Ep 105 Allyship (with B. Pagels-Minor)

Allyship, supportive association with another person or group. Hello and welcome to the Boss Podcast Episode 105. This week we are tackling the importance of being an ally to gender diverse people with B. Pagels minor. [Music] The Business of Software Podcast, sharing sessions from our confidences and discussions with software people that will make you think, find out more at businessofsoftware.org. [Music] Allyship is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability with marginalized individuals or groups of people. It's a key component in building sustainable and diverse culture in your organisation. It is not just tweeting once a year or adding a rainbow to your local for the month. In this talk, B. Pagels minor will help you understand a little bit more about what Allyship might look like and how you can actually be a great ally in your workplace. B has been on the podcast before back in Episode 44 as they discussed the understanding agile development through the medium of cake. Happy listening. I was having me back when we were coming up to this that my first talk at B. O. S. in 2018 was one of my favourite talks I've ever done. It was the best talk I'd ever done up to that point. You guys really got me going. Today we're going to talk about how to be allies to gender diverse people, essentially. To give you a little bit of background for me, just give you a little context of why I might be a good person who has this conversation. I am a trans non binary human. I pronounciate them theirs. But also before I got into tech, I actually was a historian. That's why I trained as a transistorian. I spent the majority of my life in nonprofits, specifically nonprofits that do LGBTQ+ work. This work has always been something that's super fascinating and interesting to me. Now I get to do it as something that is a passion of mine is to teach people a little bit more about gender diverse identities. Today we're going to start off. We're going to talk a little bit about the goals of this talk, which is really just to give you a little bit more context. To help you understand a little bit more of what allies might look like. But then also specifically how you can actually be a great ally in your workplace. Especially I know that all of us are business people. We have companies like how do we actually do this? So we're going to go through a bit of history. We're going to debunk some gender assumptions. We're going to talk about intersectionality. We're going to talk about how to actually be an ally and how to make your workplace great for TGNB people. So one of my main goals for this talk is to understand why this particular screen is terrible. It's totally terrible. So it's actually really funny. I have been a product manager for the majority of my career and I was working on a company called cars.com. And at cars.com we were like one of my particular ownership areas was this idea of buyer personalization. And so as a part of buyer personalization we started having these conversations about what do we actually need to know about a human to be able to personalize for the personalize information for them. And so one of the categories that we came up with was this idea of gender. And the first screen that my designer came up with was this screen that simply says male, female or other. And I remember at the time being a trans non-binary person and being like well that doesn't really make sense. And so then you know after a bunch of conversations, a bunch of research we actually kind of came up with this list. Right. And so this list is much more comprehensive of the different gender identities that actually exists in the world. Right. The female you have male, you have transgender female, transgender male, gender non-conforming, not listed. And that not listed by the way super important because on top of all of these identities, current research actually sells us that there's about 25 currently documented genders. And when I say you know in quotes currently documented that is very significant because the gender diverse community is one of the least researched areas in the world when you think about, you know, gender. Right. So like you know there are a bunch of different fluctuating numbers. I know even as someone who's a part of this community, I read so many interesting articles and posts by gender diverse people every single day where I'm just like, oh that's like a slightly new one's way to perceive your gender that I don't think is on this list yet. And at the same time, I also know that 25 different types of genders is completely intimidating. Right. So, you know, one of the things that I always like to remember when I think about this huge spectrum of gender identities is that literally people are born every single solitary day who are genetic anomalies. So these are people who are not just XX chromosome or XY chromosome, they could be XXY chromosome, they could be XYY chromosome. So we know that this is a naturally occurring phenomenon that allows for a very large spectrum of humans and how they actually, you know, how they actually have their gender or they're have they actually have their sex exist in our world. So where the heck this all come from. Right. So there's actually this really, really great gender, this gender researcher name Gregory Bolick. And he talked about the fact that this notion of gender that we currently have, which is primarily man and woman is a very, very recent phenomenon. So what's what here is talking about the fact that before there was actually implementation of your European binaries, you know, you have examples of the that the Gabba tribe and Ghana and for Kenan Faso and Ivory Coast where they actually determined that the gender identity differently. They would actually do is they would look at the energy of the person and then based on the energy of the person, they would say, well, that's, you know, a man or this is the woman or some other term that, you know, I'm sure that it has been lost to memory at this point. And in fact, you know, some people would wait until a child was of the age of five before they would think about any specific gender. And in fact, this is a very common concept. Right. So like you have these examples through history, for instance. And you know, in Samarian and in Katie and sex there 4500 years ago, they they documented what they call what researchers later called transgender or transvestite priests, named the gala and in Samarian culture, the gala were actually considered some of the most important, most sacred beings in their community. So 4500 years ago, there's the grave of the first transgender person in Europe. There are depictions of art in the Mediterranean from 9,000 to 3,700 years ago in ancient Greece and Rome and