Creating an inclusive culture - with Advita Patel

Creating an inclusive culture - with Advita Patel

Sarah:  Hello. Welcome to this episode of Athrú Communications Podcast, where we'll be exploring how we can transform the way we communicate across cultures and differences, and how building our cultural intelligence could help us succeed in today's interconnected yet diverse world.

I am thrilled today to be joined by Advita Patel. Advita is many things. She is the founder of Comms Rebel, which is an internal communications and employee experience consultancy based in Manchester. She is the co-founder of A Leader Like Me, which is a global inclusive communications consultancy.

She is one third of Calm Edged Rebels, which helps leaders, communicate and work more effectively. She is also a co-founder of the very new Asian Communications Network, and we will link to all of these in her bio. She is also the co-author with Priya Bates, with whom she runs A Leader Like Me, of the book Building a Culture of Inclusivity, and I think we can say that's both best-selling and award winning at this point.

And as if that wasn't enough, he's also the incoming president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, staggeringly the first person of colour to hold that position. She's also a certified CQ facilitator and assessor. More importantly for me, she's someone I get to call a friend and a colleague and one of my favourite people to put the world to rights to over a couple of WhatsApp messages and a cup of tea.

Welcome, Advita.

Advita: Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.

Sarah: Did I miss any of the businesses? Did I miss anything?

Advita: It was really funny when people read that out and people go, God, you've got a vibrant life, haven't you? I'm like, I really have, but you know, it sounds really cheesy, but when you love what you do, like, truly, deeply love the work that you do, it never really feels like hard work.

Rarely. I mean, I know both of us have had many ragey WhatsApp messages to each other about certain situations and, certain topics. Um, but you know, 80 percent of the time it's always, you know, joyful to do the work that I do and I'm so lucky and privileged to work with people like you and have people like you in my friendship circle that I can get great enjoyment from. So yeah, brilliant. And I'm so pleased to be here and chat to you.

Sarah: Thank you. When I was reflecting. I was following your career before we ever met actually and started working together. But one of the things that you're passionate about is really just working the way, making the workplace better for people, making it more inclusive, creating a better experience. What drives you to do that? Where does that passion come from?

Advita: It comes from spending many years feeling excluded and not having that belonging, you know, what, what we talk about belonging, what that looks like. And it's no real, I mean, some of it obviously is the environment that was in and people's ignorance around what that looks like.

Some of it was based around my childhood, you know, not. being told that I didn't belong in this country, and I had to go back to where I came from, on a frequent basis. And some of it's being, you know, working in the profession like PR and communications where you don't see many faces like me. So, you start wondering whether it is the profession for you, right?

So, I spent a lot of my time feeling excluded and not feeling like I belonged anywhere until I started to spend a little bit more time in uncovering my identity and understanding what belonging meant for me. And that's when this desire or even this fire in my belly came alive about why on earth should we spend, you know.

This, spend this time on this earth feeling like we don't belong because of other people's ignorance or the people's lack of empathy, and when it comes to people who are different from them. So, comms rebel was set up with this desire to support organizations to understand how they can use communication effectively.

So, people can thrive in their work and do good. good work, without this feeling of, I don't belong here. Um, because that can really knock us, right? Knock our confidence, knock our, uh, progression, knock, um, everything about who we are. We end up kind of just being a shadow of who we should be, and we never live up to the full potential.

Sarah: Thank you. One of the things that I'm trying to do in this season of the podcast is really explore practical applications for cultural intelligence. So, when you talk about that not feeling of belonging, how might developing cultural intelligence help people create that sense of belonging, that kind of inclusive workplace that you're so passionate about?

Advita: I think it allows folks to really dig deep about the differences that people bring to organizations and to the workplace, rather than just looking at it from a peripheral overview or a helicopter view. You know, most people make assumptions, don't they, by your skin colour, your gender, your sexuality or your religion or whatever.

And don't really think about the deeper side of what makes a person in terms of cultural um, upbringing. And the environment that that person who may be a little bit different from them has grown up and, you know, you and I shared a conversation before we pressed record about, um, an incident or a, or a, well, it was an incident where somebody didn't pass a qualification because the assessor didn't believe that they contributed as much as everybody else did in that room without the consideration that that person did.

