IDL106 Season 3: Inversity with Karith Foster

How can you create a space for grace in professional circles? Why is working on yourself the best thing that you can do as an effective leader, parent, and person? Do you value yourself?

I’m delighted to be sharing this conversation with you today! Our guest, Karith Foster, is a leader in the diversity, equality and inclusivity space - she terms it Inversity. Together, Karith and I go through the challenges that so many leaders face around bringing people together, and helping them to find their place.

Meet Karith Foster

Karith is the CEO of lnversity Solutions & Founder of F.R.A.M.E, the Foster Russell Alliance for Meaningful Expression, a non-profit, whose mission is to inspire free speech, inclusion, social change and empowerment through education and mentorship.

She is a featured comedian in two hit documentary films "Can We Take a Joke?" and "No Safe Spaces", which have garnered accolades in The Washington Post and TIME Magazine, as has her TEDx Talk 'The Art of Defying Stereotypes: Learning to be True to Your Voice".

For over two decades Karith Foster has taken her passion for entertaining and critical thinking nationwide. From the airwaves to organizations, universities to corporations, creating a seismic shift in mindsets and revolutionizing the way we address issues of diversity and leadership.

She kicked off 2020 as a visiting expert for the Knight­Hennessy Scholars program at Stanford University, where she is an 8-time repeat guest lecturer for the Graduate School of Business course "Reputation Management.".

Visit Karith’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• The unity of diversity and inclusion: inversity (02:40)

• Introspection is a tool for empathy (04:28)

• Have grace in professional circles (08:21)

• Lead by example (17:00)

• The connection between parenting and leadership (31:19)

The unity of diversity and inclusion: inversity

Often talks, seminars, or programs that aim to create connection through diversity focus on what separates people – divides them – rather than all the ways in which they are connected.

Of course, there needs to be respect for the differences between people’s cultures and life experiences, but it can go a step further. Karith’s concept of “inversity” looks at:

• What people have in common

• How people can be truly inclusive of one another

• How to be introspective

Introspection is a tool for empathy

To be introspective teaches you to look inside yourself to see your value and worth which also allows you to see the value and worth of others.

When you can observe yourself with compassion and awareness, you start to develop the skill of empathy. Empathy is a cornerstone of a healthy social life as well as of a successful business.

Have grace in professional circles

We are bound to make mistakes. Making an unintentional mistake is worlds apart from being intentionally malicious, and we should learn to tell the difference and offer grace to those that made the genuine mistake.

People can pursue and work toward becoming better versions of themselves while stumbling along the way. Take a mistake not as something to avoid at all costs, but as an opportunity to learn to do better in the future.

Lead by example

If you truly want to make an impact in the community in which you work or serve, as the leader, you need to set the example.

Soften the blow by stepping up with grace, humility, compassion, and curiosity.

Good and bad can come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Do not let yourself be led by untrue and harmful beliefs.

Terrible things have happened in history that should not be taken lightly, nor forgotten entirely. However, history does not have to repeat itself. You can make a genuine change by being intentional about how you think, act, and care for those around you.

The connection between parenting and leadership

Who you are will filter into what it is that you do, and how you do it. If you’re a militant leader in the office, the chances are high that you are also militant with your kids.

If you want to develop your employees in the office and your children at home, then you have to work on yourself. How do you act under pressure? How do you treat people in tense moments? How do you call someone in instead of calling them out?

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Karith Foster – You Can Be Perfect or You Can Be Happy: How to Let Go, Worry Less, and Enjoy Life!

BOOK | Malcolm Gladwell – Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

Visit Karith’s website and connect on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

IDL73 SEASON 2: LEADING WITH INTENTION WITH CHRIS ROBINSON

Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com

Check out the Practice Of the Practice

www.tylerdickerhoof.com

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About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

This work is about personal responsibility. How [do] you show up to these conversations? That’s on you.