frigia of these priests who existed. So we even have this Roman Emperor, a legalibus in 222 who was actually preferred to be called a lady and that they, that this particular emperor actually tried to have sex reassignment surgery, you know, in 222 AD. I don't think that really worked really well, but hey, you know, it's a thing that probably worked up. This is the thing that they looks for. You know, you have in Indian culture, you have these, these people called heroes and in Thailand, you have, you know, the cathedrals that all existed 100 and 100 to years ago. And in fact, you know, it's really interesting that, you know, obviously throughout American and indigenous culture, there are so many called so many indigenous tribes and in communities that have this notion of a third gender. And it's actually really, really fascinating because, you know, in 1906, in 1917, in 1936, in 1946, we actually have proof of individuals who had female to male sex reassignment surgeries. You know, and so we actually have had this like notion of gender diverse people since, you know, almost the beginning of, you know, time essentially. So then the question becomes how the heck did it become such a controversial and confusing topic. So there's actually a German book called transexualism that was written in 1923 and that book by itself is probably the reason why there's so much complicated feelings about the trans community. So that book actually made the notion of gender diverse people actually into like a psychological disorder. And it wasn't until 1965 when Jay Oliver and actually, you know, originated the term transgender and he actually like looked at that and said, actually, this is a point of evolution. You know, this is actually not based on someone's sexuality. This is literally the fact that these individuals have different gender representations outside of what is currently typical. And you know, I love to provide a few examples, additional examples. So this particular image is one of very early on image in the early 1900s of a two-spirer person from the indigenous community. And again, you're showing that, you know, the folks have already always been here. Then this particular image is actually an image of the town of Salinas and the Dominican Republic. So in this town, every child is born as a girl or typically most child are born as what we call a sign female at birth. But at some point, usually around puberty, some of those individuals who are sign female at birth actually become boys, right? And so it's one of the things that scientists have been researching it for years. They don't know exactly why it happens. But the physical bodies of these children change and their gender representation changes to be the opposite of the gender that they were assigned at birth. And I love this story because this is actually a very common story, but this is one of the most famous stories. So this is a story of Albert Cashier. So Albert Cashier was a person who was a sign female at birth. Who decided that they wanted to go fight in the Civil War? I'm not sure why, right? Because fighting is not my thing. I'm definitely a lover, not a fighter. But they decided to go through and fight in the Civil War. And after the Civil War, they just lived their life as a man for the rest of their lives. And it actually wasn't until they got into a car wreck in 1911 that it was discovered that this individual was not born as a man. And in fact, they were so brave in their fighting for the Civil War that their fellow soldiers band together to bury them once they died and provide them this amazing, amazing tribute because they were like, well, we don't really care what biology he had. All we care about is that he saved our lives. So another example of the fact that people or gender diverse have lived throughout time. So I'd love for you to take a moment and think about how were you taught about gender as a kid? And the reason I asked this is because if you were to meet me and mark into mothers of actually met me, I am the number one person who's in a dapper suit like outfit at all times. I got on my loafers. I got on my amazingly tailored button down shirt. And if you were to meet me, you would go, B is masculine of center and that has to be how they always were. But that's actually not necessarily true. Just like any person, I evolved as time went on. I can tell you, I loved just as much when I was a little kid, being the person who was in the fairly dress on the playground with my penny loafers out running every boy at recess. It was very important to me. My mom would yell at me because she was like, you're messing up your shoes by having these races every day at school. And she was like, why don't you just wear different shoes? I was like, I like these shoes. So again, it's this interesting nuance about how you can be taught as a kid to perform certain aspects of gender. It was very typical for my mother to put me in dresses. I also kind of like dresses because they're comfortable. I mean, who? I mean, look at all the rappers who wear skirts now. Sometimes it's very comfortable to have a skirt or a dress on, right? But at the same time, I also even knew as a child that I was not typical because of how I like to fight with the boys. I like to do all these other types of things. So the way I performed my gender was very complex. And even to this day, it's very complex. My wife is six foot tall Amazon. And I tell her every single day, I was like, the reason I married you is because you're handy. And you can get things off the top shelf. I do not fix things. I do not build things. I will make the cocktails. Right? We don't have to worry about performing gender in our household. So then let's talk about what these attributes look like. So what we're really going to come down to in society is that if you're male, people tell you you're like your man, your manliness, you have a chest. If you're female, you have a woman, your woman, your womanliness, you have breasts. But the reality is that the actual who organizations, or the World Health Organization, actually sells us at the very minimum. We actually are more like male, female, and intersex. And so male, you x, y, female, you're xx. If you're intersex, you be x, y, y, x, x, x, x, x, so we give you a lot of different things. And then my alma mater, so I went to North Washington University. So I have to call them out. It's a great experience for me. Actually has this other diagram of what they call the gender-diverse community. So there are these notions of masculine. And again, I described myself as masculine of center. And there's also these ideas of femininity. And then you have these people who are both. So on the masculine side, you can have a transgender man. You can have a butch. You can have a stud. You can have a