Have you ever been in a situation where you hesitated to applaud your own achievements, held back by an invisible societal leash?
Join us as we sit down with Ravi Agarwal, (one of our favourite people here at The Culture Ministry). He is an agile culture transformation consultant, who passionately advocates for change in workplace culture and champions gender equality.
Drawing insights from the #IAmRemarkable program, Ravi sheds light on the often-unrecognized challenges faced by women in male-dominated industries and the crucial role allies like himself play in initiating a progressive shift.
Listen in to engage in a thought-provoking conversation about male allyship, individual behaviors, and empathy as key components of culture change. Ravi shares practical tools to overcome biases and cultivate a more empathetic perspective and addresses the hurdles women face when advocating for themselves.
Did you know that Ravi is a huge Taylor Swift fan? He loves exploring the profound impact of Taylor Swift's lyrics and the clever satire woven into the Barbie movie.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
A Dog Called Diversity is proud to be featured on Feedspot's 20 Best Diversity And Inclusion Podcasts
Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
Have you ever been in a situation where you hesitated to applaud your own achievements, held back by an invisible societal leash?
Join us as we sit down with Ravi Agarwal, (one of our favourite people here at The Culture Ministry). He is an agile culture transformation consultant, who passionately advocates for change in workplace culture and champions gender equality.
Drawing insights from the #IAmRemarkable program, Ravi sheds light on the often-unrecognized challenges faced by women in male-dominated industries and the crucial role allies like himself play in initiating a progressive shift.
Listen in to engage in a thought-provoking conversation about male allyship, individual behaviors, and empathy as key components of culture change. Ravi shares practical tools to overcome biases and cultivate a more empathetic perspective and addresses the hurdles women face when advocating for themselves.
Did you know that Ravi is a huge Taylor Swift fan? He loves exploring the profound impact of Taylor Swift's lyrics and the clever satire woven into the Barbie movie.
The Culture Ministry exists to create inclusive, accessible environments so that people and businesses can thrive.
Combining a big picture, balanced approach with real-world experience, we help organisations understand their diversity and inclusion shortcomings – and identify practical, measurable actions to move them forward.
Go to https://www.thecultureministry.com/ to learn more
If you enjoyed this episode and maybe learnt something please share with your friends on social media, give a 5 star rating on Apple podcasts and leave a comment. This makes it easier for others to find A Dog Called Diversity.
A Dog Called Diversity is proud to be featured on Feedspot's 20 Best Diversity And Inclusion Podcasts
Thanks for listening. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.
This week on A Dog Called Diversity, I have my favorite or maybe I should say one of my favorite male allies, ravi Agawal. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Lisa, thank you so much for having me. I'm absolutely delighted to be here, especially knowing I'm a favorite male ally.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to say my favorite, but then my husband's a pretty good ally, so I thought I should be a bit careful there. But I've been wanting to speak to you for so long on the podcast because of, I guess, the work you do but I guess more for the person that you are and the things I see you doing I think are just pretty cool. So why don't you start off and maybe introduce yourself, tell us a bit about where you are, maybe the kind of your day job kind of work? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you again, lisa, for having me. I'm a huge fan of your work. I've done some training with your organization, culture ministry, on diversity and inclusion. I've really enjoyed it. I've learned a lot from what you do, so it's an absolute joy to be on your podcast, and in my professional life for years I've been engaged in agile culture transformation, so agile is how we brand it. It's a culture change initiative and we're on the ground working directly with the business and product development teams to nudge culture for better future ways of working.
Speaker 2:So for instance, I run training classes, workshops, individual coaching, team coaching and mentoring, and these have been my great passions for years. And then I came across diversity and inclusion a few years ago and I became very fascinated by it because I saw that the work being done is very similar to agile. Okay, we're working with culture behavior in the office. So I'm like, oh, I've been doing this for years. What's going on in D and I that's different or new? And this is how I got involved in this area and I became so in love with culture change Agile as well now is learning about these inclusion agendas that I moved out of full-time corporate employment to be an independent consultant in agile and D and I culture change. So it's not an overnight journey, but it's a very natural type of development. Right, when you really really want to change culture, you have to have a degree of independence to say what you think. Yes, right, yes.
Speaker 1:What I love about your agile work, though, is many times when I've spoken to you, you've often worked in more of the tech space.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Where it does tend to be more male dominated, less women. But you're always saying to me Lisa, I don't understand, there is these amazing women and they're not getting the opportunities and I just think it's crap. You're pretty open about it, yeah. So I love that you're doing culture change work, but you're noticing that things aren't quite right and you're thinking about what can we do about it? And you're standing up and saying this is what I'm going to do about it.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. And it's not just that things aren't quite right, it's that things are very wrong. Yeah, that's the conclusion I started to come to. So earlier on, pinging in the back of my mind, I see a very talented software developer who's a woman. She's better than all the men in the team, oh my God, and I can picture her now. I looked at her code. I can assess it myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I didn't really realize there's a diversity and inclusion issue here, because I didn't know anything about it many years ago. Okay, and it's a small thing that we don't talk enough about, especially in the engineering world, because by default, you're a man, and so when I learned about it more carefully, I started to realize there are headwinds blowing in the face of women that men know nothing about, and I know nothing about it because I always had it as a tailwind.
Speaker 1:Yes, right.
