eddie Turner:
I think it goes back to some of the things you said earlier. Number one believe them. There's an individual who I became aware of who got out of a parking space, handicapped parking space at a location and someone basically wanted to attack her. Well, she didn't have a wheelchair, don't have a walker or a cane or anything, but she received a handicapped placard and they thought maybe she was driving someone else's car. But she has that her car because, I forget the exact diagnosis, but whatever it is, it feels like pins and needles going through her body at times. And it's a it's a chronic problem that she's going to have to deal with the rest of her life. Others, a mental illness. This is the month in fact just to help with that, it's it's it's a it's a chronic challenge for folks which causes behaviors and in all things they're suffering from and a host of things that, as the question says, either we are not aware of or not fully recognized and being as easily, having enough empathy for, as we do, that person in the wheelchair, as you do the person who is this blind, where we could see. So individually we have to believe them, but also start to be more accepting and widen our own personal lens and not judge.

Eddie Turner:
So I think empathy is the competency that I'd ask leaders and individuals, individual colleagues, to develop the ability to put ourself in someone else's shoes and feel their pain within us, even though we don't literally have it. And I think that'll make us slower to condemn and judge. It'll make us more understanding and hopefully more compassionate. And I'm not sure how it is there in some of the governmental roles, but in the corporate roles, many people are now returning back to work for the first time, either hybrid work situations or full time. And as your going back into the office, I'm reminding the folks that I'm working with, they're not coming back the same way they left from February of 2020. They're coming back and there's been a lot of psychological trauma. And so we all will need a lot more understanding, a lot more patience, a lot more empathy.

Danielle Carnes:
So I think these are fantastic questions. It's important to remember, I mean, that, these topics also come with a lot of stigma, and I know that like, you know, it's Mental Health Awareness Month, but like neurodiversity is incredibly stigmatized and that kind of puts people in a place where it's hard for the marginalized individuals for that underrepresented group to advocate for themselves. And so for the person, this is this is the same thing that USAID, like if if you have a USAID doesn't really have the security processes and procedures in place to keep our staff safe at post. And so if you have a transgender American who's serving overseas, then they are not necessarily able to be out in that work environment. And so advocating for their own issues is difficult, if not dangerous. That's the sort of situation where the person in that community, think about building your allies, think about choosing who you're going to approach and who you want to select, and for those people who are approached, those people who are serving as allies to those communities. Listen and help make progress on the things that matter. By first starting with believing them that these things matter. And it's it's similar, it's in the same sort of vein of, this is the case of any of these sorts of identities is where it's important that not just the people who are suffering the harm are trying to stop the damage.

Maria De Fazio:
Excellent, excellent. So I think another another area where I want to dig in a little bit deeper on that idea of how we can how we can be an advocate for someone when we are not experiencing that same kind of harm, whether it's whether it's like a microaggression where the only woman in the room is just asked to take notes for the meeting or whether we all agree to tolerate inappropriate jokes in the workplace when they come from someone high enough up. Can we can we talk about sort of specific ways you've seen folks defuse one of those situations where you've seen someone step up in a way that diffuses an awkward or a an aggressive or a detrimental situation? Because I want to make sure that we're sort of giving folks an example of what that looks like in the office, because it's not just it's not just enough to like to get out there in march in a parade. It looks different in the office. And a lot of times when we're in the office, we're also dealing with social expectations of how we carry ourselves or how we talk to people, particularly in the federal workplace, there's often a hierarchy when it comes to who is in charge and things are very siloed and you don't go over the head of the person supervising you. So if either of you can speak a little bit to how you've seen people kind of step up or step in. In circumstances like that, and specifically just to give everyone an idea of what that looks like.

Eddie Turner:
Sure, I'll take that and I'll build on the two examples you mentioned asking the woman only woman in the room take notes. I was with a CEO the other day and she told me this happened to her. She's in a room of other CEOs. So this doesn't even happen if you are at different levels, lower levels of the organization. At the top job, she's with her other CEO colleagues, and since she's the only female, they asked her to take notes. Well, how can I help in that situation if I had been in that room? Then I would have modeled what the appropriate behavior should be and what I call moral leadership, doing the right thing and said, hey, I'll take the notes, recognizing that my male colleagues just did that. And I might have even called out the behavior and said, guys, that's not fair, that we just asked this individual to take the notes and said that I would do it for that reason, or it could be the case where this happens very, very often, where we have the example I used earlier, because I've been in there in the situation and I have called it out. Hey, listen, that comment is a great comment, Bill, but didn't Jen say that same thing earlier? And now everybody's giving Bill all the kudos, so redirecting the attention back to our female colleague who said it or if she's continuously being cut off, being the person to speak up. And by the way, as you said, in some environments there's this hierarchy or this pecking order. The beauty about leadership is that you don't have to have that formal hierarchy to do the right thing. The person that just does the right thing becomes the leader informally.

Maria De Fazio:
I think this is this is an area to where it is really important because often the person who the harm is being done to is not in a position, particularly at the moment it's happening, to stand up and say that joke wasn't funny. It's actually really insulting because. Or why am I always the note taker? I outrank half of you? Because those are those are behaviors that are not always acceptable in the workplace, even if they are accurate. So, Danielle?