drag king. On the feminine side, you can have a high femme, a lipstick lesbian, a cisgender woman, a drag queen. And then under both, you have gender non-conforming and drodginess, gender queer, age gender, all of these other types of gender identities. And again, it goes into that picture of the fact that there's 25 or more different gender identities that we know of in this exact moment. And the way that we start-- if you start actually met them them out, it actually makes a lot of sense, right? Because I think all of us have met someone where you're like, that person definitely does not perform gender in the way that I do. But they're awesome, right? So it's a little bit of that interesting context there. And so then there's this other idea. So one of the things that I was like to remind people is that even within gender-diverse communities, even though it might feel like gender-diverse communities or people who are part of gender-diverse communities are different than you, there's still that idea of intersectionality. So intersectionality is a concept originated by Kimberly Khrinshaw, which essentially says that there are a lot of different aspects of a human that allow them to exist in the world. And in fact, if you look at my intersectionality, I identify as a lesbian. I identify as non-binary. I identify as black. I identify as transgender. I identify as Southern-- they have this reference for Southern Pride because I love Southern Pride food. I was there this weekend. And I literally will be detoxing for the next week from other Pride food I had. I also identify someone who's married and I also identify as a figurehead. So if you're thinking about those ideas of intersectionality, when you're actually starting to think about, OK, how do I engage someone from a gender-diverse community? If you don't understand the gender-diverse part of it, maybe you understand that they went to the same university as you. Maybe they're from the same town as you. Maybe they like the same food as you. So there's always other aspects of people's personalities that allow you this opportunity to connect with them, to understand them better so you start your journey into allyship. And so having said that, what is an ally? So this is the textbook definition of an ally. So it says it's an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, which a person in a position of privilege and power seeks to operate in solidarity with marginalized group. So the first thing I want to say here is that I also have to have to practice being an ally. So I am now a person, especially working in tech, especially working in a type of tech that I do. I have more economic ability. I have more social capital than many people who I am friends with. And so this is something that happens to everyone. Everyone has some sense of allyship that they need to participate and practice at a given time. And so it's a responsibility that we all have to unlearn and re-evaluate, especially part of this allyship. Secondly, allyship is not an identity. It's a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability with marginalized individuals and our groups of people. So this is one of the things that I hear all the time, especially for people who aren't really internalizing what it means to be an ally. The first thing they'll say is, I'm an ally. And I'm like, OK, cool. But who told you you were an ally? I need to see the document or the text or the video that someone said you were an ally. Because until I see that, I can't believe it. Because someone else has to give you that. It's just like earning that promotion. You can only be an ally of someone else who is an expert at this thing, who's that person, gives you that title. And so again, it's not self-defined. One of the greatest things that can happen in my life. So one of the groups of individuals that I'm really working to be a great ally to are neurodivergent people. It's something that's super important to me. I work in tech. I work with a lot of people who are all in the various terms of autism, of ADHD, and all these other types of classifications. And so one of the things I love is when I can be that person who goes, hey, you weren't really giving X person enough credit because you don't really understand the nuance of their neurodiversity. Let me explain what they were trying to say. And then let's work together to accommodate them. And so that's like, and so, you know, having people say, be. you help, you really like thank you so much for being my advocate there because they really weren't understanding what I was doing. And so it doesn't important when you're doing allot, when you're trying to be an ally, to be intentional how you frame the work you do. So for instance, you know, you can use language like we are showing support for or we are showing our commitment to ending a system of oppression by or we're using our privilege to help buy, right? Like that type of language is very different. You know, things that you should never say, my friend is blocked. So this is why I know about this. You don't actually, you don't necessarily know, you're not that human. You don't know exactly what you're doing. But being able to say like, you know, one of my friends is a part of this diverse group. And as a part of that, I have learned a lot and this is what I've been doing in my practice to actually help be an ally to that group of people is a type of terminology that you should be using. So, all in a shipment action. So it's really, really corny to say this, but if you see something, say something, it is actually so important. I can't tell you so my pronouns again are they them theirs. And it's been so great for me and my current company, especially where, you know, my peers, my manager, my directors, my VPs have literally stopped a meeting to go, hey, by the way, these pronouns are they them theirs, you just misgender them, right? That type of fellowship is exactly what you should be doing. And it's more representative of the type of world and the type of community that actually would be great for a diverse person. Yes, I'll still challenge those around you. Like I said in that, that previous example, you know, I have a lot of neurodivergent colleagues and I also have a lot of not neurodivergent colleagues. So it's very important for a person like me who understands or who is working to understand the nuances there to actually say, hey, it's not okay for you to be, to prejudge or dismiss that person just because they're different than you. You know, you need to give, you need to take some time to think about that and think about what they said and actually provide them feedback and context so they can be successful as well. And then speak up in front of those you wish to be now into. This is something that's super important. I