On-Demand Webinar

00:00:06 Jonathan Munk

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone.Welcome to today's podcast. I'm really excited you're here. Today's podcast is.

00:00:16 Jonathan Munk

With a guest author that we're really excited to bringalong, it's it's part of our author series Webinar cultures of belonging,excited to jump into some of these topics on belonging and DEIB.

00:00:30 Jonathan Munk

I am Jonathan Monk, CEO of Book Club with me as co-host isBrett Brewer, senior director of Creative Experience Book Club is a platformthat allows companies to take the world's most impactful, meaningful and newideas from books and bring them into companies and teams. We ask as youparticipate with us today.

00:00:51 Jonathan Munk

Everyone please post in the chat where you're calling infrom. We'd love to hear where you're joining us from and also what is yourfavorite book that you're currently reading? We we just love to hear how peopleare participating in reading and gaining new knowledge from other experts,really excited today to introduce.

00:01:12 Jonathan Munk

Yeah, Alita is alita. Miranda Wolf is a diversity inclusion,equity and belonging expert who has written two books with Harper Collinsleadership. One of them is called cultures of belonging, building inclusiveorganizations that last super important. And the second, the first timemanager.

00:01:32 Jonathan Munk

Diversity, equity and inclusion that is coming out in May of2024. She is the founder and CEO also of Ethos, which is a full service to EIBand employee advocacy firm, which serves hundreds of clients across the world.In addition.

00:01:48 Jonathan Munk

She hosts a podcast called Care Work with Miranda Wolffabout what it means to offer care for a living. In 2021, Alita received theUniversity University of Chicago's early Career Achievement award. She's agraduate of the University of Chicago and holds certificates from the School ofArt Institute.

00:02:08 Jonathan Munk

In graphic design and Georgetown University in Dei welcomeAlita, it's great to be with you today.

00:02:15 Alida Miranda-Wolff

It's wonderful to be here. I'm so excited to dig into thisconversation.

00:02:20 Jonathan Munk

Wonderful with that, Brett, why don't you kick a stuff withsome of the questions that you have prepared as we as we begin the conversationtoday?

00:02:29 Britt Brewer

Thank you. I echo Mark and I'm so excited to be talking toyou today, Lita and I.

00:02:36 Britt Brewer

Think well, the.

00:02:37 Britt Brewer

One question that we love to ask folks is what book isessential reading for everyone that should be on their night stand that youjust think it doesn't have to be business nonfiction, just the one book thateveryone should have.

00:02:50 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So I have three books that have fundamentally changed myrelationship to work and life in the last three years, and for folks on thiscall in particular, the one that comes to mind is saving time. Baby, JennyOdell. A lot of people know Jenny Odell from how to do nothing, which was abestseller.

00:03:10 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And saving time is the follow up. There are a few reasonswhy I think it's so essential, but ultimately, if how to do nothing was reallyholistically about.

00:03:21 Alida Miranda-Wolff

How to resist the attention economy and learn to be present?Saving time is a reconceptualization of time. And what I find most useful aboutthe book as a leader is it really challenges our norms around productivity? Howmuch time we put into work and time is like.

00:03:40 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Here so one of the main arguments that she makes is that ifwe look at our gardens, if we look at nature, time is cyclical and nonlinear.When we think about growing lettuce, one of the reasons it's so fast to do isbecause so many people have done it before. So we've essentially saved time bymaking that earlier investment.

00:04:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And essentially sharing time with a broader community. And Ithink being able to apply that lens.

00:04:06 Alida Miranda-Wolff

To our workplaces would create more balanced and humaneworkplaces, but also, frankly, since I read saving time, I have done so muchmore that is valuable and meaningful in my work, and that has ultimatelyallowed for us at ethos to go from needing eleven people to do our client loadwork to five.

00:04:26 Alida Miranda-Wolff

People to do our client load work so.

00:04:29 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I would absolutely recommend that.

00:04:33 Britt Brewer

Sounds amazing. I.

00:04:34 Britt Brewer

I feel like with all the new.

