Better collaboration & performance through diversity and inclusion

About Trier Bryant and Kim Scott
Trier Bryant is a strategic executive leader with distinctive Tech, Wall Street, and military experience spanning over 15 years and the CEO of Just Work. Kim Scott is the author of both successful books: Just Work and Radical Candor. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies.

Read the complete episode "Better collaboration & performance through diversity and inclusion" (Transcript):

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[00:00:00] Michaela: Hello, and welcome to the software engineering unlocked podcast. I'm your host-Dr. McKayla, and today after pleasure to talk to Trier Bryant and Kim Scott who just released the newest book, 'Just Work'. But before I start, I want to tell you more about code, submit the best take home assignment platform to streamline your tech recruiting. Yes, exactly. This amazing startup is back sponsoring. Over the last month, they introduced a lot of exciting new features, such as live coding within a full working ID, running directly in your browser code submit makes it really easy to recruit and hire amazing title, and they support 64 different languages and frameworks and integrate seamlessly with. Beginning of the year when I was hiring engineers for a startup I worked with. I used the tool during the interview process for all the candidates and was extremely satisfied. Their mission real task. No, brainteasers resonates a lot with me, so I cannot recommend CodeSumit enough, please check them out at codesubmit.io. That is codesubmit.io, but now back to Trier and Kim who founded the company just work, which helps organization and individuals create more equitable workplaces to your brand.Trier is a strategic executed leader with distinctive tech wall street and military experience spending over 15 years and the CEO of Just Work. She previously worked at Astra Twitter, Goldman Sachs, and led engineering teams in the United States air force, where she also drove diversity, equity and inclusion. Kim's cough is the author of both successful books, Just Work and radical candor. Kim was the CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrix, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at apple university and before led AdSense YouTube and DoubleClick teams at Google. So what should I say, except that I'm super, super thrilled to have both fantastic and super accomplished women here with me through here. And Kim, welcome to the show. [00:02:00]

Trier: Thank you for having us. [00:02:01]

Kim: Thanks so much. It's an honor to be here. [00:02:04]

Michaela: Yeah, I'm really excited. It's also the first interview for me, where I have like two guests here on my shows. I'm super excited. And I normally start my show with asking my guests how they actually landed in tech. So a little bit about your journey and here, I think it's really interesting because you both have such a wild, a little bit wild and very diverse backgrounds. So Trier, I want to start with you. You served in the United States air force. Like, I mean, it's already makes me wow. Right. And you led engineering teams there. How did you get into us air force? And how did you get into software engineering and how was that experience before? [00:02:44]

Trier: Yeah. I actually got into the air force through, by attending the air force academy. So I attended the air force academy for four years for college and then got commissioned as an officer. And I actually wanted to be an engineer. I majored in systems engineering because my dream job was actually to work on the planes. The future planes at the airport was going to build and take feedback from the pilot to make changes. That's not what I ended up doing. I ended up doing cybersecurity, but that's what I wanted to do. And here we are. [00:03:21]

Michaela: Okay. And cyber security. So did you do that as the US air force? Or where did you, when you do do that? [00:03:29]

Trier: I did that. I did that for seven years, active duty in the air force, cyber security, primarily defense. So preventing adversaries from getting into the US military is now. [00:03:42]

Michaela: Oh, that sounds very, very exciting. How was that experience for you working with probably quite a lot of men at that point. I mean, maybe that's a very naive picture of the US air force. I don't know. Maybe it's like equal, but I mean, engineering generally is very heavy, unbalanced workwith diversity. So how is that in the US? [00:04:04]

Trier: Yeah. So that's actually then how I usually say I stumbled into my passion with diversity equity, inclusion, DEI, and that was because there weren't a lot of women in the military, particularly as an officer in the officer Corps. And as a black woman, there definitely were not a lot of black officers as well. Fewer black women officers. So that's when I really started to understand what could we do as an institution, both at the air force academy level, air force, and DOD to increase representation in the US. [00:04:40]

Michaela: And then you have also been at other companies like Twitter and other tech companies. How has that experience, is it different at the US air force or is that very similar? We say, well, people are similar or work. Cultures are similar, you know, problems are similar. [00:04:55]