can't tell you when I first, you know, came out as trans-numbinary, you know, people would be like, oh, by the way, like I did reach out to Edward. I know he said the wrong thing, but like whatever. And I'm like, yeah, but in the meeting, you didn't say anything. So no one knows that you told Edward that's not actually the principles that we have at our company. So, you know, the next time this happens, like they're going to make the mistake and they're going to think it's okay because no one else said something. So it's super important to speak up in front of other people. You know, and that's great not only for the community, your organization as a whole and your community. It's also great for that person. I can't tell you like literally it gives me, like, it supercharges me to have someone show their allyships me in real time. And it keeps me in allie even when it's hard. This is like super, super important. So one of the things that I do at my current company is I'm also the lead of trans stars. So trans stars are trans employee resource group. And it's really interesting because again, I'm trans-numbinary. So I don't really know anything about what it means to be a trans woman or to be a trans man or to be a gender or any of that. And so sometimes, you know, one of the trans women will come up to me and say something that like, you know, hey, the insurance benefits and doing this thing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I actually have to go over there and explain like, this is not okay. This is not happening. And it took me like six months for the last thing that happened to actually help get that benefit covered. But it is, you know, and it was very frustrating. But it was something I had to do because I want to be a great amlite to all of my colleagues. And especially, you know, my colleagues who are, you know, unjustly suffering just because of a policy. So how do you prepare seated the table? So this is the part that I think is super important because we're all business people here. And we're trying to think about how can we make our business better? And we know that diverse companies like every citizen tells us, diverse companies are more successful companies. So first and foremost, pronouns and signatures don't count. I can't tell you how many times someone has been like, oh, yeah, like I'm doing great. Like I put pronouns in my signature. And I'm just like, well, first of all, like, that's cute, but that's that's literally like beyond the most basic level of things that you can do. So ERGs employee resource groups are helpful. But only when they are well funded with advocates and leadership. So it's great to create like employee resource groups or some kind of organization within your organization that advocates for different types of people. But you actually have to make sure that there are leaders within the organization who are going to support those ERGs and help them be successful. Then the next thing is you have to make sure that once employees are there, that they have equal opportunities. So this is one of the things that I think is kind of an interesting nuance because, you know, it's just the same phenomenon that happens in the black community, for instance. You know, whenever you are actually inviting people into the door, if you have not that done that work and do diligence to understand what your own blind spots are, you know, you may end up with a situation where those people feel like they're not being valued. They don't have the same opportunities. They don't get promotions, things like that. And so they end up leaving anyway. And I know this has been my actual experience where, you know, I worked at a company where, you know, they loved me. They thought it was great. And then one of the senior directors took me to the side and said, hey, just so you know, you're never probably going to get promoted here because like a lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that you're different. And I was like, thank you for giving me that context. I'm going to leave, right? But it was an actual true story of something that happened to me. So ensure all the leaders in the company understand the importance of getting it, right? So that again, this goes back to this idea, even with what Asia was talking about, which is this idea of alignment, right? How can you have a company that's successful if there's misalignment in any aspects of the business? And so if you want to be great allies in a place that, you know, ensures that, you know, people feel comfortable working for you, that's another one of those aspects. In addition to knowing what KPIs that you want or what ROI you also have to understand, what kind of organization and community you're going to be creating for your employees as a whole. Ensure job description and career sites make clear support for diverse people. I can't tell you how many times I look at a job description and then I'm just like, okay, you want me to do all this stuff, but like I did some digging. You're benefit some cover anything that I need and you don't even have like a place for me to like reach out if something doesn't work out. I'm not interested in that company. So again, it's a little nuanced type thing, but it's super important. And then do your research and insurance policies and health lines cover gender diverse people? I've been to so many companies where they just don't. In fact, my former company Apple, I was very surprised at what they didn't cover. And I spent, you know, already my time in Apple actually working with the benefits team to update their benefits to actually cover gender diverse people because they really didn't cover them at all. So then lastly, why is this all important? So the percentage of people who identifies LGBTQ by age group is 12%. If you break down that group of people 18 or 1334 year olds, it's 20% for 35 to 51 year olds, it's 12% for 50 to 71 year olds, it's 7%. And for 72 plus, it's 5%. And so for the majority of us that 1834 group, that's the group that we're trying to recruit or hire or who's going to be the future of our business. And so the fact that 20% of this generation of people identifies LGBTQ means that it's kind of our responsibility to ensure our companies are ready for them because they're not going to work for us. Right, and we need that talent to be able to move forward and be successful in what we're going to do. And so then lastly, so I gave you 30 minutes of all of that and I'm just going to say, gender is given too much importance. We should be able to see humans just as humans. And so my favorite quote, and in fact, if you listen to me talk like 99% of I just help people in humans, I'm like, you're a good human or you're a bad human. That's all I need to know about you. I don't need to know anything