It's not from that dominant culture and how they may perform and react and communicate is very different from the dominant people in that room. And that wasn't really taken in consideration, and they used their bias on what good looks like to make an assumption about that person's character. And cultural intelligence can really help us understand actually people from different cultures.

doesn't necessarily mean they're not good at what they do. They just do things differently in the way how we may do it. And once you understand that, It can transform working relationships and that's what I love about cultural intelligence because it just allows you to just take that step back, reflect, think, understand, ask curious questions, lean into that culture a little bit more, figure out, you know, what it is about them that makes them different, but also makes also what are the similarities, um, cause we all have that.

Um, but we work in a very busy world right now and there's lots going on and people don't take that time to get to know people outside of the characteristics that are visible of what people feel comfortable in sharing.

Sarah: Yeah, and I want to probe that a little bit more about, you know, what are the barriers that you think are coming up for people in terms of, you know, we quite often talk about getting below the waterline of what we see on the surface.

In the work that you do, what do you see coming up as kind of the, the obstacles to getting deep and getting into that kind of getting below the surface in people's cultural backgrounds?

Advita: Vulnerability is a challenge for a lot of folks, you know, we, when you're underrepresented or you belong to a marginalized group, you spend a lot of your time hiding your identity because you just want to belong.

You know, I spoke about why I'm so passionate about belonging and inclusion is because I did change my character, you know, in the workplace, I became part of the dominant workforce. I didn't. Talk about Diwali, you know, the, the celebration that Hindus celebrate. I spoke about Christmas and I spoke about Easter and I spoke about Christmas dinners and I'm a vegetarian, you know, but just to belong, I was kind of contributing to some of those conversations and rarely spoke about things like Diwali, because if I spoke about things that made me different, that that makes me stand out even more, which means that people see me as different and don't want me to be part of that conversation.

So, uh, a lot of marginalized folks. keep things under the surface, I believe, because they just want to be seen and be heard and belong in that space and be part of the wider community. The more dominant culture, I think, for them, it's the fear. of getting things wrong. It's the fear of not knowing what to say or how to say it.

It's the fear of being called out, of being sexist or racist or whatever, you know, homophobic. So, in their world, they're like, I'd rather not dig too deep in this because If I do, and I don't know how to answer it or how I should react, then that's going to make me look bad and I don't want to look bad.

So, I'm just not going to talk about it. And they convince themselves almost that it's not really a problem. And that's where you hear those folks that say, oh, I see everyone the same. I don't see colour. I don't see, you know, sexuality. I don't, I see everyone. Everyone's the same to me. And we know that's not, you know, that's not the right thing.

Ultimately, and if only we were, if only none of us had any bias in the world. Wouldn't that be hard? Wouldn't that be absolutely brilliant? But we all do. It doesn't matter who, what background you come from, what your personality is, what kind of socio economic, you know, upbringing you had, we all have biases.

And I think a lot of folks just want to try and keep those things hidden when they don't feel safe enough to share. And that's the challenge, right, with psychological safety in workplaces, that if I share too much, what does that mean for me, and will I succeed?

Sarah: Yeah, and it takes us back. We need to break the vicious circle in order to get to a virtuous circle.

So, if you can build cultural intelligence, you start to build greater psychological safety and you can ask more of those curious questions. I know that a lot of your work is around changing, shifting organizational cultures. Into more inclusive, um, spaces where there's greater belonging. There is, um, I get, for me, more humanity in the workplace is where I like to think about it.

Um, and I'm curious about how you think that potentially developing cultural leadership, cultural intelligence as leaders helps to drive that kind of cultural shift. Does it drive that kind of cultural shift?

Advita: It does if people spend a bit of time and energy investing in their learning. You're not going to change your way of working in a, in a one-hour workshop once and you think, right, I get it.

