The cognitive load of diversity with Stephen Frost

Jacqueline Conway  00:00

The organisational peak is a perilous environment. It’s more complex and challenging than anything that’s gone before. And as a consequence, both executive tenure and corporate longevity are decreasing. To survive and thrive at the perilous peak, executive leaders need to balance their functional leadership or focus on execution with enterprise leadership, that is ensuring the organisation adapts and our new world. That’s what we’ll be exploring in the advanced executive leadership podcast. Welcome. I’m your host Jacqueline Conway. I’m the founder and managing director of Walden Croft, a consulting practice dedicated to helping executives and executive teams anticipate, navigate and lead at the paperless peak. In today’s episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Steven Frost, who is a globally recognised diversity and inclusion expert who founded included in 2012. Prior to that, from 2007 to 2012, Steven designed led and implemented the inclusion programmes for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. As head of DNI for the London Organising Committee. He works with leaders around the world to embed inclusive leadership and their decision making and our conversation. I act as a provocateur to Stephen to try and probe and to diversity and inclusion. And we explore together some of the challenges of doing it well, and why it’s so necessary to keep on keeping on. Steven mentioned system one and system two thinking a couple of times. When he does, he’s referring to the Nobel Prize winning work of behavioural economists Daniel Kahneman, who popularised these ideas in his best selling book Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman differentiate between what he calls system one thinking, that is an almost instantaneous process that’s driven by our instinct and experiences. Less helps us in a crisis, but often doesn’t lead to our best decision making when what’s required is a more considered and thoughtful response, that system to thinking, but it’s the part of our brain responsible for executive functioning that’s in charge, helping us to make better decisions. So I just wanted to explain that ahead of today’s conversation. Let’s get into it.

Stephen Frost  02:38

My name is Stephen frost, and the CEO of included included is a global diversity and inclusion consultancy. We’re impact focused. And what that means is that we work across all aspects of diversity, all aspects of inclusion, to try and make company and leadership decision making more inclusive. So my background is commercial in advertising consultancy, but I kind of fell into diversity inclusion at ThinkFree passion, really. So I worked at Stonewall 20 years ago ish now on LGBT rights it was then I then worked at the Olympics, and London, London 2012 games, the Olympics and Paralympics, but I’m trying to make those the most inclusive Olympics and Paralympics to date. And I was chief of staff there. And then I worked at KPMG. And I’ve set up concluded about 10 years ago. And we really exist to try and join the dots for organisations and leaders to help them increase decision making. And I worked with a wonderful team of people are doing this all over the world. And I teach a few business schools to try and get people to think of this and to conceptualise this as just a good part of of leadership inherent part of good leadership. And then I’ve written a few books, and the most recent book is called The key to inclusion, which came out a little while back in summer. And that book has been co authored by a wonderfully diverse suite of authors who each bring their own professional and personal perspective to the book. But I think it gives people a really good handle on subject matter, and how you might kind of approach the similar level of subject in a very practical way.

Jacqueline Conway  04:23

Okay, great. And I noticed that you’d said in that book, that the the earlier books that you had written, where the why, and this latest was the how, and perhaps in this conversation, if we just follow that pathway and start right at the beginning and see why is diversity and inclusion, a good business idea? I mean, lots of we would like to think that that that we’ve kind of prosecuted that idea, and yet, it doesn’t seem to be in all of the places that it needs to be or it certainly hasn’t mattered faces itself certainly in the C suite where I typically do my work, it says getting better, but it’s not where it probably would be if we were to see that it was sort of fully diverse and inclusive. So perhaps if you just help listeners with why it is so important.