00:04:36 Britt Brewer

Apps and supposed time keepers. We're all just sort ofscrambling to have time for anything. And so the concept of actually just chillout and be OK with chilling out is a time saver that we don't recognize. So I'mI'm definitely going.

00:04:50 Britt Brewer

To check that book out.

00:04:53 Britt Brewer

So the first question I.

00:04:54 Britt Brewer

Have for you is.

00:04:57 Britt Brewer

Well, so you're a.

00:04:58 Britt Brewer

CEO and you're an author. I would love to hear about whatcame first, both in life and in your mind because you know we.

00:05:07 Britt Brewer

Were all like.

00:05:08 Britt Brewer

Rock stars and firefighters in our minds.

00:05:10 Britt Brewer

But we love to hear about what first came.

00:05:12 Britt Brewer

1st and then.

00:05:14 Britt Brewer

You know, maybe after that, if you could talk about being aleader.

00:05:17 Britt Brewer

And fosters cultures of belonging and teaches DI practicesand how that has affected your leadership style. So I know that's a lot andhappy to you know you can take it bit by bit but just wanted.

00:05:31 Britt Brewer

To hear your insight and wisdom on.

00:05:32 Britt Brewer

All of that.

00:05:34 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So I don't know if other folks have been through this, butmy mom decided to give me all of the scrapbooks and art from my childhoodbecause she said she didn't have space for it, didn't want it anymore, and so Ihave the advantage of seeing these questioners I filled out in preschool, prekindergarten and kindergarten, and there was an interesting trajectory at fouryears old.

00:05:54 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I wanted to be a supermodel.

00:05:56 Alida Miranda-Wolff

At five years old, I wanted to be an artist, and by the timeI was six, I wanted to be a writer, and that was consistent. What kind ofwriter I was going to be. I certainly changed in that as I went through mylife. But I knew that that was what I wanted to do, so much so that my firstreal set.

00:06:15 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Of professional experiences where, as a journalist, I hadcovered the arts and culture beat for the University of Chicago, and then I wasa freelancer for a variety of culture magazines and publications. Ultimatelythat wasn't as sustainable.

00:06:30 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Life or career from just a pure money standpoint, I am awhite passing lab and a cisgender woman. I have multiple disabilities. I'm alsoneurodivergent and a big part of my identity is that I am part of the humandiaspora, and that means that apart from simply just having inheritedrootlessness.

00:06:51 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I also have commitments to my family that have been prettyconsistent throughout my life. So when I started college at 16.

00:06:58 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I went in with the idea that I need to be earning an incomepretty quickly and I worked my way through college. I paid off my college byworking full time while I was at the University of Chicago, and I also saidthis is the most expensive thing I will probably ever do in my life. So I wantto study the things I want to study and that led to me actually getting adegree in creative nonfiction, so.

00:07:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I triple majored at the University of Chicago. I studiedEnglish law and romance languages.

00:07:26 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And I did a lot of writing during that time, and I alsosupported myself writing and I graduated. And I'm in my very early 20s and Iwant to be making a good income. And I also want to be writing at the sametime. And so I was pursuing creative nonfiction. I wanted to be an essayist,but I also was working in industrial.

00:07:47 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Manufacturing and then inventor capital and tech and tryingto basically do those things at the same time.

00:07:54 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When I founded.

00:07:55 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Ethos, which is almost six years ago.

00:07:58 Alida Miranda-Wolff

What I started to understand was instead of writing personalessays instead of being more in the tradition of some of my favorite authorslike you, alibis and Leslie Jameson, too. Folks, I think everybody should bereading, especially if you are wondering about capitalism but want and artsytake on it. Those are two people I definitely recommend.

00:08:19 Alida Miranda-Wolff

That you read Leslie Jamison in particular is super famousfor a book she wrote called the Empathy Exams, which pretty much anyone whowrites creative nonfiction is basing their long form.

00:08:29 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Work on but I was doing this work and I was inheriting alsofor my husband who's very involved in open source bio and from being intact. Imean before I started ethos my entire career really was in VC and tech andstartups.

00:08:49 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I wanted to make what I was doing open source because it wasworking. Our clients were seeing real improvements and as the team grew, it wasmore and more expensive to work with us and I do very much believe in takingdown the barriers around I.