Trier: Yeah. I think that every organization has similar problems. I mean, cause you're dealing with people, but how you may approach them or solve for them will be unique and different. But every company and organization and industry has their own cultures and subcultures within those cultures. So it's been quite an experience going from a military type of a culture to then, wall street and Goldman Sachs and then two tech companies. But I think ultimately what's really exciting is that. Really great challenges and really incredible smart people across all of them, but they're vastly vastly different for sure. [00:05:32]

Michaela: What do you like? Could we generalize that it's more, that's more hierarchy there in the US air force, at least that's what I would think that it's very radical and very like order and the, you know. [00:05:44]

Trier: Yeah, there's definitely a chain of command. You know exactly how many people in levels there are between you and the commander in chief, the president of the United States, but there's a, I think the biggest difference from a culture perspective is. And the military, as I say, everything that the military does is either to save a life or take a life on wall street. Everything at Goldman was about making a dollar, losing a dollar. And then I found at tech, you know, it's really just about. What's been really energizing about tech. It's like, what is the cool new thing, right? Like what's the new, cool thing that people want to build or how do you want to solve it? And, and, and building upon that. And it's been really interesting, but very different cultures as far as like what motivates people to show up. [00:06:36]

Michaela: Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. I like it this very, very, to the point abstracted essence of what it means to work somewhere, right? Like a dollar alive. And now we say, well, the coolest and newest and shiniest thing, even though I think maybe Twitter and, you know, like those tech companies are a little bit more advanced. There are a lot of tech companies that are quite old school, boring tech companies, where I wonder a lot, like I'm doing a study right now. Work culture and what motivates people and productivity, satisfaction, happiness, and a lot of people deal with not that new and shiny thing, right. They work with, you know, established technologies and. What I've seen from the interviews that I did is that people are not only motivated by the new and Chinese thing, but really the value also that they bring with their product, for example, or sometimes it's just the people that you're working with that are very energizing and, bring your motivation. And I have seen it as quite diverse and really depending on the company and the environment, people are very, also adaptable to the environments that they are in. When, you know that thing isn't going so well, they can adjust and focus on something else. Is that also your experience that, you know, even if you're in a workplace where some of the things aren't going that well, depending on what kind of things you're focusing on, something else, and people are tough. [00:08:05]

Trier: Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that, you know, professionals that you gain with experience is just how to be adaptable and how to understand, you know, how to make the biggest impact you can with the resources you have and collaborating together efficiently. And I think that that's why 'Just Work' the book and the framework that we have is really being so receptive to tech companies because we need to increase. We need to, efficiently collaborate. Like how do we increase collaboration while also, respecting individuality? And that's what Just Work is because that's the two by two that Kim gives you. And if, you know, cam from radical candor, like Kim's going to give you a two by two and Kim is going to give you a framework. And it's been really exciting too. Have the framework and the book leveraged in that way that teams are able to increase that collaboration. [00:09:04]

Michaela: Yeah, that's really cool. I really want to deep dive into that and really understand a little bit more about that. But before we go there, I want to ask Kim a little bit about her background, because this is also super fascinating, right? So you manage a pediatric clinic in Kosovo. That's what I read online. And you started a diamond cutting factory in Moscow. I mean, how, why, how did that come about? I mean, this is really a big change. We were just on vacation with my kids. And I read this article on a guy that, where he was looking for diamonds, and I told him about this to my kids and he actually found one and proposed with this diamond and that, and he was like, yeah, we are going to do that. And I was like, yes, I didn't even know that it's still a thing. So how did you do that? Like how did you diamond cutting or diamond timing companies? How does that go? [00:09:59]