Stephen Frost  05:19

Thanks, Jacqueline, because I think it’s a great place to start. Right? Why is diversity inclusion so important? I think one caveat up front, is that I think a lot of the reasons it’s not perceived as important are because people misconceive what it actually is we’re talking about, people might think it’s soft skills, or tokenism or just, you know, doing things for charitable reasons, which may or may not be a good idea. But ultimately, why diversity inclusion is important, is because it doesn’t really matter how brilliant you are, or how brilliant you think you are, none of us is brilliant enough. And we’re living in such an incredible time, where the amount of information at our disposal and man information, entering our brains is so overwhelming, that unless we are humble enough to recognise that we need other people and other people’s perspectives and other people’s skill sets to help us make sense of it, we can’t possibly arrive at an accurate decision. And so I think only the foolhardy or the incredibly, hubris would think that they’ve got it all right, why diversity is so important. Core is because we need difference in order to make decisions that are actually in our own self enlightened interest. One of the most poignant moments in my career was was meeting working with Desmond Tutu. And he said that the real why for diversity is that we need other people, you know, that we should know our need of one another. Because ultimately, I alone cannot solve all the problems, and I need to, you know, we need different perspectives, we need different inputs and so forth. So the why starts with this idea that, you know, we’re not an island. And to make better decisions that are owed interest, as well as the interest of other people, we need to cooperate them and challenge them, and so forth, which comes from interaction with difference. And so I often say to leaders that, you know, if you really want to make better decisions, you need to surround yourself with people who are as different from us you can handle, because that gives you the biggest toolbox from which to work. But of course, to your point, it’s more effort. The other wise, I think, you know, our range and the convey personal to people, I give you my opinion. But ultimately, I think it’s up to individuals to figure out their own why. And it could be personal, it could be ethical and moral, right, we just find it wrong, that women are paid less than men for equivalent work, we just find it wrong, that black people face more discrimination than white people. So it could be very ethical or moral like, it could be very strategic. So you know, if you are in healthcare, developing drugs at a pharmaceutical company, and you test your drugs in clinical trials on one sector population, that’s not necessarily gonna apply to all set to the population, and so cheaply, you need to think about your inputs matching your customer base. And that would apply, for example, to tech firms doing algorithm design and accuracy of search results. So it’s in sampling error. And in designing experiments, it could be commercial, that actually if you want to do better customer service and get more sales from certain groups, you need to adapt them more. And some people are better at adapting to others than the others are. So it could be a whole suite of wise, but the way I try and conceptualise this for people is to think of it in terms of a journey. There’s the understand why why is this important? And then you go on to lead realise it’s about you and then deliver do things. And it’s an iterative process. But ultimately, you don’t start with why then you’re not going to have the the impetus to suppose to put the effort in, to your to your point about, you know, being more effortful to manage diverse teams, and it’s being more effort to to deal with difference. But if the wire is strong enough, that it justifies the work.

Jacqueline Conway  09:40

And yet, sometimes, even when our Why is strong, the delivery of something then can be less than perfect. So you mentioned tokenism a few minutes ago. Also, you know, there’s there’s the potential of tokenism. And there’s potential the potential of that the answer. I mean, I’m kidding. To know, in really in a genuinely open sense that this, I was reading that most unconscious bias training feels it feels to have any impact on or an unconscious bias. So okay, if we’ve, if we’ve done the why, and we are well intentioned about that, and we might have a multitude of reasons, as you’ve outlined, how do we know how to best do something about it?

Stephen Frost  10:26

I mean, the short answer thing is it starts with self awareness. So if the question is, how do we do something about it, self awareness. And the way that I would measure that self awareness is in cognitive dissonance, or essentially, the gap between what you say and what you do. So, you know, let’s say I want to lose weight, but I keep eating cake. I know what I want to do, which is lose weights. But I know that I keep eating cake. So I’ve got my way down, I want to lose weight, because I might want to, you know, go downsizing clothing, or have better self esteem on the beach, or whatever it might be. So I never why. But like you say, it’s not happening, because I keep it the cake. And that cognitive dissonance is just part of being human. Like, we’re all humans, we fail all the time. And so when it comes to inclusion and diversity, we might feel very strongly that sexism is apparent, right? But because blacks have been brought up or we’re stressed or whatever, we slip into inadvertent, bad behaviour all the time, right, we kind of collude in things, which actually on reflection is a bad practice.