00:09:03 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Key and making everything when it comes to ideas, open andaccessible. So that's what gave me the idea that, OK, I'm going to write abook, but it's not going to be the kind of book that I had sort of alwaysimagined myself writing. It's going to be one that's instructional, useful,helpful.

00:09:21 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And that is.

00:09:23 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Is ultimately what led me to write cultures of belonging,building inclusive organizations that last. With that said, I also recognizedpretty early on in running ethos that we needed to have a product of some kindin order to be able to scale as a services business. And I didn't want to be atech company. I didn't want to build a platform.

00:09:45 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And I was trying to think about, OK.

00:09:48

OK.

00:09:49 Alida Miranda-Wolff

What is our product? And I will say that I went through afew different kind of cycles of this, but if anyone here is familiar with thebook called the Emath which is an entrepreneurship book, a lot of entrepreneursuse it.

00:10:05 Alida Miranda-Wolff

One of the things that is central to the EMIF is what you'reselling is not a commodity, it's a feeling.

00:10:15 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And I had decided for ethos what we are selling is thesecurity to pursue optimism. And when I thought about what I would turn to, tofeel like I had what I needed, the the tools, the resources in order to build,to better, to hope for better, I thought of a book.

00:10:32 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And so I was also thinking I already want to write. I'malready a writer. I want to make these ideas open source and my business needsa product.

00:10:41 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And so that's what led me to write my book proposal forcultures of longing in 2018. And it was a long gestation period. Ultimately,the book came out in 2022. So I will say in the meantime, my second book, whichis coming out in May of next year, was a really short gestation period. I wrotethe proposal in 2022.

00:11:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Finished the book by the beginning of 2023 and it's inproduction right now and we'll be out in 2024, so a little bit of a differentstory, but that's really how I see myself as a CEO and as an.

00:11:16 Britt Brewer

I'm amazing. I love. I love hearing your story and you know,just to to follow up on some of your conversations about, you know, some ofthe, the multiple identities and and and sort of you know coming to the, youknow, having juggling all these at once, which we all do. I would I'm sointerested to hear and this is going to.

00:11:34 Britt Brewer

Probably set up months. Next question.

00:11:36 Britt Brewer

About sort of this, the strange bedfellows of of capitalismand some of the DI belonging work that you're doing and also.

00:11:43 Britt Brewer

You went to the University of Chicago, which is, you know,sort of.

00:11:46 Britt Brewer

Famously, you were.

00:11:47 Britt Brewer

Leo Strauss and Milton Friedman, where like somewhereconservative thinkers went so you know where these conversations around somethings that people you know in a in a more profit motivated society don'talways see as you know the preeminent thing to go towards but that theimportance of belonging and the importance of.

00:12:05 Britt Brewer

Feeling safe in a workplace and and how those things sort ofinteract with each other and and how you they will been able to apply some ofthe things from your book in the workplace and you know any kind of examples ofof anecdotes from real life would be would be great.

00:12:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Absolutely. Well, first of all, I absolutely recognize thetension between having gone to the University of Chicago and and beinginterwoven into it, and also understanding that the Chicago School of Economicshas not just in the US, but globally, been the biggest booster of not justcapitalism, but.

00:12:40 Alida Miranda-Wolff

A performance market based capitalism, which I know we havesome Brazilians here. Many people credit with creating a lot of strife inBrazil in particular, so.

00:12:52 Alida Miranda-Wolff

What I will say is the place where I understood what itmeans to belong and not belong was the University of Chicago when I was 19years old, I got hit by a car while crossing the street and I flipped over thehood of the car. Twice I shattered my entire right side. I was.

00:13:08 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Hospitalized. I had emergency surgery and I experienced areally massive change, not just in my body and this experience that I had, butalso in my community. So I started at the University of Chicago when I was 16and up until that point, I had never felt that I belonged to anywhere.

00:13:26 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I moved eleven times before I was 16. I have a lot of inbetween identities. I passed in a lot of the marginalized identities that Ihave, but not enough that I can fully participate in the dominant group. Andthat was the first time that I had a community that I felt valued in that Ivalued back where I felt like I was connected to something that was.