Kim: [00:10:00] Well, so I, unlike Trier, had a very impractical major in college. I studied Slavic literature, so it wasn't totally clear when I graduated, how I was gonna make it. And I wound up going to Russia and moving to Moscow and I took a job earning $6 a month, working for Moscow physical technical Institute and what I was doing there. I was the reason why I studied Russian was that I was very interested in. And ending the cold war and then the Berlin wall fell and it solved that problem solved itself. So I wound up in Moscow doing a study on military conversion, sort of swords into plowshares.And that was very interesting. But then that company wound up pulling out of Russia and I wanted to stay in Russia. And so. As all things, this is what Trier and I ain't going to talk a lot. It all comes back to relationships. So through a friend of a friend, I wound up a job in Moscow with this diamond cutting factory. And that was actually where my interest in management started was, was I had a higher these diamond cutters, these workers, and I thought that they wanted that they were going to just want to be paid. I didn't have any notion of management at the time. 22 years old. And I thought it would be easy. Cause I had dollars may have rubles dollars worth something and rubles were worth nothing. And so I went to them and I just said, I'm going to give you this salary. And I just assumed they would take the job, but no, they didn't just want money. They wanted a picnic. And so we went out on a picnic together. And it turned out after a bottle of vodka. I finally figured out what they really wanted from a leader was someone who would give a damn who would get them out of Russia if things went sideways in that country, as they were apt to do at that time. And, and so that was all of a sudden management became much more interesting than being just about paying people. It became about for me, relationships. And as Trier are said, learning how to create environments in which we can collaborate and respect one another. That didn't lead me to attack immediately. That was a longer, I wound up in. I wound up in tech after I graduated from business school and I worked for them. I worked for the federal government, the only person in my class to do so working at the FCC. And when I was there, the T this was, gosh, it was long time ago. Now it was in 1996, but the telecommunications revolution was, was in full swing. And that was, that was actually where my interest in tech. Working for the US government. [00:12:48]

Michaela: So go figure. Yeah. And so there, you started doing something technical or managing technical people. How, how did you tip [00:12:56] Kim: I, so it's very strange. So we were trying at the FCC to. And the settlement right system. So it turns out the United States is a net exporter of telephone calls. And because we had broken up the US had broke it up. It's telecommunications, monopoly. We, these different Z US telcos were negotiating with, with PTT that were monopolies and we were losing those negotiations. And so we were exporting billions of dollars in what's called settlement rights. And those days it was quite expensive. I remember. The man I was dating at the time was in Africa and, and I called him and had an hour long conversation. And while that with a thousand dollar phone bill, so that was, remember those days we forgotten those days. But that was when I was there. And I, we were trying to end that we were trying to bring down the cost of international phone calls. And as, as we were looking at doing this through regulation, I learned about voiceover IP, and I thought, you know what? Thatis the solution and I wound up starting in Israeli voiceover IP company called Delta three. So that was my foray into tech. I thought, oh, well, yeah. Tech could solve these problems of bureaucracy. Wow. [00:14:14]

Michaela: Yeah. So you found it a lot of companies even in different countries and this must be such an. Impressive experience as well. I mean, I moved to several countries, lived there, established a life there, but even, you know, starting a company is another, another step. Right? Like you have to understand how to do that there, how people work, how people think that's really, really impressive. And so you both together work on chest work. You wrote the book, Just Work. And now you have a consultancy around that. As I understand it, it's like focusing on recognizing understanding and preventing or fighting injustice. But if you have to summarize it in one sentence, how, how would you say what's the, what's the essence of the book and, and why, why would people care? Why should they go and read it? [00:15:08]

Kim: So the essence of the book is about really diagnosing and treating the problem of workplace injustice so that we can build the kind of organizations where we all want to work, where organizations that are optimized for collaboration, which is humanity's superpower and organizations in which we can all respect. One another as Trier said before, I don't know if that counts as one sentence about chair can do it better than me. [00:15:34]

Trier: No, I think that's, it can that's the essence of the book. And then for Just Work, the company, helps leaders and organizations build more equitable, productive, and successful workplaces. But what makes the company unique is that the Just Work framework book is definitely part of that, but we meet organizations where they are, because there's also other things, you know, there's not a silver bullet to get this right. You have to have a very comprehensive strategy. And so we provide, you know, a full suite of D and I solutions and products that, you know, can help organizations get there so that they can Just Work because it takes a lot, there's not just one thing. That's gonna get you there, but you have to have a starting place. Right. One of the things that's just so powerful about the book is that, you know, we don't have a lot of frameworks. We don't, I have never been familiar with a framework that employees can use, that organizations can use, that leaders can use, that you can add to your toolkit. That's very tactical, right? And so the fact that Kim has really built this and provided this is really powerful that you can point to something and people can easily grasp it and start using it in their every day in their everyday work situation. [00:16:57]