Jacqueline Conway  11:36

So let me just pull on that thread a little because you’re talking about self awareness. But I guess, in order to have, I mean, of course, we have to have an impact on individuals. But well, it’s it’s this quick, we’re where does the impact really come? Does it come on individual self awareness? Or does it come on sort of systemic interventions that could have a potentially really big impact on an organisation? Well, absolutely,

Stephen Frost  12:05

I mean, the reason, you know, racism still exists, or we have more to to discrimination still exist is because they’re systemic, right? So it’s not a one off, if there’s a pattern here, right, is deeply ingrained in the structures, institutions of our society and our world. So you’re absolutely right about the systemic piece. But I suppose, part of this as well, where do we start? How do we, you know, and I still believe there is value in an individual self awareness, because individuals being aware of that they can do something like ultimately, any human being can decide to be more inclusive, you know, instantaneously, if they’re conscious about it, but to your point, to have a bigger effect, we need to think about this systemically, right? It’s not just one bloke being sexist, it’s institutions being generally more in favour of men than women. So how do we deal with that? And, in a sense, there’s five things that we’ve deduced from the literature and, and from our practice over the years that we need to consider to try and attack that systematic pattern of discrimination. And that’s really strategic. So for example, a pharmaceutical company doing clinical trials, thinking about the diversity of the clinical trial in order to have drugs that work for everybody. Because currently, we have drugs that work for some people better than others. It’s about data, it’s about measuring these things. So okay, I can be self aware, that’s great. But I need to be able to measure the change in my behaviour and be held accountable for that. That’s that’s then governance, you know, that we need to think about responsibility and accountability. You and I can both aside, stop eating cake tomorrow, because you want to lose weight, but we should check in on each other every week to see how’s it going. And then, there’s leadership, ultimately behaviours, being aware of our behaviours, and getting feedback on those behaviours, 360s, and so forth. And then finally, there’s systematic change. So nudges, right? That if you really wanted to have gender equality in organisations, you would look at how you nudge decision making around childcare provision, or around promotion decisions or around recruitment decisions. You would, you would engineer systems and processes to be much more conscious, you know, so in algorithm design and coding in tech, you’d think about racial bias. You’d think about the words we use like master slave and blacklist and whitelist you literally put into place all these little nudges and engineering tricks to to try and make things marketable. There’s a whole load of things that you can do. But I come back to you know, whilst I completely agree with you than the systemic nature of this, we have also to give people individual agency, because otherwise they might Think well, what can I possibly do? Right? It’s so deeply ingrained that you No, no. Yes, it is. But you can do things.

Jacqueline Conway  15:08

But how? How would we do that in an organisation that that is big and complex and has got a lot of other things going on?

Stephen Frost  15:17

So, essentially,I still stand by the extrinsic and intrinsic thing. So how do you do it in a big complex organisation? There are a few extrinsic things, right? Like, if you’re really badly behaved, you’re gonna get fired, right? There’s a professional code of conduct, there’s a set of values, there’s a, there’s the law, right? So there’s a bunch of extrinsic things, which are gonna, hopefully God against the worst behaviours, but then the extent of how you’re going to do it, you need to get the incentives, right. So it could be things like, you know, incentivizing pay compensation for championing a network group or chairing a network group or mentoring people or sponsoring people, it could be part of your professional development programme, it could count towards your promotion or your annual review. It could be things like actually reputation, you know, the currency reputation in ego is really important organisations. And if you’re actually known as somebody that mentors, people, helps people a go to person that can bring for someone’s self esteem or their own sense of self. So actually getting those incentive structures, right is really, really important. If I think about clients that I’ve been working with, you know, how do you do it? There is that big, systemic, extrinsic motivation stuff going on? There is those five things I’ve talked about strategy, data governance, legend systems, but there is also individual stories going on, right? People meeting people that are different from them, you know, the proverbial senior, straight white man mentoring the proverbial young Muslim woman, but I never would they otherwise meet, but they do. And they both get things in relationship that they wouldn’t otherwise have got. And that is enough value and incentive for them to keep that relationship going and to develop it. The person who chairs meetings, who has suddenly realised that actually, more meeting structure and agendas in advance, enable introverts to participate more in the meeting. And actually, that leads to better meetings, better reputation for them, better outcomes, high performing teams, and so forth. So, you know, there are a multitude of things that actually, while seemingly small and insignificant, can add up to outsized effects, which in combination with other things, does change culture.