Speaker 2:So then I start to become extremely fascinated and I start to see that little ping in the back of my mind years ago. It's turned into something enormous that I need to do something about Because, frankly, we are missing some of the best talent that exists simply because of these exclusion agendas that nobody really came up with on purpose. Nobody's fault. But once we become aware of it, we have to change it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that language about headwinds and tailwinds and so that some of us in life have a better tailwind that helps push us along, whether it's the family we grew up in, the country, color of our skin, the education we've had access to, our sexuality, all of those things. If you're in the majority group, you often have a tailwind and we often use the word privilege to talk about headwinds. But privilege puts people's backs up sometimes. But headwinds or tailwinds, where am I going? Privilege and tailwinds go together, but I think headwinds is a way that people can understand. Well, yeah, I was given all these opportunities just because of who I am. Often yes.
Speaker 1:And some people don't have that. They do have headwinds. They do have these things working against them that make it harder. I know one of the things that you have done was to become an I am remarkable facilitator. Would you tell us a bit about that and why you decided to do it?
Speaker 2:I utterly fell in love with. I am remarkable. I am unashamed of my love affair with this program. It is Oscar Charles Brilliant. Now. I originally did it as an as an attendee, because I had joined a mentoring program for women and I wanted to understand what do women struggle with in self-promotion because that was how I am remarkable was sold to me in the email invite. It's a woman's network is running. I am remarkable to help women speak up. So I thought I'll be a good mentor and join the program so I can help women better. Nothing wrong with that motive. But when I did the program myself, I realized I am awful at self-promotion and that's why I fell in love with it, because it showed me how to be different.
Speaker 1:And I always thought I was good at it.
Speaker 2:But what I found out is that I am actually benefiting from tailwinds without really knowing it.
Speaker 1:Do you?
Speaker 2:see how it works, Ryan.
Speaker 2:So I realized I have been dumbing myself down, playing myself down for decades, or at least one, and I am remarkable. It's a program created by Google. It's recently been spun off into an independent NGO because it's become so big. It's edited up by the founder, anna Vayner that's her new role so it enables it to grow and its purpose is to help educate people about self-promotion, why it's important. Give you skills and abilities and confidence to speak up about your achievements in the workplace and beyond, and also to change the cultural perception around self-promotion.
Speaker 2:So I realized well, if I'm having a hard time with all the headwinds, how much harder is it going to be for people who are experiencing those headwinds, right? How much harder is it for them than for me? And so, once again, I see genius hiding out all over the place. How do we unlock that? Because if we're very good at something, we have an obligation to bring it out into the world, never mind the headwinds telling us we can't do it. And I am remarkable, helps teach that. And it's only 90 minutes long and it's free of charge. So it's an and free of charge doesn't mean value loss. I would say it's almost the opposite. Sometimes things are so valuable it's very hard to charge money for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that, so I so want to come on one of your I am remarkable workshops, but they are always when I am ready for bed and too tired, but maybe 2024.
Speaker 2:We'll do it in your time zone. I'm entirely at your disposal.
Speaker 1:Okay, maybe we'll set one up together.
Speaker 1:Hmm, I find it such an interesting program and I was talking to a potential client yesterday and they want me to come and run a program for their women's employee resource group around how to build confidence, how to deal with imposter syndrome, how to speak up just in meetings, and it's it's something really important for women to do, to speak up and to be able to self promote.
Speaker 1:And I was just reflecting when you were talking that there's cultures that you've come from, that I've come from and where I'm living, and also across Asia. Asia in particular, are much more humble cultures and the culture that I grew up in Australia, new Zealand, where I'm living now, has this notion of the tall puppy syndrome that you can't be seen to boast, you can't be seen to talk about the things that you're good at, and so that's that's a real challenge. How do you find the people on the program deal it if they coming from those backgrounds, those humble backgrounds, or those cultures where you know you'll be cut down if you say that you're good at something like. How do the participants respond?
Speaker 2:So it's a great question, and this is the heart of why culture changes is is a worthwhile engagement, because we are trying to change perception around self promotion too. So, whether it's tall puppy or this I'm very humble culture thing, the cultural resistance is the same. I'm not allowed to tell you what I'm good at, so we're practicing doing it anyway. Okay, now it takes courage to go against the tall puppy status quo or the you're supposed to be humble status quo. So by recognizing your achievements, you develop courage. Okay, so it's, it's a fearless engagement. With speaking about who I am, now you say, well, why should I do it? Why can't I just be a coward and fit in? Okay, so, so, so what does tall puppy syndrome do?
Speaker 1:It creates a culture of mediocrity is what it does. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, so the idea that the head of the curve, alan Turing, was, way you know, invented, co invented the Silicon revolution and the AI revolution that we are still dealing with today. But because he was in a sexual minority, sexual orientation minority, he was arrested and his life started falling apart after that. But the excellence remains embedded in all these individuals, and so we want to be able to speak up about our own excellence. Now, einstein was okay, but Alan was not. And if Alan had done I am remarkable Okay, we may have lived for another 40 years, and who knows what he would have contributed to the world, right?
Speaker 2:So if you're sitting there thinking, well, I'm from a humble background, I better not tell everybody what I'm good at. What are you robbing the world of? What are you robbing your own life of? And also, who says you're not supposed to say and, by the way, we're also misusing the word humble it's not humility at all, it's a misuse. Okay, so what does your word humility mean? It doesn't mean not speaking up for your achievements. So in the workshop, we're trying to get people to think about this and challenge their own perceptions. If you say humility means keeping your mouth shut, all of a sudden, people have associated the virtue with keeping silent and they haven't thought well, what does that even mean? And who's in charge? The men, yeah, yeah, they're the ones.