Michaela: So, what you're describing is this diagnostic tool for identifying and treating systematic work injustice. Is that also described in the book? And can you describe it for my listeners? How it looks like, how can they imagine it? What does it do? [00:17:13]

Kim: How do we work? Sure. Absolutely. So I think we tend to treat the problem of workplace injustice as though we're one big monolithic problem. And when we treat it that way, it becomes very difficult to cure the problem to solve the problem. And so what we've done is we broken down the problem into its component parts. So at the root, the root causes of workplace injustice or bias, prejudice, and bullying. And I think too often, we tend to conflate those three things. We treat them as though they're all the same thing, but they're different. So bias is sort of not meaning it. It's often unconscious. Prejudice is meaning it it's a conscious belief and bullying is being mean or meaning harm. And so each of these, each of these attitudes and behaviors demands a different kind of confrontation. And then when you add power on top of bias, prejudice and bullying, you wind up with discrimination, harassment, and physical violations, and we can walk you through some of the, some of the solutions that we recommend that leaders can put into place and, uh, upstate. Can use so that they don't get slimed by other people's bad behavior. And that we can use when we are the person who's harmed by these attitudes and behaviors. And also how we can respond when we get feedback that we are the person who was harmed. So in some senses, it's like a six by four. It's a big, it's a, it's a big problem, but six by four is not intractable. So there's bias, prejudice, bullying, discrimination, harassment, physical violations. So those are the problems. And then each of us play four different roles where either the leader where the upstander. We are the person who's harmed or where the person who's causing harm. And one of the things that Trier and I are working on doing is, is coming up with very specific interventions for each of those problems enrolls. [00:19:13]

Michaela: Yeah, I really liked that. And I think, especially when I was younger, I've ended up, I don't know why I ended up quite often in situation where there was harassment or really bad situations. And I felt like people could already smell that they can step over boundaries and be mean, be bullying even more. Right. And so, I don't know. Is that something that you, that you saw, you probably did some research around that and, and very familiar with. [00:19:44]

Kim: So I think that it is one of the things that I have found is that when we, when we observe workplace injustice or we observe that someone is a colleague who we care about is coming into work, having experienced [00:20:00] injustice in the society at large. And if we don't do anything about it, if we are a passive bystander, Then I find at least I often wind up feeling quite good. And then, and then that wakes me up. And now all of a sudden, not only am I a bystander, I'm also harmed by it, but I also have caused harm by not intervening. And so now all of a sudden I'm playing three of those roles. And so teaching teaching. Sort of bystanders to become upstanders is really important. And then also working with people who are the targets, bias, prejudice, and bullying to know how to respond.I think we have a default to silence and very often when, when there is a default to silence, then we reinforce the problem. So helping people learn how to choose a response. [00:20:58]

Michaela: I also think like I'm coming from Europe and especially Australia. So I don't want to generalize for whole Europe now. There is in Austria then was when I entered the workforce. I wasn't really expecting that people were really nice to me. You know what I mean? Like the school system here is already that, you know, there's like the power hierarchies and teachers can be quite mean and you know, the person is the boss, so they can, they have, somehow people are expecting the boss to be mean and, you know, to be in power and to be able to say mean things. Over time. Very, it took me many, many years and you know, many countries to work on that. I also changed my, my perception and I said, well, what happened at that point where I felt really shitty as a, you know, as a student, for example, with professors or even working at university horrible, horrible work environment, harassment, but really official harassment, like shouting in front of the colleagues. Like the professor, for example, nobody would stand up because. [00:22:00] The new it, but it weren't like it wasn't, it wasn't something that you would say, oh, it's not allowed. It's not good. We know it, but it wasn't really not allowed. And just over time, and those were being in the US I get more sensible for it. And I was like, this was really unright at that point, I would but it wasn't my current. Understanding at that point that this is something that is not allowed. How do you see that? Is that, is that a cultural thing as well? Or it has to do, I think it's cultural, but it's also probably with the age, right. That you're really young and you're coming into and you don't know what's right. And what's wrong. Is that allowed or not? [00:22:37]