Jacqueline Conway  17:28

And it remains mainly when there was when we’re willing, but we’re not there yet. And, but we’re Perhaps perhaps a little weary or frightened because of our perception that there’s a kind of punitive thing going on when we get stuff wrong. So when we’re well intentioned, but we make a mistake around language or something. So for example, I was with an executive team are on a, on a treat the day after, they’d been on some training on diversity and inclusion. And this was a team who genuinely wanted to lean into that and be open minded to all of the possibilities of it. But they were left with a sense of being a bit bamboozled with all of the, the sheer scale of it, and, and a bit frightened that there were so many potential ways that they could get it wrong, that in some ways that was the barrier itself to reaching out to people and trying, because, you know, they were they were afraid of what the would, what would happen if the, if they made a mistake, and as it were around, particularly around language, I mean, for, for for, what advice would you have given for those leaders?

Stephen Frost  18:54

Several incredible amount of empathy for that situation? Because I don’t know what training they went through. But it sounds like quite a negative framing, and quite a deficit model approach. In other words, you know, what’s the problem we’re trying to fix and fear of getting it wrong, rather than a value added model, which is how can we actually improve things being more inclusive? So I think the framing is really, really important, right? And I want to go back to them and ask them how it was. But to your point about what advice would I have for them? I would say that doing nothing is a risk, as well as doing something as a risk. So take baby steps and try things out. Right? Where you can get kind feedback where you can course correct, where the consequences aren’t that significant, you know, and you can build your confidence.

Jacqueline Conway  19:44

Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that, like that. And I was just, I was really just left with some empathy for them because they were the they were willing, but it was it was a challenge for them. T=

Stephen Frost  19:57

That’s it because I mean, you know, you’ve got to leave, I mean, we look at the state of our world today, right? But you’ve got to believe that most people are good people, and they want to do the right thing they want, they want to be inclusive, they want to be kind, they want to, you know, so don’t go in them bashed over the head and set it all back, work with them.

Jacqueline Conway  20:17

And I mean, that that that has been my personal experience that the vast majority of individual leaders do want to work in a more fear and inclusive organisation. And I mean, why what’s your take on why progress is still so slow? Or is that my framing? Have I got that wrong?

Stephen Frost  20:42

Well, your failing is your failing. Right. But I, I think a bit of both. I think we do forget that things have got better in many ways, right? If you were gay, before 2000. You couldn’t adopt you couldn’t marry, you couldn’t serve in the military, you couldn’t get a bed and breakfast room guaranteed you. So things have been a lot better. Similarly, legislation in terms of maternity leave, or anti racism legislation or hate crime, things have got better. So we need we need to remember that, you know, there has been tremendous progress, right. And whilst there is still a mountain to climb, we are already in the foothills, right? We have we have made progress. But to your point, I think about well, why why haven’t we got to the summit yet? You know, fundamentally, we prefer similarity to difference. For those reasons we talked about earlier about basic human needs of love, and comfort and security. And so we dealing with differences is a skill, we have to practice and discover muscle, we’ve got to exercise. And ultimately, more people prefer not to go to the gym than to go to the gym, or to eat cake rather than diet, right? Particularly when we’re stressed and as high cognitive load. And there’s all these things going on in the world. We just want the easier route. Right? And that’s, again, who might a judge, right, that’s just a human response to kind of cognitive load that you want the easier route.

Jacqueline Conway  22:11

And what you’re seeing is making me also think about the differences between kind of diversity and inclusion. Let me give you an example. queer. I mean, there are a number of teams I work in where there’s one woman in an all otherwise all male team. And, and they try to be I mean, in terms of strategic decisions and things that person’s voice is as is as important as anyone elses. And yet, it’s harder for them to be to feel really part of the team, because the first 25 minutes of every meeting is Did you watch the rugby or, you know, what did you make of, you know, the football or whatever, and so, or they play golf together, or there are some things that just make it harder to be included. So you’re there, but you don’t really feel kind of quite part of it. And that does seem incredibly challenging are a really difficult thing to try and break. Because in order to, yes, you could see what we need to do more to bring this colleague in and to make her be included. But there’s something that’s lost for those people who want to spend the 25 minutes talking about the rugby, in, in having to do that. And so that’s where you get into the sort of tricky balance of it, isn’t it?