Speaker 2:If you're a man telling a woman to keep quiet in some of these very old fashioned cultures where you say humility, what Obviously you need to, you know especially cover yourself up, because that's some kind of humility. No, you need to keep your mouth shut and silence people, yeah, like masquerading it as a virtue, and it's a form of oppression at the level of our own psychology. So once you start to re-enforce all of this, you realize that you're practiced. You start to say, well, I'm going to, I'm just going to be different anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had to learn that running my business and I'm in a group with other women and you know I put stuff out on LinkedIn. If something's great, great has happened, I will put it out there and I don't see it as boasting.
Speaker 2:I just see it.
Speaker 1:If people don't know what I'm doing, how will they know whether they want to work with me or the stuff that I'm actually good at? Often in this group I'm in with other women. They're all oh, I don't. That would look like boasting. I'm like, oh, it's kind of how you do it, but also does it. I don't look at other people and go man, you're boasting.
Speaker 2:So we have a special moment about boasting and I'm remarkable. But all of us need to be very clear. What does it mean to boast? If I have done something that's valuable and I can prove that I've done it, that's not boasting. That's a misdefinition of the word and once again, I'm using the word to oppress somebody. It's a fact.
Speaker 2:And if you tell somebody something okay, based upon a fact, it's not boasting. That I'm drinking a cup of coffee right now, it's a fact. Okay. It's not boasting that I ran a workshop on D&I and I got this result. It's a fact. So you tell people what you've done, and what we're doing now is rewriting the narrative in our own mind. That's telling us not to boast, and I grew up with this at school. This is why I am remarkable had such a big impact on me, because in education, because we're being tested, if you get very high test results, it's obvious that you're good at something because you're being tracked, but when you enter the working world, nobody knows what you do or what you're good at at all. That is so true. Yeah, that is so true, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and in fact, on some of the women's leadership programs I facilitate we talk to women about. You know how do you manage your career and work with your manager, and when you meet your manager every month, you start with your achievements for the last month. Right, what are the two to three things you did that was great over the month, so that your manager knows that you're doing a great job? I wanted to ask you what does being a male ally look like for you? How do you describe it?
Speaker 2:Right, so male ally is an old term, so we Just an ally.
Speaker 1:An ally, it's a term that everybody uses, so I've made my peace with it.
Speaker 2:But an ally is somebody who, in a state of war, shall we say you've already agreed, you're going to be an ally, you're going to defend a nation that's being attacked. So a male ally is a little bit like that. But the wars that are going on are all at the level of our own cognition, how we treat each other, they're at the level of culture. So for me, a male ally well, I happen to be a man, so that's convenient because I'm in a position of privilege and I recognize it. So to be a male ally is to stand up for individuals who are not in a position of privilege, to recognize that I'm benefiting and they're having a negative experience and to try to even that out.
Speaker 2:So what does that mean? It means I stand up for gender equality, equality of opportunity. Okay, I also stand up for equity. Equity means we give more where it's needed and less where it's not needed. So, for example, I joined a mentoring program that was for women only. Why is it for women only? When I was thinking about this for a day, it occurred to me that women needed more than men, because it's much harder for women to have a mentor in the modern workplace than for men. And when I thought I realized I have men basically offering me mentorship anyway, just by the role they gave me and then I started to learn.
Speaker 2:That doesn't happen for women. So I am a mentor for women specifically, not because women need it because of something deficient, but because there are headwinds blowing into the face of women that men are not aware of, so I'm trying to even out opportunity. Okay, it also means to be outspoken about these issues, so I speak about issues that touch on how men have this wonderful position with all the headwinds.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's not difficult for men. Of course it is, but that's a separate conversation. We can have that separately. Why is it hard for men living a human life? But it's even harder for women, in my experience in the workplaces that I work in. Okay, so to be able to speak and use one's voice from within the privileged community is a very powerful way of creating culture change, because I'm trying to tweak other men's conscience just as my conscience was tweaked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I know that you were invited recently to run a workshop at a big law firm.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:On male allyship. Would you like to tell us about this, because I haven't heard. Apart from this one, I haven't heard of any other organizations running training or workshops on allyship, and particularly for men to come to and learn.
Speaker 2:Right, so it's a very new thing in the world. There's a bit of it going on here and there, but very, very little. So we're co-creating it as we go. So I ran this for the Singapore office of link-lators, who are a leading global law firm, and I was co-facilitating with an organization called Catalyze. This organization is the corporate consulting arm of AWARE, and AWARE is Singapore's leading NGO advocating for gender equality. So Catalyze does corporate training, and so it was.
Speaker 2:This was a dream come true for me that I didn't even know was a dream to get to co-facilitate this workshop. And so, speaking very generally about the workshop, because the details of what we did with link-lators is, you know, we don't speak about it outside of that workshop, but the definition of allyship we're trying to help people with is to well, what I've just said speak up for gender equality, challenge culture and common stereotypes and nurture an inclusive environment at the workplace. And what we're doing is we're not, we're focusing on the individual. What can you, as a man working at this organization, do differently at the end of the workshop to be a better ally?
Speaker 2:Okay, so we're not focusing on some big, systematic change, some policy implementation. We're not trying to change the government's behavior towards workplace fairness or anything like that. What can you do immediately Now? I love it because that's the heart of all culture change. Okay, a human being changes their behavior, even in a small way. That's how you do it. There's no other way to change culture. Actually, if you really look at real culture change, you have to start behaving differently, which means that I have to behave differently and bring that to others. So that's what we're doing in the workshop with allyship, and one of the ways we really do it is we want to reveal the headwinds or tailwinds.