Karith Foster

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. If you're listening, I hope it sounds great. If you're watching, I apologize for how I look. No, no, that's such joke. I am glad you're here. So thankful that you're choosing to listen again, subscriber, whether on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcast. If you're not a subscriber, hit that subscribe button, get notified whenever new episodes come out. Man, I am excited to share this conversation with Karith Foster. Karith is a leader in the diversity, equality and inclusion space. She terms it inversity, meaning inclusive diversity. I mean, honestly, if you go back to the episode with Chris Robinson last year, last season, we talked about this idea, like, I don't understand it. Karith and I go through that. We go through the challenges so many leaders have, but also some of the origins, some of the ways out. We happen to be recording this episode on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It's fun to be able to overlay that and have that influence our conversation because again, so many of the desires that Dr. King had was not for divi, but inclusion, more people coming together, more people finding their place and from their value, that's what causes real workplace diversity and really augments and creates a better environment for everyone. That's something that I've been led to believe and understand and see. There's one common factor, one common factor that I think everyone focuses on and when they focus on it works out so much better. I'm going to tease it. We'll come back at the end. You'll catch on during this conversation with Karith Foster. [TYLER] Karith, thank you so much for joining me. I am beyond excited to have this conversation. I didn't quite mention this in the beginning when we were chatting beforehand, one of the great joys of doing this podcast is getting to meet and having conversations that ultimately hope brings value to people, because I get to meet people that I wouldn't have otherwise met. I'm so excited to have this conversation and really to see where this goes. [KARITH FOSTER] I'm excited too, Tyler, thank you for having me. [TYLER] One of the things that I want to start off and just your subject matter that you talk most about, that you really serving the world in is inversity. I love how you've put that together. I love it because I've seen such confusion there where there's, people are like, all right, well, we need to do diversity training and inclusion, but yet we're going about it in the complete opposite way that if we're going to note this day is January 16th, that Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Day, the very opposite of what he called people to do when he first went about it. So let's kick off there. [KARITH] Absolutely. Well, I thank you for even sharing that word because it is a new word for many people, inversity. What does that mean? The reason I came up with that word is because even the word diversity, the root of it is DIV, divide division. Then we're shocked when we call it diversity training or programming and it has the opposite effects of what we want, which is bringing people together. So inversity is still taking that aspect of the diversity programming that is acknowledging, honoring, respecting, all that we are, our background, our heritage, our identity, what we bring to the table. But shifting the focus from what separates and divides us to what do we have in common, how can we truly in inclusive of one another, but most importantly, and I think powerfully, how can we be introspective, meaning, understanding your value and worth so that you can then see it in someone else. Because we've been working from the outside in this whole time. We've been trying to change people's minds, telling people what they should say, what they should think. This isn't about changing people's belief systems, is about behavior and turning the tables, going inside, making it an inverse scenario where you're thinking, how would I feel to be on that end of things? How would it feel for me to experience that? Well, let me apply that and treat somebody else the way they want to be treated. It's not just the golden rule of treat someone how you would like to be treated, treat someone how they would like to be treated, the platinum rule. So it's expanding that and it's also, if I may broadening the term of diversity, because I think we've been caught in this paradigm of thinking that diversity is only about someone's ethnicity or their sexuality/gender. Like that's far from what true diversity is. There's neurodiversity now, there's diversity of thought, diversity of ideas, the languages we speak, our socioeconomic backgrounds. Like there are political views. There's so many things that make up diversity. Again, if we can focus not on it being about someone's belief system, but rather their behavior and how they approach one another, how we conduct ourselves in professional settings and conversations, in our communities within our families, then we're getting somewhere, [TYLER] Man, I mean, it's such a loaded conversation and topic, which makes it hard to speak about because you're like, well, can I actually go there, and you're like, I'm trying to like engage and like trying to think logically through this. But then there's this fear of like, okay, am I going about it the wrong way because I don't have the right perspective? To me, that's that whole conversation. I remember years ago I happened to get like on an alumni newsletter from Cornell University where I went and there was a blurb where they're like, our admissions last year we had a 15% higher admission of minorities. My initial thought was like, okay, so what makes that powerful? Either we were doing it wrong through our admissions process, so we had to change it, or we all of a sudden changed our mission policies so that way we now selected for minorities. Is that going to solve the problem or is that just doing to one, what we didn't like doing to the other, but in the name of diversity and inclusion and equality, it's okay? Again, even my mind to having that thought and question, I'm like, that's really, that's not right. Yet, it's so hard to have those conversations because you're like, can I actually say that? Is that okay? Is that kosher? I mean all say all the words around it and you're like, hmm, I'm just going to