I know what I'm doing. It's a continuous learning cycle. And the work I do in organizations is giving leaders an opportunity to explore their thinking a bit further. and looking at where the gaps are, where the barriers are, what they're fearful of, you know, what are they hearing, when they can kind of be a bit more vulnerable about that side of them, and then start looking at how they can fix some of those root causes that's causing that disruption or disengagement or people just not connecting, things start shifting and leaders have to take accountability. They have to understand the consequences of, of not doing anything. What does that look like for them? And like, to your point, it's building that humanity into the workplace, you know, understanding that life is very different from people to what it was five or ten years ago, and especially since the pandemic, you know, things, this global crisis that impacted almost every person on this planet has changed the way we all work and think and support each other. Leaders need to take a little bit of consideration about what does that mean for my team and ultimately, you know, both of us have spoken about this before, when you spend a bit of time and energy in understanding your people and how they work and what they need from you, it's only going to give you positive benefits to the organization. You're going to get loyalty. You're going to get engagement. You're going to get people put in an extra effort. You're going to get people who are innovative, people who want to see the organization succeed and will be the advocates for the organization and the business that you're running when they feel safe enough to be who they need to be to do their good work.

Sarah: Yep. And obviously we're the converted, so we believe all of this, but I'm just wondering the experience that you're having, the conversations that you're having with people across lots of the different industries and contacts that you work in. What's holding people back? What's stopping leaders kind of jumping into this, driving these kind of inclusive workplaces?

Advita: I'm going to go back to fear. It's fear. It's fear of doing something different. It's also the fear of losing out. Right. If I create an inclusive workplace, what does it mean for people like me coming into the workplace? Does it mean less for them? Does it mean that they won't get the opportunities that the other folks get who are different?

And they may not admit it openly, but that inner root, like, you know, we all, when I did, when Priya and I wrote our book, uh, I did some, um, research on why we have bias. Now what, what leads us to that bias? And it all goes right back down to our ancestors, right? Where Ice Age when we're living in caves and the only way we could stay safe was when we saw the visible attributes of the community that we belonged in, and we knew that they were our people.

And that really hasn't really left us to be honest. And that's still their part of, I, when I see someone who looks like me, I feel connected, and I feel safe and I know they will understand whether that's true or not. Like just in those immediate few seconds, when he sees someone who looks like you, you feel that slightly more connection to them than he would to somebody who's very different from you.

And I think a lot of leaders fear having difference around them because it means they're holding the mirror up to themselves. And it's a very deep cycle. I mean, if I didn't work in comms and PR, I would love to invest in psychology and human psychology and how human brains work, but there is, you know, that little bit of research I did on that, how why people feel that way.

I think a lot of leaders who are resistant to change fear it and the fear of what it means for them and what it means for people like them going forward. There's that part and then you also got leaders who are fearful, like I said before, of getting things wrong. I'd rather not go down that road in case I get called out for it, in case I break the laws.

We know what's going on in the US and stuff with all these legislations coming out and policies, so people are scared. Like, am I breaking the law if I interview more women than men? Am I breaking the law if I give opportunities to a black colleague over a white colleague, because I feel like I need to bring the balance into the team or whatever, like people are very worried and scared about making mistakes.

So, they rather just take all that away and just keep it quite, you know, on the surface level. Um, and not really want to talk about it. And it's quite, you know, Priya and I have also said, we've spoken about this as well, about it's quite, it's very personal. And it is, it's a very personal, vulnerable thing to do, because you are holding the mirror up to yourself.

And when I was doing this work. On me, when I was looking at cultural intelligence, you know, it did open up a lot of cans of worms for me. I was very much like, oh my goodness, I, I thought I was doing good by doing this. And now my biases and my stereotypes and my assumptions have led me to make decisions that are unfair.

Uh, and what do I need to do about that? And that takes a lot of deep work, and I think a lot of leaders are equally, if not more tired, exhausted, frustrated, challenged. You know, they've got a lot to think about and. You know, we don't often give enough grace. To folks at that level. Sometimes.

Sarah: Yeah, I think that's very fair. I often think about the overwhelm as a barrier, and it's not that people don't care don't want to care. It's just there's so much coming at them. So, to be able to, you know, to do the work to get to the point where you can perspective take better. And you can kind of get out of the day-to-day chaos and emails and messages and all the things, all the news, and get to that point where you are going to be able to sit above it and take your perspective.

I think it's really challenging for a lot of leaders, which I suppose also leads into some of the work that you do around confidence coaching and leadership coaching as well, that sometimes we need that time out and that voice. To say, wait a minute, stop, here's, here's where we need to step in and think about this differently.

Advita: Yeah. That safe space to be able to explore your thinking without any judgment, we're not, we live in a very volatile world where people make assumptions through a tweet or a post or some misinformation that's shown us someone has shared without actually learning how to do our due diligence. And we make massive assumptions just based on a few hundred characters, and we don't allow grace, enough grace to have these deeper conversations.