Stephen Frost  23:35

I think it’s a classic scenario you outlined, right? The way I try and find that is about zero sum games, or enlarging the pie. So let’s take your male majority team who wants to spend 25 minutes talking about the football and the one woman who feels excluded. One option, as you say is that they don’t talk about the football, they include them and maybe talk about other things. And they have a sense of loss, by anti worry point about how do you create change, or loss is not a great starting point. But I feel like well, I want to talk about the football. But if you can, rather than just dwell on the zero sum game of like to talk about football and not to forget about enlarging the pie. Could you talk about football live unless it was something else as well, or the need to talk about both?

Jacqueline Conway  24:25

I’ll just say one more thing about this. I’m just going to, but it goes back to that thing around cognitive load, doesn’t it? Because Because if the natural thing to do before, natural for a particular group who all like the rugby or the football, is to talk about it. And then and you don’t have to talk about what we’re going to talk about. You just talk about it, then, but but the very effort of having to talk about how do we open this up, actually adds to the cognitive load, doesn’t it? It’s it in effect, it says So here’s an How do we do that without that being at, you know, gosh, that’s another thing I need to remember, instead of just coming in, in a kind of naturalistic we talking about football and not having to be very so self conscious, I then have to move into sort of a place of being thoughtful and deliberate about the my interactions with others. And I don’t know that there’s an answer to that. But it’s just it goes by I mean, I’ve just loved that. When I first read about, you know, we’re going to talk about cognitive load, and I thought, What’s that got to do with it? And then, of course, it just completely opened up. For me that actually is a really, really important point. And you got an answer to that or not.

Stephen Frost  25:41

I think it I think it’s essential, right? Because I don’t again, most You gotta believe most people are good people. I didn’t, you know, most of the work with the morning thinking, I’m gonna be racist today, you know, I think people are just stressed out and full up. And, and that means there’s less room for empathy, less room for symmetry, thinking less room for inclusion, right. And so, understand that starting point is really, really important. Because otherwise you’re never going to succeed. But I think if you do understand that, and ironically, have empathy for people who might be lacking empathy for you, right, that’s really important. Because otherwise, you’re never gonna get anywhere. So. So do I have an answer for it? Well, you know, ultimately, we do need to kind of work on meditation and getting you to be less stressed. Right? And that’s for sure, that’s going to help everybody. But I think your points about, it’s even more effortful to have to talk about the fact that we’re talking about the football. Well, at some point it comes down to that’s leadership, isn’t it? You know, like I had this amazing moment, I remember a few years ago with a an executive team of an advertising agency, when the penny dropped this one woman on the exco said, right, it’s all this talk about bring yourself to work, actually, I’ve got to bring less of myself to work. And sometimes good leadership is exactly that. I might really want to talk about the football for the team don’t. So I’m gonna take one for the team. I mean, key moments in recent history, Brexit 2016, me to 2017 COVID 2020, Black Lives Matter 2020, you know, Ukraine war, last year, Middle East war this year, key moments, which clearly have ramifications amongst communities, and really have put this on the agenda in various ways. So if you think about Black Lives Matter in 2020, the obvious visceral reaction of most people around the world to seeing a murderer, clearly spot deep feelings. And I think the corporate response was such significance that other corporates couldn’t not do something, you know that there was a bit, but then you get into the house as well as the wad, right? To really point the maturity model of this stuff. It’s very easy to do stuff. But it’s harder to sustain meaningful stuff that actually has an impact. So some great stuff. Also, some not so great stuff, but some great stuff was launched in 2020. But only a fraction of it, as it did three years later.

Jacqueline Conway  28:22

Just as you see that there. You just think, oh, gosh, you and they were all really big things, weren’t they? And, and so that takes me then to my second question about sort of reflecting on your time doing this work. Okay. There’s been these events that have catalysed some movement, some have stuck, some of it hasn’t stuck. What other reflections have you? What other reflections do you have on how this area has changed and evolved over the time that you’ve been working in it?