go be quiet because that's what I should be doing, is the way I feel, exactly. [KARITH] That's exactly what's happening. People are terrified. They're terrified of speaking out to say, look, there's an issue going on. We need to talk about it and work through it. Because then they're the troublemaker. They're terrified about saying anything of like, wait a second, is this really the right way we want to go about this? Because then they're automatically like the racist or the misogynist or the sexist or, and it's this no-win scenario. It's this catch 22 where now everybody's afraid to talk so any issue that we have proliferates and it becomes a powder keg. There is an organization, I'm not going to name names who had a, and this is a worldwide, like Fortune 100 company, had someone come in to give a diversity talk, a keynote. Every single person in the audience walked out. I don't know what they said. I can't wait to get more intel. But every since then, they've not done anything with regard to diversity inclusion programming, because of that one instance. They're terrified. People are terrified of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing. A lot of what I practice, I mean, there are many things that go into the university conversation umbrella, but I talk about having grace. That's not a word that we used very much professionally. We just like love, we're just starting to bring that word in. Like it doesn't have to be romantic love. I wish we could go the way of the Greeks, like they have 14 different definitions of the word love, different relationships. But grace, because we're humans having a human experience, we're fallible. We are not going to always say the right thing, do the right thing, react the right way. We have to really cater the fact that we're not perfect and that's okay and if we could have grace in that and forgiveness. Now that doesn't mean if someone repeatedly acts out or misbehaves or just cannot get it together, that they shouldn't be called out. But I actually, I prefer the term calling people in versus calling them out, which does seem to be very popular with traditional D n I stuff. Well, that person said that so they need to be called to task and okay, how do you learn best? When somebody like embarrasses you, when somebody like, makes an example of you when somebody punishes you or do you learn best when someone like brings you in and educates you and enlightens you? [TYLER] Includes. [KARITH] Includes you, exactly. [TYLER] A great author who I love, just because he again, thinks so differently, Malcolm Gladwell [KARITH] I love him [TYLER] One book, I can't remember, I think it was Talking to Strangers, in the book Malcolm described how there was, during the racial tensions of the 60's, there was a black man and a white man who ended up having this conversation and ended up, the white man was a Ku Klux Klan member and they ended up having this very tenuous, then they became very close friends. This white man was, this black man actually ended up inviting him into his family because he got ostracized for having that relationship. They soon found out they had way more in common because they were both raised in such racist homes, but yet one of them was pictured different than the other and they realized, you know what, we appreciate each other. We actually have way more in common and appreciate each other based on values than we do anything from how we look, the way we dress, all those other factors that you could go down the litany of because they just wanted to be people. I think one of my favorite movies, remember The Titans where, that was really, again, at that crossroads and it's like, it does not matter. We are teammates on the field. Why can't we be teammates and friends off of it? Yet the great thing that I've seen, and Brené Brown talked about this in the last couple years, this is really powder keg, is this dehumanizing and how dehumanizing through the process of diversity and equality and inclusion has created it to be so tense instead of like, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what choices you make, how do you want me to treat you and vice versa. Let's start there. Let's start as people that we're all living and breathing and we have desires. Let's talk about that curiously, rather than making these statements, how do you deal with that? How do you engage in that conversation? [KARITH] I always use the term curiously and I always tell people, be curious. Like, we should be curious about one another forever. Because it'll, the expression I use is the opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference. When we lose curiosity, we become indifferent. That's going to be the downfall of society. But something else that you mentioned, which really is a key component within adversity is what outside forces are telling us were so different from one another. Like where is this coming from? A lot of it is media, now social media, but on multiple levels, not just again about ethnicity, but male against female straight against gay, sits against tran. Like all of this like Democratic against Republican, all of these, these, these dichotomies are coming to a head and we're supposed to pick a side. When we can run the gamut of all of those things, we're not just, we're not monoliths, we're not one dimensional, who is telling us, we have to pick one aspect of who we are and that's it. That's why honestly, I have an issue with the whole pronoun thing. Not because I don't respect what somebody wants to be called, but it just seems like it's just another layer of a way to divide us further, putting people into a category so they feel more isolated and alone. Why can't we just be people? Now I lectured at Stanford University for some time and I was honored to be asked to be luminary for the Knight Hennessy Scholars program. While I was there, there was a gentleman by the name of Michael Specter, who's an adjunct biology professor. He's a writer for the New Yorker and he was teaching a class on DNA, gene editing and crispr, which can be controversial stuff. [TYLER] Can be, yes. [KARITH] We're talking about either curing a painful, horrible disease like sickle cell anemia or creating designer babies. [TYLER] Wow, I mean, what's even to add in another layer there is where people I think are conflicting. Again, my background, don't realize there's not in agriculture. So