Speaker 2:Okay, it doesn't work to lecture people on this stuff. Believe me, you know this better than I do. You've been doing this for longer. It balances off our eardrum. We don't hear it because we are biased and the bias is built into our thinking mechanisms. It's built in so deeply that we need tools to see beyond it. So we're giving people tools, and so what we try to do in the workshop is give people an experience of empathetic listening.
Speaker 2:Now, empathy. You probably don't need me to lecture you on what empathy is, but even if I lecture somebody they're not going to understand that you want to experience empathy. Empathy is one of these super skills that too few of us are any good at. Okay, and this is really for the listeners, not for you. Empathy is the ability to see something from somebody else's perspective, even if you don't agree with them or even if you think they're wrong. Right, it's a power skill. And if you're hearing me and you think, well, I'm not going to agree with you because you're wrong, I'm so glad you feel that way.
Speaker 2:Come to the Allyship Train, because the ability to empathize crosses these barriers that exist between human beings, alleged barriers. We separate ourselves off into these different worlds, right, and we fight each other without even knowing it, because we can't empathize. So we're revealing empathy and we're giving people a practice of it, and if we do it right in the workshop, you're going to start feeling the difference being a woman compared to being a man, because the cultural perception is different. And a simple way of putting it is if a man is very assertive and he says what he wants and he tells his team you know, I need it done this way, okay, great, he's on top of his game, he knows what he wants. But if a woman does it, we will often see the B word.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say she's a bitch yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was going to say bossy, but yeah, fine, both, both, both. Now these are both pejorative words, that they're a slur on a human being.
Speaker 2:But it's being used to describe identical behavior which reveals a gender bias, and we're not even aware that we're doing it most of the time because we expect women to behave in a certain way. So we are challenging those stereotypes in real time. Give people an experience of it. Now, if you do it right, you're going to touch people's hearts Right, and that's always my goal. How do I touch somebody's heart so they start caring about it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I saw an example of, I guess, empathetic listening in one of the roles that I was in in my career where we set up some sponsorship, so in a structured way. So we took a lot of the senior men in a particular team and matched them with up and coming women in the organization to create networks for them, to help the senior men understand some of the great talent we had in the organization, and the first thing they were tasked with doing was to go and have a conversation with their protege, I guess and I can remember the head of the region coming back Very lovely man, but going back it is like Lisa. I went and spoke to my protege. I'm like, yes, did you know the things that she's had to deal with in her career? And he reeled off quite a few things and he couldn't quite believe this stuff had happened.
Speaker 1:It was things like being on sites where there was no bathrooms for women, how she'd been treated in various situations. But it created that empathetic listening and it was one on one where he could then connect with and understand something that was going on. And then we started to see a shift in behavior, which is exactly what you're trying to do. Did you have any without giving away confidential information? But did you have any light bulb moments for people in your workshop where I guess they realized deeply what's going on for them and how they can do things differently?
Speaker 1:Yes is the answer.
Speaker 2:So we're trying to reveal the bias Now. It's very sensitive because it can really and I'm not speaking about any individual now, I'm speaking about myself it can break your own heart to realize how badly I've behaved.
Speaker 2:Without realizing I was behaving badly. Remember, bad behavior isn't always about my conscious motive, it's about the impact that it has on the individual Right. So we're trying to reveal that to people. And we have this wonderful role play exercise where another co-facilitator who's a woman plays the role, and she did a brilliant job. She plays a role of a woman who's being told that she's, you know, too bossy, and so on. And so we practice how would you respond to this woman who's coming to speak to you as a male ally? And so, in that moment of practice, if you think the woman is doing something wrong, maybe she's using the wrong language, maybe she's being bossy there, it is right there. But there's no such thing as a bossy man, there's just a boss. No, right, no. So we reveal it.
Speaker 2:And when you reveal these cultural moments, it's often very private to the individual and they may not even want to speak about it. Because, because, but that's what creates a tweak in conscience that leads to long term behavioural change. That's what's called touching somebody's heart. So we can't guarantee somebody's heart is was touched at that level unless they start telling stories about it. But mine was years ago. So that's why I'm telling stories about it now Because I'm okay to speak about it, but at the time I was like, oh my God, I've made such a mess, haven't I for years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think one of the challenges when I've been dealing with men in the workplace and it's the same for all of us that we want to know that we're a good person yes, Like you know, I did that thing, but I'm still a good person and so being able to navigate that line between helping someone understand their bias and maybe, by doing or saying a certain thing, might have upset someone or disadvantage them, is a hard line, before saying you know you're a bad person because you did that, because you're not and you know that's a really hard line, particularly in this space.
Speaker 2:It's really helps. I'm glad you brought this which we're talking about ethics now. So the way I deal with this is I'm going from less good to more good to more good to more good.
Speaker 1:So it's developmental right.
Speaker 2:Being a good or a bad person is not some binary distinction. It never was, and we have good moments and bad moments. I have bad moments, terrible moments especially, you know well, in all kinds of ways, we all do. But if we cannot accept that we need to develop, we imprison ourselves in an underdeveloped place for the rest of our lives. And that includes ethical development. So, yes, dni and allyship is an ethical activity because it's to do with becoming a better person. But by definition, if I succeed, I'm going to look back in time and say, oh, what a mess I was.