So, leaders need a space, everyone does to be honest, but we, specific leaders or leading teams and organizations need a secure safe space where they can talk openly about challenge, about their fears, about the resistance that they're facing, about their own. career and upbringing and the society that they've been surrounded by and what's wrong and what's right.

And then understanding the steps to take on how to amend, adjust, adapt. And what is it, you asked about some leaders’ feedback and some leaders fear that it means changing themselves or their personality. And I'm always about, it's not about changing your personality at all. It's about adjusting and adapting how you may communicate to people who are different from you.

Sarah: Yes. And I think it's also one of the things I've learned on my own personal kind of cultural intelligence journey, is being able to step back and go, okay, that's my reaction, but what person, what perspective is that person bringing, or what background are they bringing into this conversation? Were they, you know, we're cross purposes, we're not understanding each other because there's so much difference.

And then be able to step back and go, okay, I see the good intention. I can see where that might be coming from. Um, but that's, you know, I'm still a work in progress on that, let's be honest. Anybody who's heard me raging will know that.

Advita: As all are though.

Sarah: Yeah.

Advita: There's never going to be a time in our entire existence that we're going to know everything about everyone.

Sarah: No.

Advita: Every single day is a learning day, and it's Maya Angelou that says, when you know better, do better. And that's the philosophy that I live by. Like, I'm not, I don't claim to be perfect. I don't claim that I want to get everything right. And I, just because I work in the world of inclusion and cultural intelligence and, you know, equity and diversity doesn't mean that I am.

None of us are. And it's allowing that learning mindset and that growth mindset that we often hear about and accepting that sometimes we're going to get things wrong. Apologize, move on, adapt and be better the next day.

Um, and then don't make the apology about yourself, just, I'm sorry is a complete sentence. One of my friends is very fond of saying to me, no is also a complete sentence. I think that's very true. I think one of the things that the world does not set us up well for is embracing what I like to call being perfectly imperfect. Um, that we're, you know, there's meant to be this, and particularly around leaders, this kind of superhuman expectation of how leaders show up, particularly around inclusive culture, cultural intelligence, difference, you know, you're meant to be fabulous and perfect and actually the best thing you can do is just practice apologizing because at some point we're all going to make mistakes or get things, say things that don't land the way that we intend them to.

Advita: Exactly, exactly.

Sarah: Advita, thank you. Trying to keep this short because Advita and I are well known for talking for Way longer than our meeting schedules when we get together, but I'm asking every guest this season to recommend a book, a video, a podcast, something as a resource for anybody who's thinking, I want to drill down more deeply into this, putting together a little resource list at the end of the season for everybody to download. So, any top tips from you, please?

talk by Kathy Tan. It was in: 2019

And Kathy Tan is connected to Mindvalley. Those are people who know Mindvalley, you know, the, the training and the learning development platform, which is pretty, you know, very good actually. And she talks about how she, um, created online education for four different languages in different markets in over a few months and why, and the impact that had, and she talks about, shares her journey on that and what cultural intelligence means and why we should all think about it as part of our role and the contributions that we make in the work that we do as well.

So, it's a good watch, highly recommend it. Brilliant.

Sarah: Thank you. And one of the things I'll add to when we do the list is I'm going to put some kind of reflection questions because I think one of the things that we learn from trying to become more culturally intelligent is not just to read it, listen to it, watch it, it's to then reflect on what that means for us, which I know you're very good at. So, we'll do that as well. Advita, anything else you'd like to share? Any words of wisdom before we wrap up?

Advita: I would like to say to the listeners is it's been the kind of underlying theme of this conversation is don't give yourselves too much of a hard time, you know, keep an open mind, ask curious questions, apologize when you need to apologize and keep on learning and learning about others, you know, as human beings, we are very interesting individuals and we have so much to learn from each other.

So don't be too hard on yourselves and feeling the fear is absolutely okay. Like we all have that. So don't let it stop you progressing is what I would say.

Sarah: Brilliant. Fabulous tips right there. Advita, thank you. I'm going to stop now before we just keep recording for the next three hours.

Advita: Thank you, Sarah

Sarah: Thank you