when we look at oh, GMO, it's like, oh, you can't do that. But you were like, wait a second here. This same technology is what just cured your loved person of cancer. And again, that that whole mixed bag of like, oh, where did we go? [KARITH] It's big that, like totally, totally. But I sat in on his class for one reason. I mean, yes, I was curious because I'm not a big science person, but I love learning new things. But I wanted to know, from literally the horse's mouth, how close are we genetically as human beings? Because in this field of DEIB, I want to be able to tell my audience, look, we're this much percentage apart. So I sat in, listened to him, he was brilliant, of course. Afterwards, I told him what I did and who I was and I said, "What percentage are we really different from each other as humans?" He goes, "Karith, we are 99.99986% the same." I go, "Wait, so wait a sec," I go, "we're fighting over four 10 thousandths of a percentage point?" Because in my mind I'm thinking, oh, that's melanin content, hair, texture, eye color. He goes, "No, not even that." I go, "What?" He goes, "That four 10,000 of a percentage point has to do with your chromosomes and chromosomal anomalies, like if someone has down syndrome versus someone who doesn't." I mean, mind blown. If people could like come from that perspective sometimes, and like, look, we are so not that different from one another. We are so much more alike than we think physically, biologically, value wise, like you were just sharing with your story. If we could get there and we could cut that outside noise off, that's telling us we're different. That's challenging because you are going to really get off social media, you are going to really stop watching TV and stop watching the news. And l look, I worked in media for over 20 years ago. I saw it like back in the day and there was something that just didn't sit right with my soul. I didn't know then how bad it was going to get but I knew that it was about luring people in. It was about catering to echo chambers. It doesn't matter what network and it's about fear mongering. We are being told on a consistent basis to be afraid, be afraid of people who don't look like you, who don't talk like you, who don't think like you, who don't vote like you, who don't love like you. Be afraid. We're not told to be graceful. We're not told to be kind and loving, at least not in that arena. [TYLER] So how do we soften the blow? Like how do we have the conversation to where people can let down their shoulders, they can let down their guard to say, okay, yeah, I need to think about it differently. I need to think about it in that way? [KARITH] We soften the blow by leading by example. We soften the blow by stepping away sometimes from making it a personal experience. I think it's very easy for people to be on the offense and for people to be on the defense. That's usually what happens in a traditional DNI type of training or programming, especially the way that's been done the past however many decades. You're either going in and being told you're part of a marginalized group, so you will always be a victim. You'll always have somebody done to you, done against you, or you're the villain and you're the perpetrator of all bad behavior. [TYLER] Yep, and the victim has a makeup in that. Like there's a, this is what the victim looks like and then the villain, this is what the villain looks like. So before you ever walk in, not saying by actions or by what's done, the villain looks like this, here's the stereotype. In the victim, this is who it's going to be. It's usually a white male, a female, it's a white male, it's any other race. It is again, you go through those stereotypes, you can continue to go around the world and it's differing, but overwhelmingly, you start with the villain and the victim are already set before you have the conversation. [KARITH] That's one of the things we have to, we eradicate, coming in with that mentality that there's all victims and all villains. Guess what, there are nasty, awful people of all colors, shapes, sizes, religious beliefs, ethnic, I mean, it's just, you know what I mean, and there are good people. And I think again, what we're having to do is literally reprogram how we see ourselves and how we see other people. That's where the challenge is. If you're constantly being fed messages about, and I'm not saying we ignore history, like this country is rife with some pretty annoying, say this country, I mean America, some pretty like dastardly, horrific events that have happened across the board. I'm not saying you ignore those things or like, oh, it's water under the bridge. It's, look, those things happen, let's make sure they don't happen again. But this overcorrection of doing the exact, like, I call it segregation 2.0, when I find out about these areas that get created in certain spaces. I mean, look, I'm not opposed to ERGs. I think if there's a collection of people that want to gather and support one another, absolutely, but if we're talking about being truly inclusive, then everybody should be invited to be part of that. When I hear about these dorms that are only for one subsection group, it makes me cringe a little bit because I'm like, I get the idea of a safe space. Like I get it, I get it, I get it. But I think we need to elevate it and have brave spaces, have a brave space where you're allowed to be who you are, to be your authentic self, but you're also brave enough to welcome in people who may not think exactly the same way or see exactly the same way, but you're brave enough to have the conversations and hear what may be uncomfortable. This is across the board. It's not just one versus another. This is like, everybody needs to participate in being brave because I think we get so scared, we want to be right. We want to feel validated. We want to feel sometimes even vindicated, which I think is happening with a lot of the DEI work, but is it really changing the world for a better place? Are we creating healthier, stronger relationships or is it just flipping the script and now there's another outcast group of people? [TYLER] Sure, you change it from, well, one group was the outcast. Well, we're going to push against that and we're going to make a different group rather than rewrite the whole process. One thing that, as you mentioned, this idea of rewriting that, and I had a friend share this