Trier: Yeah, some of that, some of it is culture and how things are communicated, but you know what you're, I think that what you're, what you're getting to are some gaps within organizations, within their people, HR practices, because there's a need for things to be very explicit and not be implicit. And one of the things that we talk about in the framework is having a code of conduct. Right. And it needs to be very clear. So. People can think and believe whatever they want, but you can't come into an organization and do and say whatever you want. And so in a company to your point, like it has to be very clear. This is not acceptable, or these behaviors and attitudes are acceptable. And then another part that we talk about in the framework is having, you know, a holder of consent. And that's another one that, you know, Kim and I have spent a lot of time talking about, about we're in an organization. Organizations, aren't very explicit on a culture of consent. Right? So like McKayla, you've probably worked at organizations where if we said, Hey, was there a culture of consent in your previous organization or companies? And most people will say, well, yeah, there's a culture of consent. No, one's going to say no, we don't have a culture of consent, but it's implicit. But those are things where organizations have to make it very, very clear. Right. Like in whatever type of documentation employees, reading adhere to that, [00:24:00] everyone can point to it. Everyone understands what it is. And the other thing that Kim and I have talked about a lot is that in this, you know, environment of a pandemic with COVID and people going back into the workplace, having that being explicit is really important because it goes beyond. You know, these physical interactions, it might be more intimate or personal to something as simple as like a handshake, right. There's culture of consent. And COVID is like, what are we going to do with the handshake? It was interesting yesterday in my building, someone reached out their hand to introduce themselves to me because they're a new member of the staff. And I was like, I'm never shaking anyone's hand again, but we can like nice to me to pull it out. Right. But like, how are companies thinking about this in your organizations or even, you know, you're in a meeting. If someone wanted to borrow my pen and didn't ask you just grabbed it. I wouldn't think too. Now, if we're in a meeting and you grab my pen and I'd be like, you know what, it's yours have it. I have plenty on my desk. So, you know, these are some of the things that I think there's real opportunity for leaders and organizations to really pause, look at the artifacts that they have for their employees that help them understand. What is acceptable, what is expected of their behaviors and their actions in the workplace. And if there's things missing, then where do we need to add and fill some gaps so that we can get it right. And it's very clear of as far as like, what is expected of people. [00:25:22]

Kim: And I think also McKayla, I'm sorry you had those experiences in school. It sounds like. Sort of acceptable for professors to bully students. And I don't think that's unusual, unfortunately I don't. I think that happens everywhere in the world to a certain extent. And, but I do, I also think it's changing. Well I'm an eternal optimist, but I really do. In fact, I learned how to deal with bullying from my daughter when she was in third year. So she was getting bullied on the playground as happens, children everywhere in the world, unfortunately, and her [00:26:00] teachers weren't doing enough about it. I mean, one of the things that trior and I work with leaders on doing is creating consequences, but there were no consequences for this kid who was bullying my daughter. And so she and I were talking about how to deal with it. And I was sort of. Trying to convince her to use what we call an I statement with this little kid and to say, I feel sad when you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my daughter banged her fist on the table. And she said, mom, he is trying to make me feel sad. Why would I tell him he succeeded? And I thought, oh my gosh, she is exactly right. And so we talked about it and we realized a use statement is much more effective. If an I statement sort of. Invite someone in to see things from your perspective, a you statement pushes them away. So you can't talk to me like that, or you need to stop now or, or what's going on for you here. If it feels like those first two statements might escalate the situation too much. But the point is with the use statement and the Facebook. You are now in the active role and you're making the other person, the person who's bullying. You answer your questions. So you're not submitting to the bullying and that is really crucial to respond to it. So I think it's, and I think increasingly leaders are beginning to understand that it is a part, whether they're a teacher or a manager or a CEO, they're beginning to realize. Part of their job to tamp down bullying in their organizations. Because if humanity, superpower is collaboration, as we were talking about earlier, bullying is a collaboration killer, and it might work for the person who's bullying, but it's bad for the team collectively. [00:27:52]