Speaker 2:You know, I once got very angry that a woman got promoted this year ago, way, way back, barely remember. I got very angry. That woman got promoted during her maternity leave period Because I hadn't done anything right. So we have a year where we assess and the woman was there for maybe eight months, but she still got promoted. And I thought, well, how can she be doing a better job in eight months compared to a man in 12? But if you think about it, that shows my ignorance of the fact that women are always going to get pregnant. So what do we do about that? If we just say, well, you can't possibly be promoted if you're pregnant. We are condemning all women to basically never really get promoted. So what we do is we say within that eight month period, did she outperform? Is she worthy of a promotion? That's how we judge and assess right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, but it took me many years to wake up to the fact that that's an expression of my own biases, because I haven't thought very carefully about how we should promote in the workplace. I just think it's based on the number of days that you've worked, as well as your competency, sure, but I'm now starting to build in distinctions. If we're going to treat women fairly in the workplace around pregnancy, we can't automatically under promote just because you're off being pregnant, which means we need to change how we run our organizations in a profound way to start making women feel welcome at the workplace, rather than I've committed some kind of crime by getting pregnant.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's-.
Speaker 1:And that example you gave of a woman being promoted while on maternity leave is very unusual.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Usually what happens is you go off on maternity leave. Your manager forgets about you. The organization says, well, you can only promote a certain percentage of your workforce. So that means in my team, I can only promote one person, so it's not going to be the person who's off on leave having a holiday, which is often the terminology used. So that's often what happens.
Speaker 1:The other thing that happens and I call it the good guy syndrome, and it's when you have a man who is so poorly performing and I've had this and lots of men perform well, but sometimes there's ones that don't perform very well, and I've been in HR roles so I see it and they're so bad I think they should be out of the organization. And when we are doing cost cutting, making people redundant, and I suggest these people and I get, oh, but no, you can't do that to him. He's a good guy but he's not performing. And then, on the other hand, we'll go, well, we'll get rid of that woman over there because she's only working part-time. So then that's a head count that doesn't matter so much because they're only working part-time. So there's all these biases of which I've just shown one. But then the opposite is sometimes true for women. Women will work so hard, perform so well, take on more and more, but will never get the promotion because they're not talking about it, they're not promoting themselves, they're not doing some boasting.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, so it's not boasting. It's not boasting if it's based on facts, but that's one thing. I just but look, I mean I see that absolutely. And look, performance assessment in many organizations that I've seen has nothing to do with performance at all. It's so farcically bad. Okay, it's like who's my buddy? And I'm just talking about really senior leadership levels, never mind the Virginia. I mean it can be so bad that your CEO is a criminal who goes to jail. That's how bad it can be right, that's how bad performance can be. And we never hear the stories because it's always confidential.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So we have an incentive system that protects bad performance, and the vast majority of companies are not really innovating. They are utilizing an established business model and the money's just flowing in. So you can afford to have extremely low-performing senior managers and the company still runs. So I've been wrestling this for years and it's really solved. And what ends up happening is, if it's bad enough, the company goes bankrupt. And that happens all the time too, and that's a good thing, because the economy lets that happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, except they get bailed out, usually by another company or a government.
Speaker 2:They may do, but that's again a function of how powerful you are, which has nothing to do with your performance. We're in the world of politicking again, and who's buddies with who? Yeah, and I think, women. So when we mentor women, we're trying to help women with this. Sometimes, no matter how good you are at your job, you will not be recognized. You need to tell people what you do. Yes, you need to articulate it. Which is speaking up? Because you're fighting all of these biases where it's a man's club, right. So I had some work on Goldman Sachs.
Speaker 2:We were reading a book and I interviewed the author about bullying and misogyny at Goldman Sachs. Her name is Jamie Fiori Higgins and it is horrendous what she wrote about in her book. And this isn't some small, backwards, little country in an underdeveloped part of the world. This is downtown Manhattan, at the heart of the world's global financial markets. That this egregious behavior is going on yeah, absolutely appalling. So that's what she's doing. She's speaking up about it to try to change culture, right, and she sounds like a high performer to me. I know what she did for a living. It's really hard, but it's full of pressure, and then you've got all the misogyny on top of it to deal with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's For me. I enjoy a lot of music. I look to the arts, as I know that you do as well, and one of the artists and one of the songs that so resonates for me with this topic is Taylor Swift's the man. It's, I think, one of my. I'm like how is she so clever in writing this song that reflects all the things that women all over the world, in every profession, are dealing with, and I know that you love Taylor Swift and I know we've had many conversations about how clever she is with her songwriting. But I mean, what do you take away from that song and maybe some of her others?
Speaker 1:As it relates to yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, how does she do it? Well, she's a literary master, she's an artistic master. Is how she does it, that's how, and she spent, well, two decades now practicing the art. So becoming a great artist like Taylor isn't an overnighter, you don't see all that, but she's only 30, like 32.
Speaker 2:But she started age 13. Every song that makes it onto a record there may be a whole load that never make it onto a record Practice, practice, practice, practice. So that, in a very simple way, answers the question how did she write the man? It's tens of thousands or more of hours of practice and learning and failure, and we only see the great things. So this song really touched my heart, really, really had a massive impact on me and I mean massive, and it's only 400 words long.
Speaker 1:How do you know that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, many of the words are repeated the man, just so. What's so special about the song? Well, it's a great work of art, and great works of art touch us in ways that information doesn't. So I decided to create a training class based upon I mean, I could do it on lots of songs, but I chose this song because it also has the whole gender equality agenda built into it. But I'm not actually teaching gender equality, I'm teaching emotional intelligence and critical thinking, using literature, poetry, literary criticism as the teaching vehicle.