with me, and it just makes me wonder that, again, children learn, people learn from part, from protectionism, when you think about it real instinctive, oh, I need to be afraid of something too, oh, falsely so prejudice and all of those things. I had a friend share this with me, one of the great concerns about artificial intelligence is that's being written by someone. All of a sudden, if that perspective is being written into the artificial intelligence, that's the result we're going to get. All of a sudden now we start looking at this, all right, we want to change the narrative. We want to change the narrative to have inversity to where our inclusion comes with diversity because we're not picking people based upon whatever metric you want to, we're choosing it upon something else, maybe values, maybe hobbies, whatever it may be. Those can be exclusive because not everyone has the same hobby but yet they can be very inclusive because now all of a sudden, it's a very different group. But yet, if we look at how we're going to operate going forward, and the concern is, oh, we're going to have this built into it by certain segment of people who chose, choose to write the code, man, that's really concerning. [KARITH] Extremely concerning. AI scares the hell out of me. I mean, I appreciate technology, I do, the advancements that have come and the things that we're able to do in some respects, but there's nothing like good old-fashioned conversation. Eye contact being and someone else's energy, realm, I mean, if we're talking about our physiological beings. Literally the energy that radiates from our hearts, from our souls, from our etho, it's like six feet. I mean, you wonder like, huh, why do they want us to stand six feet apart during the pandemic? Oh, oh, maybe so we couldn't connect to one another on top of trying to keep a Zs away, but like, wait a second. Oh, because there's power in that connection. There's power in that feeling that you are in someone else's energy and it's very similar to your own, being able to make an impact, being able to find a connection and a collaboration that you might not have, which AI does not offer. It just doesn't. It breaks my heart when people get sucked into these, and I know it's been around forever, but like the second life type things and the virtual realities. It's like the real world is happening right outside your door, right in front of you. Let's not be so scared of it. Let's not be so intimidated. Let's not feel so bad about ourselves. That's a big part of adversity. When I say understanding your value and worth, I wrote a book called, You Can Be Perfect, You Can Be Happy. Spoiler alert. There's no such thing as perfection. But the idea is happiness is a choice. Now the caveat is it's not a constant but it's a choice. If we can get over the fact that we don't have to be perfect, the weight that that lifts off of our shoulders, the fear that that releases, that, wait a second, I'm not perfect. No, neither is anybody else. Oh, okay, we can be imperfect together and we can learn and we can make our mistakes, but we can bring that grace into play and we can make this. Actually, we can find the happy in that because it's totally possible. But if we're constantly living in a state of fear and then we refuse to even go outside of our house or our shells or our little glasses, I mean, what's the point? [TYLER] So with that in mind, this pursuit of happiness over perfection, how did you come to grips with that? I mean, how did you, as a little girl raised in Plano, Texas, how did you work through that ultimately to say this gives me a perspective that is very unique that I can really offer to people? [KARITH] I was caught between two worlds. I don't know if you or your listeners know about Plano. Plano, Texas in the early 80's and 90's was very white, like very white. I started in an all-white production of the play A Raisin in the Sun. There were 1200 people in my graduating class from high school and 12 of us were black. Like we were part of the 1%. What's interesting is before I graduated from that school, I transferred to another school because there were more black students there. I thought, this is where I'll feel like I fit in because I always felt like even though I had my popularity and my friends like, hmm, I just, maybe if I just were around more people who were having my experience, it'd be different. But I went over to this other school where there were more black students, but they didn't have the same shared experience. I came from a two-parent home, a pretty affluent area, and I got there and I was basically told that I wasn't black or black enough. I'm like, wait, wait a second, because I look in the mirror and this is what I see, so what do you mean? I was tortured, like I was bullied for the first time in my life ever by the group of people that I'm like thinking is supposed to be embracing me. I had to, it was a mind you know what and it really set me in a tailspin because I'm like, wait a second. How, why is anybody defining me just by that? What's wild is that when I left for school, I went to school in Missouri and then England then I moved to New York and I started in broadcasting. I worked for the view but while I was there, I started doing standup comedy. The same thing happened, like people wanted to categorize me. They wanted to pigeonhole me. Well, what comic are you? Well, she's black, but she's not like sassy and roll her neck and talking about baby daddies. She's not like Monique or Samora. What do we do with her? People just didn't know what to do with me because I didn't fit this stereotype. So again, it was this, wait a second, why do I have to just be this one thing, because you see it when you look at me when I'm so much more. That really was the catalyst, if you will, for the path that I went on to refuse to be labeled, to refuse to be pigeonholed and siphoned into a category. Yes, I'm black, yes, I'm a woman. Those are two aspects of who I am, of which I'm very proud, but that's not all that I am. When I go somewhere, I'm like I'm a comedian or I'm a speaker and these other things are bonuses. I think if more people could do that, and I feel very fortunate that I was empowered enough to do that, A by my parents who taught me to be proud of who I am and our background and our family and our heritage, and I did go to a women's college, which was another boon