Michaela: Yeah. One thing that came to my mind is I love to talk about software engineering practices ended [00:28:00] on this podcast as well. And. What I'm wondering sometimes is how, and probably you, as the experts here, you thought about that already. How can some of the engineering practices shape our culture, or how are you doing this? And do you think that they can increase or decrease, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion? For example, cultural abuse, right? There are also studies on biases in culture abuse that, you know, certain, certain types of groups GAD, their cultural views rejected for, you know, for no reason or less of a reason than other people or what I always saw. Like the Friday night beer. Well, like I hated the Friday night there. I don't drink beer and, you know, it's very, very stereotypical, but I don't drink beer and there was no wine, never, ever a wine, right. Or a coal gore, you know, I would even like more, just a soda or something. Right. It's sort of the Citroen. What is your, what are your thoughts on that and how, how we should, should we reflect on it? Is there something around engineering, testing, code reviews, even there's Def [00:29:06]

Trier: Ops. Yeah. Okay. It's so interesting. Having been an engineer, led engineering teams, working at tech companies, working very closely with engineering leaders. There was a lot of things that are problematic in kind of the engineering culture and it doesn't have to be right. That's the part that is so silly
that it doesn't have to be that people consist, like continue to perpetuate and make a conscious effort not to change their behaviors because it works for that person or the status quo. But we have to challenge the status quo. What are some things that engineering leaders and teams can do? One that I was really inspired. And there's a bunch of, there was an article written about it and there was a bunch of tweets on Twitter and it got a lot of attention actually from a black engineer that when I was at Twitter, my university recruiting team actually hired, but they created this documentary. [00:30:00] And really getting engineers to change even the language that they use, right? Like a black list versus a white list. There's a lot of problematic language and language is so important in engineering. And so even like going and finding that list and saying, okay, we're going to change some of this language. We're not going to use, you know, this language anymore because it just reinforces bias. And, and our, our minds are very, very powerful. And so I think the language that is used within engineering is step one. Right? That's that's one, two. What is really interesting is I, I was working with a white man engineering leader at a previous company once. And I have one of the highest performing engineering teams at the company and they're all white men. So if it's not broke, don't fix it. Like, why would I need, if we're performing and we're high performing, like why does it matter that everyone on the team are white men? And I said, wow, like you, you think if you're high-performing with just all of these white men on your team, The data, the data and the research is there that we know more diverse teams, outperform homogenous teams, right? Imagine what you could be if you actually had representation on your team. And I wasn't even my, my engineering background didn't even align with what he did, but I pointed to an engineer on his question. This was a team that part of their responsibility was to write algorithms. To identify hate on a platform. If you look at most platforms, underrepresented women, first of all, trans women and black women face the most hate on most social media platforms. So if that is the population that experiences the most hate, but yet you have a group of white [00:32:00] men that are supposed to write the algorithms to do find that hate. That's problematic. Right. There we is that we are, I don't even know exactly how to do, I don't know how to do your job, but I just know that it's not working. Right. And we also know that. These populations are still experiencing so much hate on every single platform. And one of the problems is that we don't have a people who look like the populations who can identify that those populations have considered the table and have those conversations about like, how do you really define that and make it better? And so I think that, like, we really need to think about representation on the teams for that that's inclusive for the problems that we're solving for the communities that it impacted. [00:32:42]