Speaker 2:And I learned this in university. Right, I was taught by one of the greatest critics of his generation, a man called Eric Griffiths at Trinity College, cambridge, one of the greatest universities. Right, it's hundreds of years old, this place, and I was so privileged to learn from him. Now, his mentor was a man called Sir Christopher Ricks. Sir Christopher Ricks is still alive and he wrote about Bob Dylan's lyrics and he published a book, and he's one of the reasons we all started to take Bob Dylan seriously as a literary master.
Speaker 2:So when I started hearing Taylor's songs, I'd already been trained to think about song lyrics as great literature.
Speaker 2:So I started seeing that in Taylor's lyrics, right? So, in a nutshell, I now teach that song as a class, three hours long, and the song personally showed me, if it's that hard for Taylor and Beyonce and Annie Lennox and Scarlett Johansson and this whole long list of celebrities, whole long list of celebrity women who are extremely talented, really hardworking, get up and work and work, and work how much harder is it going to be for a woman in a white collar office environment where I hang out, right? How much harder is it, right? And so, if you really get it, you can't help but want to change things, and so we can learn so much from these great works of art. And so what I'm teaching is, when you actually really examine the language with a magnifying glass, you're going to get a much stronger impression of the cognitive perspective that Taylor is sharing. That can be so strong that, for a few precious moments, you can empathize with a super duper global rock star who's got all these headwinds blowing in her face.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's like that it's like, oh, I can't, yeah, yeah, it's so hard and in some ways, that song and those lyrics are very direct, very simple in a lot of ways, but very clever, and I think what I love from there is she has pointed out all the misogyny that she's had to deal with in her career and then has turned around and taken away the earning rights of a man who would not give her back her material, who wouldn't sell her back her material, and completely undercut him. And I just thought that was so clever. So people who don't know what I'm talking about she has been re-recording all her material. She always owned the lyrics and the music, but executives of record companies owned the recordings and so she re-recorded all of her music so that she effectively owns it now and is making millions, and I believe she became a billionaire just recently in part way, part of was doing that. So, so clever.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'm not sure people realise that not many of us are great Nobel Prize winning literary master. Futures changes of civilisation, artists like Taylor is.
Speaker 2:No, but if you use your empathy to try to understand. When you write a song like the man, you create a kind of cognitive armour and missiles and weapons that enables you to do things like re-record your own music. It gives you the strength to do it. And not only is what she doing absolutely legal there's not a damn thing any rights owner can do about it she's also proving that the creativity actually is hers, because she's just re-creating the same stuff, but what she's doing is also ethical. You can't accuse her of bullying those record industry executives. She's just re-creating her own music.
Speaker 1:No, because they still own the original recordings.
Speaker 2:They're welcome to it. I mean, it'll drive the price down and they may come back on their knees to sell it back to her in the future, but they may be too proud to do that, so they'll just write off as a loss. Oh, it's only $300 million. Who cares? That's how people think. My pride is more important than the money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually think those recordings are worth nothing now, because her fans will not listen to those recordings. I won't touch them. I won't touch them.
Speaker 2:I'll only look it for the live action video because I have to, but otherwise I won't touch the old versions. I mean I will, but we know what we mean and all the fans are like that and that's the amazing thing. The fans went along with her Because of songs like the man. She's living, the very thing that she writes songs about, and this is why it's such a phenomenon what Taylor Swift gets up to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now recently, fairly recently, we've had the Barbie movie released.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think I was, before it came out, thought it would just be a little fun, cutesy movie, you know, in a plastic set with you know, cute fashion, you know. I don't think we really missed the cleverness and the thought that went into that movie and there were just so many, so many clever things. For me, I think my favorite bit was when we met the Mattel executive team. I mean, that was the absolutely funniest thing.
Speaker 1:They're all male in the movie if you haven't seen it, and it made me think gosh. Mattel definitely has a sense of humour and we're willing to be poked fun out, but I wondered what were some of your takeaways from that movie. What did you like about it?
Speaker 2:So again, I'm classically trained in great literature, so Barbie's as good as anything Shakespeare put together Completely, I'm telling you it is off the charts, brilliant. Okay, it's doing so many things simultaneously in every scene. The dialogue, the script is wonderful. There's not a single wasted second in that movie as far as I'm aware. So, yes, it's a movie about gender equality, but one of the ways you do these things is you use satire. You make people laugh, you make it so ridiculous, and so by satirizing what women's lives are like, by making all the men's lives like that, you reveal what the culture looks like in a way that is very hard to argue against, because you're just laughing right so that's a huge part of it the ability to use satire to reverse it.
Speaker 2:And also we show that the kens are really just don't know what to do with themselves and then when they right.
Speaker 1:I think when they're all the same at the start is so funny and so hilarious and a satire of how sometimes women are viewed in the world. Yeah, and that they don't know what to do with themselves. Yeah, sorry, keep going.
Speaker 2:You see little competitions with each other. Do you want an ice cream? No, because Barbie doesn't care about me, you know. But all right, then consolation prize. And so this satire, like, you can use it to empathize, like, what's it like for a woman? Because this movie was created by women.
Speaker 1:Such clever women.