for like, wait a second, women can do anything and everything that a guy can do and that doesn't have to define me as a victim again. So that was always my approach, which is why I think I have the success that I did in the pretty male dominated field of standup and TV and radio, that thing. [TYLER] There's an element there I think about, and I think about a lady who is part of my community and we've talked about this. She is a high-level executive and she's like, I don't like the conversations about the women in business or the girl power or whatever. It maybe was like, I've never seen it that way. I've never labeled myself that I'm pushing against that. I'm just doing me because I didn't know any different, I didn't know that there were supposed limitations on me. So why am I going to speak against something that I've never experienced? It's a great conversation to have because what's interesting about that is that lack of insecurity is almost like, well, there's something wrong with you. You should have that insecurity because that's what society says you should have, yet there's someone else who maybe is a a middle-aged white man who has a lot of insecurity based upon what value do they have, what standing do they have, what place do they actually have because they don't fit this stereotype model as well of being Uber aggressive and is super intense in this whatever style that an executive should be. It's like, well that doesn't work either. I think, I've seen this in some of your work and I really want to use it as a stepping off is this idea, there's nothing wrong with me, so why should I think there is. [KARITH] Yeah, yeah, most people think there's somebody, most people wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and immediately start criticizing, oh, look at that blemish, look at that acne, look at those roles. Look at that. We say stuff to ourselves that we would never say to another person. And if somebody else said it to us, we'd be like, who raised you, yet we're expecting to take people who do that every day and have them be good to other people too. What? Of course, we're failing at that. We can't even be good to ourselves. That's another like, I mean that's another layer of adversity. You have to understand your value and worth, not seek it from an outside source and you have to train yourself on it because it's not easy. Not many people were raised being told how amazing they were. I'm raising two young ladies. I mean it's a challenge. You've got kids? It's always a challenge. Like they don't come out with instruction booklets. But every now and then I'll pick up a nugget. Like one of the best things I heard recently was instead of telling your child that you're proud of them, you should say you should be proud of yourself. That way they are not constantly seeking that outward validation. What a beautiful nugget. So I do that now. They show me an art piece of art or they've made a cake. I'm like, that is, you should be really proud of yourself. I hope you are. [TYLER] Yeah, that's great. I mean, to me, and as parent, you layered that in here, how we do, how well we parent is a reflection of how well we're attempting to grow in our leadership ability. There should not be a difference. At the same like get frustrated seen. This is if you lord over children, well then you're going to attempt to do the same thing. You can't play one style of offense at home and then go play a different style. It is who you are. If you want to have better children, it's like, well you're going to treat people the same way and vice versa. There can't be an on off switch. And I love that idea of this again, coming back to the top of it, insecurity, which is an area where I've really tried to grow and it's been a major point to have to hurdle to get over. A lot of it was that understanding. Well, the world didn't see me in the classical way of having value. I had different interest. I came from background on a farm and I liked all these different things. It's like, well it was always discounted. I'm like, oh, I don't know why. I think as we talk about this, again, diversity and inclusion and inversity, ultimately is seeing those uniquenesses as great opportunities instead of that's your limitation. No, that's your great strength. That's what is so unique and different that's going to add tremendous value. [KARITH] Absolutely. Just like there are shadow size to things, there are highlights to things and I think it's so much easier to get caught up in the shadow stuff. I don't know if you watch Pretty Woman, that classic movie, one of my favorite movies. And there's a really great and poignant line in there was, Julia Roberts character's lying in bed with Richard Gere and he is telling her how amazing she is, how wonderful she is. She says the hard, the bad stuff is easier to believe. That's our default mode. So we have to reprogram ourselves and our brains to get out of that default mode. And there are things you can do, like every time you say something negative you have to say something positive, at least minimum five times. Like I've read, it's up to 17 but I try to tell my kids that too. Because nobody else can do it for you. As much as I want to do it for my kids, as much as I want to do it for my husband, nobody else can do it for you. Nobody else can build you up. You have to take that on yourself. This word is about personal responsibility, how you show up to these conversations that's on you. Are you going to come in as a victim? Are you going to come in as somebody who's always had somebody say something bad or they're looking at my weight or they're looking at my skin color or they're looking at if I'm flamboyant? Is that where you're going to stay or are you going to show up as the amazing, incredible, purposeful being that you are because if you weren't purposeful, if you weren't supposed to be here, you wouldn't. That's what most people don't know. They don't get that the fact that they exist means that they have something awesome going on. [TYLER] Well, I mean that is an enlightenment that the sooner we go through in life as people, as adults or whatever, the greater that we can get to understanding why our difference gives us great reason to be included. Because we can be that different viewpoint that all of a sudden unlocks everything and if we're trying to continue to mold ourselves, and I think that's one