Kim: I think, I think that's exactly right. It's so important to be willing, to interrupt bias in engineering culture. And there is a lot of it. And so one of the things that TRIA and I work with with engineering leaders to do is to, to, to begin to disrupt bias. And, and so there are a couple of points to, to disrupting bias. There are a couple of different. The first is you need to come up with a shared vocabulary. So TRIA and I use a purple flag. So if I wave a purple flag, it means either I've said something biased or someone else in the room has, and we know that fear. And I know that. So, so shared by other teams we've worked with, have you. I come again, or I don't think you meant that the way it sounded or piece it doesn't the words matter. But I can't give you the words your team has to choose the words that you will actually use. So come up with the words. The second point is you've got to commit to using the body center up there. You know, that bias is occurring in every single meeting you have. So you need to come up with an expectation that bias is going to get flagged at least once in every meeting. And then the third thing to do is to teach people what to do when they are the person who's caused harm when it's their bias, who's being flagged. So if, if Trier waves a purple flag at me, I get two choices of what to say back. And she asked the same two choices when I wave one at her. The first is thanks for pointing it out. I'm going to work on not doing that again. That again, or thanks for pointing it out. I don't quite understand what I did wrong. Can we talk about it after the meeting? And then we do have to talk about it, or if we're on video meeting, we can drop a link into the chat that explains it. And the reason that it's so important to interrupt bias is that if we don't interrupt it publicly and in the moment where we reinforce it. And so I've seen this happen, In code reviews, you asked specifically about code reviews all the time, where, where you find that, that people are reviewing. Code of someone who's underrepresented very differently from the way they're reviewing other people's code. And it's important, this, this brings us to the second point. So we've got to interrupt it when we notice it, but we also need to quantify it to go out, looking for it, quantify your bias and. This means that if you, if you are in your code review, you can quantify how many times someone has negatively reviewed people's code. And then you can take a look at whose code they're not going to play review it. And if you notice that men tend to negatively review women's code more than. Men's code then you know, that you have identified some bias in your code review. Another simpler thing that I experienced, I was working with a leadership team at a tech company, big tech company, and their bias quantification did not take a lot of effort. They noticed that they had not promoted any women to the executive team at this company. And the [00:36:00] company had been around for about 10 years. So they knew it was a problem. They knew the problem was not the women who worked at the company. They had a lot of great women, so they knew there must be something broken in their recruiting process. And so they invited me to their credit to join their promotion committee, meeting to note because everybody on the committee was man. So they thought maybe I would notice something that they themselves had not noticed. And. There were two people up for promotion. One, a man, one, a woman, both of them had great reputations for being excellent managers, building teams that were very highly functioning and very loyal loyalty. Each of these, these two individuals and. They referred to the man who was up for promotion as a great leader. And they prefer, they referred to the woman who was up for promotion as a real mother hand. Now, who are you going to promote the real leader or the real mother hen. And, and so I pointed this out to them and at first they sort of were like, oh, Kim, come on. It's no big deal. I said, it is a big deal. This is why you're not promoting women. It's like the subtle ways that language impacts the way you think about people, it is real and you've got, that's why it's so important to quantify your bias and then go look and figure out what's wrong and not what's wrong with the underrepresented candidates, but what's wrong with your hiring processes or your promotion processes or. [00:37:33]

Michaela: So you're saying that we have to be very consciously thinking and looking at bias and what's going on to do work. And it looks like it's not just work, but it's also work all the time on, you know, improving our collaboration our way we work together. More powerful. Yeah. Maybe the last question that I have for you too, as you're giving workshops on inclusion, diversity [00:38:00] and equity. So. How do that workshop works? And also who should be on the workshop should be asked advocates, like people that are already pro diversity, equity and inclusion, or should we better have the skeptics participate or a mixture, or how are you going about that? Is there a minimum number of people at the company that have to take such a workshop to be, to get that ripple through in the organism? [00:38:28]