else about you besides that. It's a really good way to think about it. So if you can, if nothing else, you could take yourself out of that spectrum of how does this person relate to me? And instead think this person is just a human and I'm just a human and how can we work together. So thank you so much for that, folks. Great. So thank you. I don't really know where to say much, so much to take on board. I guess I opened this up to a major questions because we didn't really get a chance to have any first questions. Can I talk Thomas? Yeah. Delphi, raise your hand politely. Delphi, you can go. Delphi. Go ahead. Go ahead. I can go next. Okay. I know this is really good. I love the history. I really like the way these things were defined. I think this was really, really good. I'm just thinking, so I grew up in quite a conservative background in Central Europe and there are lots of people who are finding this a little bit, you know, like imposed on them, like you need to take a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of you need to think about all this stuff. And it feels kind of a lot of conservative people that this is like pushed on them very like actively, aggressively, you know, like, oh, you just misgendered someone, you know, and it just feels like harsh, like, when you look at from that single standpoint. So I wonder how to connect with this kind of people better. Like what if I, like, I also employ a couple of conservative people and I'm just trying to figure out how do I bridge and really kind of like get this to the nice thing because a lot of these things when we talk about it, it just keeps feeling like it keeps imposing something on these people. - Yeah, so first and foremost, I grew up in a very conservative background to you. So I'm from Mississippi, which in the United States is like the super soft, right? So these are the people who don't really believe in science, who believe in the church and my dad is a minister. So like I totally get what you're saying. So first and foremost, I don't think, say one of the things I think that people struggle with is trying to change people's minds, right? Like so the move is is like, oh, you're wrong. I need to change your mind. So instead, I like to focus on, hey, you don't have to, you don't have to be perfect at this. Like that's the first thing I tell people, you do not have to be perfect because the idea of perfection is where shame and fear come from. And you don't want to trigger shame and fear for individuals, right? Because if you do that, that's when they start curling up as a turtle, they don't listen to you. They don't really acknowledge what you're trying to say. So instead, what I really like to focus on is saying, hey, look at this person in front of you. This person in front of you is saying, you know, they are non-binary, they want to use they than theirs. Or this is a person who is a trans woman or trans man who is changing their pronouns from he, he, him to she, her or vice versa. And you don't, you don't have to believe that. You don't have to understand that. But just like you would say, you would open the door for a pregnant woman, right? Who has too many groceries in their hand. Why wouldn't you do the same thing and be polite to this person, right? So I like to start from there, right? Like, you know, so start there and get them acclimated to, this is about being respectful and courteous because even from conservative communities, we usually like to be respectful and courteous of other people. And then after that, you can start getting into the other things. And then again, none of this is actually being imposed on you. This is about being a good, you know, you know, courteous human, which many of us care about, right? We don't want to be, you know, seen as jerks or jackasses or anything like that, right? And that's usually where I start from, especially because like, even I was like, like I mentioned, I was at home this past weekend. And I can't tell you how many people came up to me and they were like, we know we're supposed to be doing this, but I literally just don't get it. And I was just like, I understand that you don't get it. But this, you should do this because when you do this, it makes me feel great, right? This makes me feel like a whole human and one less thing I have to fight. And that's a really good way to kind of help people start their journey on understanding. Because it starts there and then eventually they get curious. Because they're just like, oh, well, that wasn't that hard to be nice. So let me go look at a little bit more and figure out like other things I should be thinking about. - Yeah, I really like that. So it's much less about like, I lash out at you and shame you. If you don't do it, it's much more like, like, oh, you'll just make me feel great. And I'll thank you very nicely for it. - Exactly. Yeah, I really like it. Thanks. - Thanks me for the talk. I was just curious. Do you think that there should be like a bridge between, for example, people that just know about gender or they, should people explain, like, should there be like, like, how can we help? If we are from, for example, this, how do we introduce the subject to people that don't know about it? Because in my experience, I've read about trans and non-binary. It's like a super interesting topic. But it's like very steep to start introducing yourself in that subject. If you're like, if you don't know anything about it, do you think that we could help by kind of introducing people to it? I don't know if the question is, I, do, in what context are you talking about? Are you talking about like a professional? Or are you talking about a personal? - At work. - At work. Oh yeah, so I like to come up with statistics about who's going to be applying for jobs, right? So usually how I would start is saying, hey, folks, like, you know, I'm thinking about how many roles we have to fill this year and what those people may look like. And so I wanted to mention the fact that we might actually, you know, beginning our first genital diverse people or there might be genital diverse people who are going to apply. And so I would love to spend some time like educating a few of you, especially the people who are going to be interviewing people, to think about how to make people comfortable. Because if we don't figure this out before someone gets here, we get in with a bad reputation because we didn't do a good job. And the reason I, and this example, I think is very, very important because there's this company I worked at Sprout Social. And Sprout Social, they, they had trained everything on one of their interviewers and hired handers on how to be great interviewers for genital diverse people. So as soon as I came in, the receptionist asked me, you know, oh, you know, we