of the great frustration, and I get it, sitting down as an executive and you're like, all right, we got to do this d i training because we got to do it, we got to be more diverse around here, and you look around the room and you're like, the problem is the people that want to do what we want to do all come from a similar background. Why? Because that's what they're passionate about. So instead of picking and choosing based upon what people look like, well, why, what different, what experiences do you have that maybe were different, same want to be here and using that as an inclusion. Because if we start relying on the, well you can't do this, then we're letting someone else's perception, again comes back to that AI program or that's sitting there and saying, this is what everyone will look like and instead of saying, well no, because I'm choosing not to. That choice has to be on me rather than someone else dictating and saying, hey, al right, we need to increase our diversity here so I'm going to ask you to come work at our organization because we need some, a difference here. Instead of saying, I don't have anything to do with that because that isn't an interest, isn't a passion of mine, instead go find the person that's super interested in what you're doing and don't care about their background. As people have shared that with me and I've seen that myself, it is absolutely amazing the diversity, the true diversity in all shapes and walks. Yet I think whereas leaders it gets challenging is saying, how do I have the freedom to allow that to happen instead of being mandated, you have to force this and then all of a sudden it doesn't happen and you have bad experiences. [KARITH] And that's literally at the crux of my work. I mean I go in, I want to say the biggest mistakes I see with companies doing diversity and doing it wrong, I mean, I talk to, first of all, it's not a two-way street. People think it is, it's a six-lane highway but the two lanes that people get stuck on are the thinking diversity, is just about ethnicity and gender sexuality. The other lane that is full of roadblocks and why everything blows up and there's like rear ending and accidents is because everybody thinks like having a successful diversity or diverse environment, it means that everybody thinks the same way and agrees. That's the exact opposite by the way. That's the antithesis of --- [TYLER] That brings problems. [KARITH] Right, but what I'm seeing is with a lot of companies and corporations, they're either being corrective or protective. So they're needing to correct bad DEI that's been done that's caused more issues in polarization or they've seen bad DEI happen and they don't want to bring that in and destroy the healthy culture that they have. They just want to keep the culture going, make it improve it if possible. That's the thing, like I don't want to be seen as punishment. Like if something goes wrong, bring me in because you want a probiotic. Bring me in because you want a vitamin B shot. That's what I'll do for your company and I will keep you going healthy and strong. I mean I'm looking to eradicate the need for any DEI programming. Now it's an $8-billion a year industry if not more. There are some people who are very happy to keep collecting that nice paycheck and going back year after year because it's an evergreen business because they're not solving shit, excuse my language. [TYLER] No, they're making it worse. [KARITH] They're making it worse. Either they know and they don't care or they really honestly don't know and like, why is this not working? I've been doing this, that's a definition of insanity. [TYLER] Well, it's our, you can go down a long, I mean we can make this rabbit hole real big, but it's the same solution in our world for healthcare. It's, let's not fix the real problem. You used probiotic, you used those words, you started. All right Karith, you were really the one that opened up but it's that same mentality. It's like why give me a solution that maybe is going to be more work and longer term? Because the reality is it's better, it's better when you stop and you think about it a year, two, three years down the road and you said as a organization, just like we're going to as an organization, we're going to say, hey, you know what, I don't care what people look like. I don't care what background they have. I don't care if they have a degree or not. Here are the six values that are really important to us as an organization. Here are the six things that are non-negotiables. now in most cases, because if those are important to who you and your people serve, it's going to be pretty, it's going to be homogenous but it's not going to be absolute because there's going to be a girl like you who went to the all-white high school that said, where do I fit in because honestly I fit more on my experiences and my background and that's why I fit instead of being told, well you don't, somebody else said, well you don't fit there. It's like, why? Like they were my friends, I got along, all was good. Well, you need to go somewhere different. It's like, no, I don't. I'm not wrong here by saying I like it here. That can be many different ways and cuts and swaths and it's like, instead of that being wrong, that is right. [KARITH] There's a lot of double-speak in the world. Like you just said I feel like there's a lot of 1984 happening. Healthcare is really sick care because how many people are really actually healthy? Diversity is really about dividing people up into groups and segments of society. So it's like, wake up, everybody, wake up, see what's happening, what's being done around us. Let's be proactive, like you said, let's say no more. No moss, this is not okay. I'm not buying into this paradigm that you're trying to sell me that we're that different, that we're that separate because it's wrong. It's not okay. It's not okay. [TYLER] You know what, there's a bubble that comes into my mind. Again, this is January 16th, Martin Luther King Day. One of the things that he is noted for is not making it, this is a push for Black Americans. He goes, this is for all people to have rights and equal and opportunity. I don't, we're not going to shut doors to, if you don't fit what we think you should fit in order to be marching here, to be able to be championing this cause. Yet here we are 60 years later and we're still trying to figure that out