Trier: Yeah, I think that, you know what we have seen and it's, it's, again, it's been so nice to have such a positive response that we can come into an organization and do a, Just Work keynote for an hour or a half day workshop. And that we're literally leaving people with tactical and practical things that they could implement. And it's for everyone right now. Yes, there are. In the frame where we talk about, you know, what do you do? Whether any w if you're in either of the four roles, like a person who's been harmed. A person who's a upstander, which is a bystander who actually intervenes, or if you're the person who caused harm or a leader, and we can do a deeper dive as far as like what leaders and organizations should be doing. But there's something for everyone in the framework now Just Work the company. We also though have a lot of D and I. Seminars that we do talking about language, talking about, you know, what does, how do you reduce bias in your recruiting? What does it mean to, you know, take all this education and awareness that you get and put it into action in the workplace, right? And those are seminars that are for everyone as well, whether it doesn't matter where you are in your journey. Because for those who actually think that, Hey, I am a, I am an advocate. I am a ally. You know, one of the things that we talk about in one of the seminars, How do you go from being an ally to an advocate? Because allyship is very passive, right? And ally is saying, I'm not going to cause you harm, which is good. Right? We don't want people to call [00:40:00] each other harm, but an advocate, it says, not only am I not going to cause you harm, but I'm going to through action. Stick up for those who have been marginalized and through action. And, you know, create a platform and uplift those who, who need, who, who have been marginalized and know that like they may not have access to all the same opportunities as you. And so how do you use your privilege in that way to be an advocate? And so it doesn't matter where you're at in your journey. There's something that we all need to continue to educate because. It's not a sprint and it's not a marathon either. I hear that a lot of like, oh, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. No, it's actually not a marathon because for those of us who have run a marathon, there is a destination, right. When we're very happy about that, but there's no destination for this. We have to continue to do this work. And you know, the other thing that I tell folks is one of the reasons I love, I love this work is because as long as there's a majority, there will always be a minority. And what's interesting though, is that as time goes on, Those audiences and those groups have changed and they've evolved. And so it's, and that means that we always have to continue to the work to understand who are the minority groups that we need to ensure that we are paying attention to that we are representing them and that they are having equitable experiences, just like every. [00:41:15]

Michaela: Is there something that you would say to my listeners that they should take away from this episode? What is like the one tip that they can do maybe from both of you? So we have two tips for them that they can go and start doing just today and in their workplace to make it better and nicer forever. [00:41:37]

Kim: Sure. I think if you can distinguish between bias, prejudice, and bullying and respond to bias, which is just not meaning it with an I statement, which invites the other person. And to understand things from your perspective, respond to prejudice with an it statement. Cause prejudice is a conscious belief.The person means what they say. And so you need to show them where the boundary is. They can believe whatever they want. They can do or say whatever they want. So, and its statement can appeal to the law. It is illegal and it can appeal to an HR policy. It's a violation of HR policy, or it can appeal to common sense. And it's ridiculous, you know, to, to refuse to hire a woman, for example, and then last but not least with bullying, which is being mean, respond to it with a use statement. You can't talk to me like. [00:42:25]

Michaela: Okay. I like that. Very, very concrete. Cool. Do you know one thing that you would want tip that you could give me? Yeah, [00:42:32]

Trier: So I think it's really interesting. And Kim is the one who really pushed and challenged me on this is that I've always said that Kim empathy is the catalyst for change in this space. And Kim would say, We need more compassion. And I was like, I want more empathy. And then I really had to understand the difference between empathy and compassion. And so I still do believe that empathy is a catalyst for change, but the change actually occurs through compassion. And the difference is, is that empathy is yes, you are putting yourself in that person's shoes. You're understanding what that person is going through, but compassion is you wanting to. Through action. Take that pain away, take that suffering your way, do something about it. And so it's, I think that it's a journey, right? There was something that I saw about how you go from feeling sorry for someone and having pity to having sympathy. To having empathy and compassion. And so what I would encourage your listeners is to say, where are you in that journey? And to really strive to get to compassion, which means that, you know, that's showing up through action and then understanding what that app. [00:43:54]

Michaela: Yeah, thank you. I really like it. Thank you so much. You both for taking the time being on my show, I really enjoyed it. I will put the book there. If you have other links, I will share them down in the, in the show notes. So thank you so much. I thank you for being on my show. [00:44:10]

Kim: Thank you. [00:44:12]

Michaela: Yeah. Wonderful. Bye. Bye. [00:44:14]

Kim: Bye. [00:44:15]

Michaela: I hope you enjoyed another episode after sup engineering unlocked podcast. Don't forget to subscribe. And I'll talk to you again in two weeks. Bye.