Danielle Carnes:
Yeah, it's definitely it's it's tricky because work environments have this concept of this professional culture, and it's also important to remember that, like when we are making these corrections, we are doing it for that community. And so checking in first to make sure that this is something that needs to be addressed is important, because sometimes flagging these things can actually cause more harm. It can draw more attention to it. They can cause that if there is somebody in the room who is directly harmed by that action, then highlighting it and making a big to do out of it might cause more harm than good. And so we want to make sure that we're not doing more harm by our intervention, because if we are, then it's probably more about us than it is about them. But then how do we correct people? So so, actually, I was just earlier this week, I was on a panel on diversity at USAID and one of the other speakers used a trans phobic slur and then referred to women as transgendered men. And so. I went, you know I'm on the panel, too, and so it's kind of like I was running through this exact question in my mind of like, how do I deal with someone who is advancing trans phobic slurs and concepts? On a recorded panel about diversity. And so, I mean, I could have called them out, but I was a panelist and not like there's a there's a pecking order.

Danielle Carnes:
And as you talked about and it's also just like you don't want to have it's about who should be calling people out. And this person is cis gender. Therefore, a cis gender person should probably also be correcting them. And so in that situation, I was frantically chatting the moderator behind the scenes and making sure that she knew that this was important, that this was a big issue and that it needed to be addressed in real time verbally so that it's on the recording because we can't put this out there. And we'll have to have a disclaimer now that says content warning use of trans phobic slurs and concepts. And so she was able to correct it. The moderator was able to step in and say that you know just for the record, we...like this terminology is inappropriate because of this. And then we moved on. That is a situation where I was not in a position to be able to correct that, but somebody else was. And so what I did was I went and I asked.

Eddie Turner:
Yeah, and I just want to just dovetail on that, just to say that everything is about context, so sometimes it's not that person that someone else, but then also there's times where we do the best good by capturing it in the moment, because if we capture it in a moment, then it becomes it's not something that happened later on. It's not something that we're trying to now correct and the person is like, well, it really didn't unfold that way. So sometimes it is better to wait and delay, but whatever we do we always want to leave the person with their dignity. We never want to do it in such a way that the person feels demoralized because we then do harm that person and other onlookers. But we can do it in such a way that everyone is energized by it. Everyone learns from it, and in fact, it gives everybody a chance to apologize say, hey, how come we didn't do that as well? And that's what has been my experience. And everyone's all the better because of it.

Maria De Fazio:
So it sounds like these are sort of things that we all probably need to practice a little bit too like, as we had said, we're going to try it. We're going to make mistakes. We're not going to get it quite right. We may accidentally pile on harm instead of instead of helping to reduce it. But this is one of those opportunities where if you practice doing it enough, it becomes sort of second nature and then you have the opportunity to really change culture within your workplace.

Eddie Turner:
Yeah, and that's a good point. I just want to say that, Maria, because the several people have said, hey, I'm afraid to say anything because I'm afraid to say the wrong thing. I'm afraid to do anything because I'm afraid I going to do the wrong thing. So we have to give people a space to make mistakes. I listened to Josh Bersin the other day who's been studying these issues for 30 years, even he said that he wasn't sure what to do. And he's the big guru in this space and only he felt like I'm just getting comfortable. So even if someone at his level felt that he was afraid, we have to have so much more patience for our colleagues who are all just trying.

Maria De Fazio:
Now, I think that's that's great and I think that that's that's the attitude that PMAA tries to have when we bring up topics like this and bring in folks to speak about things like this, we know we're not going to get it right all the time either. And we want to make sure that the the impact that we are having on the community is giving everyone a chance to sort of learn together. It makes it a little less scary, a little less intimidating and produces a positive result at the end. So coming up on that, we are almost at the bottom of the hour. I want to give both of you a chance to sort of sum up final comment, final thought, sort of. Eddie, I know I can see a slightly blurry copy of your book behind you, so I don't know if there's anything that you wanted to finish on and then I will close everything out. So, Danielle, let's go ahead and start with you.

Danielle Carnes:
Is this my shameless plug moment?

Maria De Fazio:
Yes, this is your shameless plug moment,

Danielle Carnes:
So USAID, I would love to have help. I work in H.R. and I would love to have help if someone wants to do a PMF rotation and get some experience working on LGBT rights policies at USAID, I could arrange to have a virtual computer freed up for you. So send me an email.

Maria De Fazio:
And I will be sharing contact information for both Eddie and Danielle after the fact. Anybody has any questions, you can reach out to me. Eddie, you're up. Shameless plug moment.

Eddie Turner:
Thank you for having me. I work with leaders to accelerate their performance and drive impact primarily through the power of executive coaching, masterful facilitation and through motivational speaking. I'm available at AskEddieTurner.com. And listen to the Keep Leading podcast wherever you download podcasts.

Maria De Fazio:
I love it, that was that was very podcaster voice, excellent plug. So just to close things out, I want to thank both of you so much for giving us your time and helping us learn more about this. I want to thank everyone that attended. I think this is a really positive session and we hope to do more like these in the future. If you enjoyed today's programing, please consider donating to PMAA. We are the alumni association. We are here to help you continue to excel throughout your career and support you. And we are a member supported organization. So this doesn't happen without you guys digging in and tossing a little money our way. It's also really important right now because we're working on a lot of new and interesting programing. We're growing our operations sustainably. And most importantly, we need technology and some resources in order to be able to return to hybrid and in-person events, because I think we all do desperately wish to be able to connect in person with each other again. That's going to take some resources. So if you enjoy today's session visit pmaa.us/donate. We're also running a special gift right now. We've got our first branded merchandise for anybody that donates over fifty dollars. You can learn more about that on the website pmaa.us. Thank you all so much. If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with Danielle or Eddie, please reach out to me at [email protected]. Thank you, everyone, and have a lovely rest of your day.

Danielle Carnes:
Bye all.

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