and instead of opening and closing doors based upon what you look like, what you believe, where you went to school, how you did, it's like what unique value can you bring? If that's celebrated here, there's a place for you. At the same point, if that unique value is not an opportunity for here, that's okay. Let me help you find the place that is and using that pathway. Again, it's going to be longer because it's not black and white cut and dry. It's not A or B. It is, okay, well there's a lot of different letters there, there's a lot of different gray area, but that's okay. If we're willing to go through that process, you may find out, ah, this actually does fit me. Karith, to bring this back and more to your heart and you think about, and I've heard the story about your parents and the challenges they've had, and again, working forward and you think about as you mentioned your daughters, where do you think the great movement forward is from one generation to the next, to the third? [KARITH] I think the movement comes, it has to start with value. We've used that word a lot throughout this conversation. Value in other people, but again, value in ourselves. Because when you value yourself, you are not waiting for the next slight to ruin your day, to go to HR to take somebody down. When you value yourself and you understand what you bring to the table, you're not looking to keep somebody else down because you don't want them to get ahead because you don't think they're as valuable or worthy as you. So much of this, again, it all ties in, adversity and perfect or happy. When you're happy, when you're good with who you are, you're not caring who somebody else votes for or who they sleep with or what they eat for dinner or how they pray. You're okay because you know that whatever they do, so long as like, it's consenting adults and no children and animals are being harmed, everybody, it's okay. It's okay. That doesn't mean you have to agree. It doesn't mean you have to share that belief system. I think again, that's a really hard part for some people to let go of. But I'm right, are you? Who's to say that they aren't in their own space? But if we can get to that place, that's where we excel next generation and having an openness and an awareness. And I think really also relying our intuition. Like one of the things that I talk about, it's on my website, I say it's not hardwork, it's hard work. The reason I talk about the hard, and I bring this into play is, because there's actual neuroscience behind it. Like, this isn't just about changing someone's mind and their thoughts and penetrating here. The heart is more than a muscle that pumps blood through our body. The heart is actually a little brain. The heart has over 40,000 neuroreceptors that think and feel and reason independently from the brain, which is why, and it makes sense, if someone's died, your heart is broken. You may know in your mind that they're no longer in pain, they're no longer suffering, but your heart still hurts. When a relationship is over, even if you knew it wasn't a healthy one, it was toxic, your heart still hurts because it is a living, breathing feeling, thinking organ. That's what we have to do, is make this connection between the heart and the mind. What's in between our mouths? So the words that we use, how we speak to one another, the tones, the inflections, how we communicate, that is so critical to taking us to the next level of being really just incredible human beings. [TYLER] I love it. Karith, thank you so much. [KARITH] Thank you. [TYLER] I appreciate this conversation. Ultimately, I think it's, it is the ability to have more conversations openly and saying it really does, it's values. Now, I don't have to decide your values, but if we have the conversation, man, it's amazing how much further we can get. That's been an experience I've had. That's been the experience that I champion. I truly see it from what you're sharing. It's getting those values and making them heart centric so they can go back through to our head so our mouth isn't saying what really isn't the case. Thank you again so much. We'll make sure in the show notes, catch everything that you have inversity, also your book. Thank you again so much. [KARITH] Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. [TYLER] Value, well, that's it simply. We ended with that, Karith talked so much about value and that's my belief. If we focus on values, what are your values? I'm lucky to spend so much time with John Maxwell. John Maxwell in his book, change Your World, John Maxwell and his entire program for students in, whether developing countries through the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation or what they're doing here in the United States is focusing and teaching and discussing values. Here's what I know is the basis of values comes from a background which is very religious based, because that was the model of societies to very agrarian based, based upon what people, how they operate and navigate it. It's when we as a society start to have those conversations, what values, what are the values? What do those values mean to me? We can start having those conversations in our organizations. Man, I believe that along with what Karith is sharing, this adversity, being inclusive, not dividing, not saying there's something wrong with you, but finding what value people have, if we lead like that, if we infuse our organizations with that man, we'll have more people with diverse, varied backgrounds want to be a part of your organization than ever before. The amount of growth that will come from that will be unbelievable. Again, thanks for being here. I appreciate you subscribing, you listening. I appreciate seeing that this show continues to grow. That means you're getting value. I'm going to keep trying to get better. I love your comments, your feedback. How can I get better? What area can I speak on? What can we talk about? One thing I do know is that when we all communicate together, we all get better. So again, thanks for being here. Hit that subscribe button if you got value from today. Share. Go see more about Karith. I know her work is impactful and if it fits into your organization, man, I know she would appreciate it and would be great as well. Make sure to check everything in the show notes to see more about her, to watch her Ted Talk. Till next time, have a good one.