Speaker 2:And these guys, like I say, they're off the charts in terms of their brilliance. Yeah, really, and it's hard work to create a work of art like that. It's not a small thing. So. So the satire helps get through our defenses, but the real hero of the movie is Barbie, because she turns herself into a human being. Now, once again, this is so great. This is. This is archetypal transformation to turn oneself into a human being from a doll. And she meets her own maker twice in the movie. Okay, the first time she stumbles in. The second time is by design, and the ability to turn yourself into a human being is what solves the gender equality issue. That's what solves it, and at least it makes an incredible impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah because if we don't know who we are or what our life is all about, we don't know how to relate to each other across these gender barriers and other types of gaps. So so Barbie is a movie of existential awakening. I mean, that's what irrepressible thoughts of death means. It means what's the purpose of my life if I'm going to die? These are classical themes throughout our going back thousands of years. This is why I say it's good, as Shakespeare. It's not a small thing that they're dealing with. And actually, the Barbie movie leaves us with another beautiful song called what Was I Made For, by Billy Eilish.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:You like the song, so what do you like about the song?
Speaker 1:I like the ethereal environment it creates. It's and it's a very sparse song, like musically. It's very sparse, it's often just the voice and I'm sure it's more than that. But now that I'm thinking about it and I think that, I think the song is very reflective. So, you know, what use am I? What am I made for? What value do I have? I think all of those things, and I don't know all the lyrics that well, like I do a Taylor song, but there is something very haunting about that reflecting on, well, who am I? Why am I important? What value do I have? What is my purpose? All of those things.
Speaker 2:Yes, so of course Billy is one of Taylor's protégés. Taylor has supported her publicly in her songwriting and that means a lot. It's like mentoring we talk about mentoring.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yes yes, so that's not a small thing that Billy's song is given the last bit of the movie. Yeah, because what was I made for is the question that the Barbie character is asking herself in the movie. And I'll tell you, I don't mind admitting it, I'm very sensitive to music and language. I was sobbing my eyes out on that song after I was walking home and I was barely listening to the song and I was sobbing my eyes out. So I knew there was something very special going on in Billy's song, but I couldn't say what it was. And then, when I went into the song, you see, this isn't a problem, it just affects a movie character. This is for all of us.
Speaker 2:We don't actually have a purpose, many of us, when we know we don't, and it's heartbreaking to realize that and so we end up having these silly little battles with each other across genders or even within the gender, because we don't really have a purpose. Yes, and then we outsource our energy to you know what you bought and sold me? You know, I'm just something you paid for. That's a lyric from a Beatles song that does something similar. You know, I'm just something you paid for. So what am I? All right, this applies to all of us if we haven't done some of this question. So that's what's so beautiful about the movie. It's an existential song of longing to understand the purpose of my life, and Billy even said it herself. She turned to the camera in an interview and said this is exactly how I feel right now. This song says it all. So if Billy's asking those questions, she's 20-something years old, she's a super, mega star and she's saying what was I made for? It means it's a valid question for all of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I facilitate some leadership programs and we start to get our participants, who are mainly women, thinking about this. What is your purpose?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:What's your icky guy, what gets you out of bed in the morning and what's the legacy you want to leave? Yes, yes. I can tell you most people have never thought about it, and it hurts people's heads. Of course it should. They're big questions.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But if you're going to be a good leader or if you're going to lead your own career in your life, you've got to be able to work this stuff out. But yeah, you're right, I agree, most people don't know.
Speaker 2:We don't know, but that's tragic. That's why I was sobbing, by the way. Yeah, it's tragic, and it's tragic for all of us. It's not just you know. Barbie have to say goodbye to everybody at the end of the minute. They're all waving at her Right. Bye, barbie, I am enough. No, that doesn't answer the question. Ken doesn't know what his purpose is in life either. It's heartbreaking, and we have so little time, right, so little time to figure out these answers or to make any progress with it at all. There's nothing more important to do with a life. There really isn't.
Speaker 1:Have you thought about running a course on unpacking the Barbie movie?
Speaker 2:Right Now I do have some essay questions for the male audience, but I've not been able to hand them out yet, because when you say the word essay, people start freaking out. Oh, it sounds like a lot of work.
Speaker 1:It does.
Speaker 2:But the thing about essays is it makes you think, and thinking is what we need more of in the world, because thinking helps you act effectively in the world. So what I've got is five separate scenes from the Barbie movie, and one of the scenes is about the Mattelmen. Why, you know? Barbie jumps over the turnstile and escapes, but the Mattelmen can't get out of the building until they tap a card.
Speaker 2:It's so funny, funny, right, it's so funny, it's ridiculous, it's stupid. But the essay question is very serious. What's going on in this scene? Now, that is trying to stimulate people to think about it, and if you start to realize what's going on in that scene, oh my God. You know it's a leadership development skill. Why are they such idiots, these men, in a bumbling, likable way? This is why it's a great work of art. I'm telling you, we're teaching Shakespeare in universities. We could be teaching Barbie in universities 100, 200, 500 years from now, or even today.
Speaker 1:It's that good. I think you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think you're right. Them trying to jump over the turnstile made me think about that. We're all so concerned of working within the rules and a framework that actually doesn't exist. We've created it in our own head. And when I'm coaching people I was coaching a woman a couple of weeks ago and she's like Lisa I'm exhausted. I work all day and then I go home and then I work a number of hours at night and then sometimes on the weekend I do stuff just to clear my emails and I just want it to stop. And I said well, who's making you do that?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the expectation. Who's expectation?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then she said oh, it's my boss, because when my boss leaves she says I'll see you online later tonight. And I'm like that's on her, that's not you who's creating that. And I said what if you just didn't do that, what would happen? And you could see the like. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I don't know what would happen. You created this. Try it for a week. Don't work all the hours, Don't jump over the turnstiles, whatever the Brilliant.