Stephen Frost  28:54

So if you think back to even civil rights moved to the 60s states, it has been legal, like legal changes that have given people basic civil rights, great, but again, that’s the ultimate deficit model, right? You’re trying to really short the bottom here to try and eradicate the worst behaviour. And it’s kind of grown since then really through equal opportunities in the 80s and diversity the 90s to diversity inclusion in the in the naughties and evolved ever since now, you’ve got diversity, inclusion, belonging, it’s just it’s evolved to think up the maturity scale from it being a very basic legal requirement to it being in one sense, a more strategic imperative for organisations to attract talent and to retain talent, and so forth. It’s going to move from that must do to want to do to the point when we’re talking about deficit models and value models, I still think there’s a lot of misconceptions and and unhelpful framing going on. Because I mean, even today, I was having lunch with a bunch of executives. In the city, who think this stuff is, is just unnecessary costing business, it’s been framed to them in a legal compliance way, rather than actually how this can help them. And why this might be morally, ethically, strategically, intellectually cheaply useful. So it’s changed a lot in one way but in another it’s still misconceived.

Jacqueline Conway  30:29

Say a little bit then about belonging. So if the evolution of it has led to a point now, where belonging is the sort of leading edge of this area, what do we mean by that? How is it different from some of those other terms?

Stephen Frost  30:43

So, again, terms often misunderstood. Diversity is difference, right? That’s a fact, versus reality. Equality, is that we’ve got the same equity is that we’ve got what we need. And people often confuse equality and equity, you can give different people the same thing and get a different result. So equity is giving them what they need, then you’ve got inclusion, by just bringing different people together for benefit, and then belonging, or even acceptance have heard recently, but belonging, I guess, would be the end of the spectrum feel like that people have a real sense of place, and safety. I think for me, you know, people will use it or terms work for them. But for me, I think inclusion is the goal and the sense that we know that inclusion is linked to higher performing teams, happier people, less conflict, you know, so, so including difference for me is, is the goal, how to include difference effectively, because the diversity is a reality. Inclusion is a choice. And how do we get people to lead and to exercise that choice to include different people for everyone’s benefits?

Jacqueline Conway  31:55

So my last question, and I’ve loved this conversation, Stephen. My last question is, and I often hear this idea that, I mean, we find ourselves in a climate crisis in a world that is massively disrupted, you know, there’s this, whether you want to call it the poorly crisis, the major crisis, but the confluence of a range of potentially catastrophic events, coalescing, or colliding in a way that could have really massive impact on the world, and that the issues around diversity and inclusion are absolutely at the heart of those things. Do you have a view on that?

Stephen Frost  32:39

Yes. And I think that what unfortunately, because of poor framing, is often disregarded as a nice to have soft, fluffy, Friday afternoon activity, you know, I’ll do it if I can, or hrs make me do something. What’s often seen as that is, to your point, I think central to so many of the, the issues we’re facing, and if we could just, you know, finish where we started. That if we could have the humility to realise that it doesn’t matter how brilliant we think we are, none of us is brilliant enough. And we need other people. And we need people who are different from us, we can humble to actually come up with better solutions to these problems, or to avoid them in the first place. That’d be a good thing.

Jacqueline Conway  33:30

What I loved about this conversation with Stephen is non judgmental and accepting we, he thinks about a collective journey to make the organization’s we work in more inclusive, there’s a way for us to hold lightly at attempts to create the kinds of cultures that we want, so that we don’t have to get caught up in the dogmatic or the punitive. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please hit the Follow button. So it arrives in your feed, as new episodes are released. And if you’re so inclined, it would mean a great deal to me, if you could leave a rating and review. And if you’d like to stay up to date with the ideas and offerings that we have for executive leaders, you can sign up to my weekly digest the links in the show notes. This is very much a team effort and Walden Croft, and I’d like to thank Pippa Barker, Sarah Ballantyne, and Lauren McAlpine for helping make the podcast possible.