noticed that we didn't, you didn't fill out your pronouns. Excuse me. We noticed you didn't fill out your pronouns. We were just wondering what, what, you know, do you have all turn of pronouns? I was like, oh, yeah, I do. My pronouns are they, they're theirs. And she happened to make sure every single person knew beforehand, you know, when I got a tour of the office, the person who gave me the tours, like, oh, by the way, that's our gender neutral bathroom. Then, you know, after I got into, you know, a space, you know, every single one of those people knew which pronouns to use. And also came up with interesting, like, personal questions. Because, you know, part of interviewing process is that you want to have something personal that you can talk to someone about. And so, for instance, you know, they knew they were like, oh, how does your student make me another? And the person who interviewed me afterwards, like, well, when we found out that you were non-binary, weren't sure if you might be married to a man or woman or someone who's non-binary. And so, like, I wanted to make sure I asked the question, those inclusive of all of your experiences. And so it just becomes a part of the business, right? Like, this is just a part of the strategy to have a successful business by creating an experience for those folks that is tailor-made to them, right? Otherwise, you'll end up in a situation where I actually interviewed with a company, like, two years ago. And so, again, I'm at the Center. I wear a full suit. Like, my suit is popping when I go and interview. And this guy who interviewed me goes, oh, so how's your husband? And I was just like, just because I was born a female, this is not me to have a husband. Like, how far off of, like, how far off the reservation you must must you be? That was the first question that you think about that, right? So that's part of this. It's about business value, right? So if you're in a workplace, it's always start with business value. And then separately, obviously, that's about recruiting people. But then on the second part of that, depending on your business, you got your new diverse people, too. I can't tell you how many times I have sent in feedback on forms and documents and things like that saying, your form sucks. One, like half the company is to collect gender. I have no idea why they collect gender because it literally doesn't apply. Secondly, it's very limited. And I'm like, if you really do need this information to personalize something for me, your information doesn't work, right? And so you can actually turn off a lot of people because of that. And that's the other part of this. Like, are you actually generating revenue or are you losing revenue because of the lack of diverse thought when it comes to the different ways that people participate in gender? And I should also say, there's also people who have gender diverse identities who look in exactly the way that she would expect from the live base in their assigned gender at birth, right? You know, I have a colleague, you know, they go by she they pronouns and one of the most beautiful, like feminine women I've ever met in my entire life. But if you have a form that just says female or male, they will literally not do any business with you, period, like 100%, they're done with you. So that's the complexity of this, right? It's about proactively thinking about either how is this going to hurt your ability to recruit and retain talent or be how is this going to hurt your ability to create, you know, maintain or create revenue and create an experience that people want to work with for your company. Thank you. Also Nick, your question. So Nick, so Sprout Social is a very interesting company. So basically Sprout Social, let's say. I want to say, you know, they've been around for 10 or 15 years and just from the very beginning they wanted to be a company that was great with the EI topics. And as they continue to grow their DEI practice, they continue to go like so obviously it started off with, you know, race. ethnicity is one of the main things they wanted to focus on. And then it was about gender. And then it became about, well, you know, we have gender, but what's gender diverse? What's LGBTQ+ and it's like that? So they're just like, they're just one of those companies that that was always a part of their mission, was a part of the doing good part was part of their mission in addition to the making of money. And honestly, it worked out for them because they went public early last year and they already have a $5 billion market cap like they've exceeded every expectation. So, you know, there's a part of me that thinks that it's probably because they did such a good job of thinking about how they could help the world and then build products that looked like that. And people really enjoyed it. That's incredible. For companies that maybe are earlier on their path towards this, have you seen, you know, what was the spark that got them moving forward on these, the the conversations? And thank you for the the answer, V. Yeah, it's actually really funny to me because like, so I currently work at Netflix and actually Netflix only really started hiring like their entire D.I. organization three years ago. So technically they would you would consider them to be earlier on their path than, you know, a sprout social because sprout social started off with that. And one of the things that I think interesting about Netflix is that one of the core values of Netflix, they started springing up was this idea of entertaining the world. And so as a part of this idea of entertaining the world, it just became more readily apparent that they actually didn't have enough context or diversity to actually do that. And then especially as the company continues to push internationally, they have to have more people who are competent in that area. Because like, for instance, in most of in many areas of Europe, you actually have to create content that is created in Europe, right? But how can you have an American executive who has no context on what France likes or what Italy likes or what Turkey likes? You know, you have to have that type of that type of diversity in your talent pool. And then once you have that talent, it's like, oh, wait, but now our culture may not fit the culture of, you know, the individual who's there. So how do you actually mesh these points? And that's when D.I. became one of the huge points of Netflix. So it goes to this idea of, again, it's about this idea of how do you create an environment where anyone can be successful in your organization because ultimately your organization is going to be appealing to so many different types of people who are probably outside the paradigm of what you started with, right? Even if I started company right now, the only