Speaker 2:So this is the heart of culture change. We recognise that we are creating culture in real time right now. It's not happening to us. Nobody is setting the agenda, nobody, not the president, not somebody who died a thousand years ago. We're doing it by our behaviour in real time, which is extraordinary realisation because it means we can change culture in real time, right now by simply changing our behaviour. Let's see what happens. I'm going to jump over to turnstile and run off, yeah, and then look at how the movie ended. That's a victory. It's extraordinary victory. She refused to get back in the box. You can apply that to your life. Yes, that's what these movies are for that to show us how to live a better life, and that's why Gretz is going to win all the awards in the world, and the actors as well. That speech, I've memorised it. It's astonishingly brilliant. It's great literature.
Speaker 1:Are we both talking about the speech that Ferrera? What's her first name?
Speaker 2:America.
Speaker 1:America Ferrera said is that the one you were talking about?
Speaker 2:It is literally impossible to be a woman.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's such a good speech, such a good speech.
Speaker 2:It is so good that should win a literature award all on its own. It's only 300 words long. It is utterly astonishingly brilliant. It has an impact in the movie which is so profound I can't even describe it. That's why the Barbies start waking up. But to wake up from that cognitive delusion is no small thing. Let me tell you, it's a big thing. Oh, she says, I did win a Nobel Prize. For a moment I thought Jack Sniderkunt or whatever was meaningful.
Speaker 2:The speech wakes you up and it's a power of language to get through all of the defences that are holding you back in your life. That's why there's a Nobel Prize for literature, because language is that powerful. It's astonishingly brilliant and I want more people to study it. I'm going to find a way to incorporate Barbie in the training. For sure I'll find a way.
Speaker 1:I think you should, and I think, like you do for the man, you do a course on that. I think we should have a course on Barbie and it will come along.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:So what do you want to know about your plans for the future and what you're optimistic about? What are you feeling? Maybe start with that one. What are you optimistic about?
Speaker 2:I'm always optimistic about culture change Because I'm optimistic about my own ability to change and I keep doing it. I keep changing, I keep reinventing myself, and I've done it since I was a kid, so it hasn't let me. Now I've got them stuck at times, but it hasn't let me down. So, if you want to change culture, if you want to be a male ally, if I want to do agile transformation, it's dependent upon me changing and if I do that, I'll be an example of the thing I want to create.
Speaker 2:And I don't think there's a single force in the universe that can stop me from changing, apart from myself. So, beyond wrestling my own resistance which I do every day, by the way, it's no joke, but I have to I've got all my practices. I go to the gym, I educate myself, I do all these Taylor Swift songs, you know I've got my own ways of changing myself. But I'm very optimistic about culture change and also, I think, way beyond my own lifetime, quite frankly, right, we can't be looking to change culture but the next quarter, so that we can prove to the shareholders that I should get a big bonus.
Speaker 2:That's not how culture change works.
Speaker 1:So because.
Speaker 2:I think way off, hundreds of years in the future.
Speaker 2:I think about legacy you know, and I look back in time and I take courage. There's a male feminist called John Stuart Mill who wrote about all of these problems that we're still having today, 150 years ago, and I take courage from people like him and I want to leave a legacy for future people Right. So I'm very positive about the future and I'm not scared about technology either, because I understand technology. I can see that tech isn't going to solve our problems. We're going to solve our problems right by changing who we are. So, since I've left the corporate world, it's so that I can spread my wings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, upbringing is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and yes, there's risk involved, but everything in me for a couple of years has told me, yes, do it. And nothing has told me no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the risk that we think exists by leaving the corporate world is completely false, because we I don't know where this comes from that we think working for a big company is some kind of security and it's not. It's just not at any moment. I was watching a really young girl on TikTok talking about the company she worked with who had just made her role redundant, plus 250 other people that the company had told them 12 months ago no, their job was safe, keep working and work really hard and here's some deadlines and make sure you do all your work before they were then made redundant.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I'm like is it what's more risky to put your hands in or to put your career and your livelihood in the hands of a big organization, or is it less risky or more risky to look after that yourself, which could mean you're still working for a company, but it means that's not the only thing that you have that's important to you and that can help you earn money.
Speaker 2:Yes, if that makes any sense. You have to remember when you work for a company, the company isn't telling you what to do. A bunch of human beings who've also worked for the company are telling you what to do, and if they lie to you, I mean I've been in these meetings myself way, way back in my career where we basically have to keep everything confidential. But what that really means is don't tell the truth because you want people to keep working.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right. So I can imagine we look back on 21st century corporate culture, 500 years in the future, and just think this is horrendous. We are torturing each other by lying to each other about the purpose of your job, and I've had arguments with people about how we misrepresent what the role is. We misrepresent what the company does because we need to hire people at the most junior levels to come and do all the work. Oh well, it's not lying, it's just your interpretation of some of the arguments I've had in my career.
Speaker 1:No, you're telling a lie. Yeah, so it's not illegal either.
Speaker 2:So look, and you're right, there's huge risk to putting your faith in a system which is just a bunch of other human beings who themselves are extremely confused and are being shoved and pushed around by other people who are being shoved and pushed around by other people. That's where you put your faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very risky to do that. Yeah, Thank you so much, Ravi Gosh. It's been wonderful to talk and I always enjoy our conversations. It's just this one we've recorded, which is really nice.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lisa, for having me. These are all my favorite subjects, as you can tell, and I'm so happy to know you and to you cheer my spirit on a regular basis. I read your emails, I listen to the podcasts. I think your work is wonderful.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much and I feel the same way about you. I mean that first lunch where we met each other was just. I walked away buzzing as I do every other time. So, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you too.