things that I know a lot about are being black, being trans, non-binary, being southern, and being a product manager. So those are the things I'm expert in. You know, I'm not an expert in a whole bunch of other stuff, right? Like everything else, I have to figure that stuff out. And so I need to hire a whole bunch of people who don't look like me, who don't love like me, who don't have my background in order to augment that so that I can be more successful too. Let's see, Mary Lauren. So it's just to make sure that Eherty Future is well-funded in a purpose organization and where your show can be if something's in the community. Yeah. Yeah, so actually I can use Netflix again. So Netflix is kind of interesting because one Netflix is kind of willing to be about their budget anyway, but one of the things that's interesting about Netflix is is that they made a conscious decision to allocate every ERG a certain budget to create events and opportunities, learning opportunities, bring speakers in and things like that for their ERGs, and also as a part of that, the ERG is bringing those speakers who then speak to the whole company, right? So that the company learns more about the particular group or how to be now into that particular group. So I think that's super important because I've also been at ERGs at cars.com where there was no budget whatsoever. You had to legitimately beg to say, "Hey, we would just like see, even have a meeting room," right? You had to actually beg for that and we were meeting after hours, right? So it just didn't really feel like they actually cared from that perspective. And then secondly, every ERG should be matched up with some kind of executive who actually has the ability to move something forward. So for instance, you know, Netflix, I'm the ERD leader for Blacket and I'm also the ERD leader for Transstar and both of those ERGs have at least two VPs who are assigned to them. And they have different backgrounds completely. And you know, for instance, with the Transstar, one of the VPs is actually an HR person because HR and benefits are one of the biggest issues that challenge transmunities. And so it's important that we have an advocate who's actually in benefits, who can actually help us like explain to them what the issue is. For Blacket, the main areas are content and legal and what's it there, everyone? Yeah, no, content and legal are the two. So we have four VPs over there. And so, and again, content and legal are two things that Blacket community cares most about because, you know, making sure people get good contracts like, you know, we want to make sure that creators are being treated equally and then also that we tell stories that represent Black people. Right? So you want to make sure that there's people who have the ability to understand what the challenges are in that community and then goes out to the rest of the leadership team and goes, "Hey, this thing sucks. We have to fix it." Right? And that's the thing that's super important. Like that's exactly what happens with my ERD. The benefits stuff that's happened. You know, for instance, you know, Netflix used to record all of our pregnancy information as male and female. So like, you're a male, you took this much time off, you're a female, you took this much time off. That's actually not true. We actually have trans males who have given birth at Netflix. So if you just put male and that person has male, like that's not actually representative at all of this. So, you know, we actually changed all those terms to gestational versus non-gestational parent. We also had like added in this idea of like surrogate, surrogacy and things like that. And the great thing about that is it completely makes our data better too, right? Because our data now actually represents exactly what's going on with the humans that work at our company and how they they use our benefits, right? So that's that type of thing. So I'm really talking about the fact that, you know, there needs to be economic power. I'm not saying that everyone has to give every ERG like $100,000. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you need to like comment with the number that you feel comfortable with to allow them to actually create opportunities for them to impact the business, right? Because like, you know, the speakers that I bring in for TransDerm Black Ed, I can't tell you how many times that afterwards like people, especially our allies who join, they're just like, oh my gosh, like I learned so much. Like I don't even know if you all learned from them. But like this was such a great experience for me. This was so impactful for me. This was so helpful. And then secondly, making sure that there are leaders who really believe and who are bought in, who will support those organizations so they can be successful and advocate for what they need in the business. Thank you. How old are you? So this could you, sorry. Yeah. So it says could you please explain a bit about what you said about job posts and mistakes you see of them. So first and foremost, obviously the job description has to be complete and explain what the job is. But let's put that to the side. On the Chris site, on the job description, it should have some idea about what your values are about, you know, being like accepting diverse people, what benefits you have things like that. So for instance, I love, and I'm trying to say actually, let me see if I can find a good one real quick. But I love ones that are like, hey, we believe in blah, blah, blah, blah. And usually it's something like we believe in DEI, we believe in supporting different people, we believe in blah, blah, blah. And then we also have these benefits to support those beliefs, right? Like so it's it's usually pretty like straightforward that you know, it's like you coming here will do all this other stuff to make sure that you're taking care of. I'm trying to find. Yeah. So like, I'm using sprawl socials because it's the one I know is up to date right now. So sprawl social has this page on there. Their queries page, which I think is great. And I've got a lot of great feedback on that from people. And then if you look at their job descriptions, what there's a section in every job description that talks about diversity and collaboration essentially, right? And I think that that's super important. And they also give very specific like, especially for diverse people. One of the things that I think that people don't do is set expectations well from job descriptions. And this one like every single one of sprawl tells you exactly what you're expected to do within a certain period of time. And so what's great about that, especially from people I hired after I was at sprawl after these like job descriptions came off was they were like, well, I knew exactly what I was getting into and I knew what I could hold you accountable to because like we often think about what we hold employees accountable to. But it's really great to be able to think about what you let you as an employee can hold your employer accountable to. So because it's so clear, it's so set in their expectations. And it makes you feel very comfortable that you can can move forward and be successful. at that company. And of course, the bout section of these job descriptions are also great because it tells you, hey, we really, really care about these different aspects. And so this is, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about job descriptions that basically leave no doubt. Like I feel comfortable that there's a high likelihood that I'll be safe there because they're already thinking about and explaining to me what types of benefits, what types of things I'm going to have access to so that I know I'm going to be great. And just so you know, like it's spread Netflix. I was, I was, I was pretty satisfied with Apple. I could have stayed in Apple for a couple of years. I would have been fine. But one of the reasons I decided to move to Netflix was because, you know, one of my manager was awesome who reached out to me. So he would trust me one night. And he, you know, was like, hey, I would love to bring you over. But he also was like, oh, so I, you know, I was looking at your website and things like that. I know the chair or train from binaries, you were hurting them. They then there. So it's like, yeah. And then he took me over to a blackout event. And then he also connected me with someone from Transstar. And so I had, you know, half a dozen conversations before I started with people who either did my job, who, you know, had my same gender identity, who had my same ethnicity, you know, my, my same racial makeup. And so I was so comfortable when they actually gave me the job, you know, even though Netflix has this reputation of firing people, I was like, it's cool. You can fire me. I was like, I'm cool taking that four month severance because you guys have done such a great job of making me feel comfortable that I was like, if I get fired, like, I can't even be mad. Like you guys did such a great job of really making me feel comfortable here. And so that's the type of, that's the type of like, you know, on boarding, right? Like this, it's it's a job posting. It's the, you know, making sure that you show on your career site, how you care about diverse people. And then actually showing up in that interview process like that too, I think is like that combination that's really, really, really important. And when I talk about mistakes, like the mistakes are like super easy, because you'll go to people's websites like career sites and like they don't say anything about it. Right? And if you're a diverse person, like that's the first thing you look for, you know, because like it's to be truthful. It's really just not worth wasting the time to go through interview processes or even taking a job and then having to leave like six months up. Like so that was my experience at cars.com, by the way, I took the job because I was younger, I didn't really have like that understanding of what it means. And so now I teach people all the time, like don't do it unless you like these are the right flags. But I actually left cars.com six months afterwards because of my experience there, because of the fact that I realized that was not going to be successful there based on my dinner identity, based on my race. And it was the best decision I ever made because I actually did go to sprout social and then to sprout social kind of like, you know, was my springboard and it's everything else that I did. But it goes to show that, you know, now me as a much older human than I was at that time, I get to coach people and I tell them all the time. If it doesn't have that in the job description, if it doesn't have that on the cruise site, it's a red flag. Chance Jones not going to work out too well for you. Thank you. I have a follow up question which is something that we struggle with because we are a 30 person company. And so we have, you know, we're actually quite proud of how welcoming we are and we already have a few people who are, you know, GBP. And my concern is that I don't want to tokenize them. You know what I mean? You know, the ICS sprout social has the I report. If you make a B I report with 30 people, it's like you're putting them on this spot. Or also the experience you had of Netflix, right? If I ask my gay employees to interview every, you know, that's that's not their job. Like in a way, yes, I'm helping the company, but I'm also, you know, maybe that person after a while doesn't want to do that so much. So help me out here. Well, first of all, please. Well, first and foremost, ask questions, right? You know, so again, I don't know if you've talked to your employees, but I would be very curious if you ask them how they felt about this. Like if they, if you created a DEI report, if you ask them, like persons, they also don't have to interview. Like they don't have to be the person interview. They could just be the person who is the point person to be available for questions, right? You know, like they could just be that person and then they don't actually have to interview that person. Like be on every interview panel because that's another way that this works. But I would ask my employees what they think because like for instance, you know, within my organization, we love to be the people who get featured on stuff and explain why you should come work at Netflix because we love the fact that we feel so safe, right? Like, you know, this is an organization that we're passionate about because for many of us, it's the first time we've ever worked at a place that cares about us in this way. And so you might actually be surprised that your employees might actually say, "Oh yeah, boss, like sure, put out that report." Like I know that there's, I'm the only one of this particular category, but I'm okay with that because I'm so happy that I get to be here and I feel so grateful that this place exists for me and I would love to bring other people on who have my similar background. I like that approach where it's obtained. It's not, I'm asking you to do this to help recruit more people but if you're available and you want us to talk about this, here's how it will help other people. Yeah, it's just like representing your country, right? Like you're like, "Hey, like if I, you know, a lot of people have national pride, right?" And so it's cool to have company pride and a lot of people do actually. You'd be pretty surprised once you ask people. Thanks for listening to the Business of Software Podcast. For more information, go to businessofsauftware.org.