00:13:48 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Of a higher purpose or meaning, because for all of itsflaws, the University of Chicago does drink its own kool-aid around the life ofthe mind and everyone I was around was very much focused on the same thingsthat I were in terms of love, of learning and commitment to.

00:14:04 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When I came back after my accident, I had chosen. I electednot to take a leave of absence, even though it was recommended that I take atleast three months to recover. I went back to school five days after my surgeryin the dead of winter, unable to walk.

00:14:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Because I wanted to be in my community and have it pour intome.

00:14:24 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And my community did not welcome you with open arms, notjust the physical environment, which was not built for people withdisabilities. I had classes in buildings that didn't have functioningelevators, for example.

00:14:38 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I had a professor who denied me the use of an iPad in class,which I needed because I couldn't fully use my right hand, which is my dominanthand during my period of recovery, and I even had my student advisor say Ireally recommend you take the leave of absence. Not because I don't think youcan do it, but because this is not a place that is.

00:14:58 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Kind to people with disabilities. And so I went from feelinglike I really belonged somewhere to feeling very much that I wasn't wanted andthat acquired disability and that new lens of experience made me understandbelonging. One is very free.

00:15:16 Alida Miranda-Wolff

No, and is context dependent, and it also made me reallycurious about what does it take to create the conditions for belonging.

00:15:24 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So cut to now, I've been studying belonging for 10 years,and in that time, here's what I've learned. And here's what I think makes sensein terms of this conversation in the workplace. So belongingness, which is aterm that really rose to popularity in the 1990s.

00:15:42 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Is in the psychological research a basic psychological needlike safe?

00:15:48 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And what researchers like Roy Baumeister found in theirresearch was that to belong as to matter, our sense of purpose comes from oursense of belonging. We are fundamentally social beings. So if we're going totalk about purpose at work or meeting at work, we can't divorce that frombelonging.

00:16:08 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Because psychologically we're firing the same neurons whenwe're talking about those things.

00:16:14 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But what does that mean in a workplace, especially when ourworkplace is our marketplaces? You know you don't work somewhere for 30 yearsanymore. You might never see those colleagues that you developed relationshipswith. Again, it feels very transient. So.

00:16:30 Alida Miranda-Wolff

The main framework that I've used to think about Twanging ismy own definition of workplace belonging, which is you feel part of somethinggreater than yourself that values and respects you, and that you value andrespect back and in order to achieve that, you need to balance 3R's that'srelation.

00:16:51 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Resources and reciprocity. So relationships are what needsto happen in your workplace so that you have meaningful, durable relationshipswith people so that even if they leave the company, even if you leave thecompany, you're still talking to them five years later, 10 years later, 20years.

00:17:10 Alida Miranda-Wolff

That means you may need to design the way that you workdifferently. There's a lot of concern about remote versus hybrid versus inperson, whether we can experience belonging. And there are some things inrelationships that we need to pay attention.

00:17:24 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Into there, as the researcher Lydia Dunworth has shown inher book Friendship, which is a neurobiology of friendship, it takes threethings to feel close to people, and that is similarity. We have something incommon. Reciprocity, there's give and take in our relationship, and finally,proximity. What she found in her research is if you've met somebody.

00:17:46 Alida Miranda-Wolff

In person, but then you are long distance. You can keep astrong durable relationship, but it's not necessarily true the other wayaround.

00:17:54 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Or if you never meet them in person, so part of having ahealthy belonging culture in your workplace is what opportunities do peoplehave to actually meet each other? They don't have to work together every singleday. That's not what the data shows. But they do need a chance to interface,and they need to feel like they are investing in a long term.

00:18:15 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Relationship that matters to them. So things likediscouraging friendships or creating blockages to those relationships isactually detrimental to workplace belonging.

00:18:25 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Then there's resources and this is really tied torelationships. If you don't have enough time or energy to invest in yourworkplace relationships, you will not experience a sense of belonging. And soif your meeting schedule is such that you have to go from one meeting toanother, meeting to another meeting to another meeting.

00:18:46 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Well, that's going to be a problem because you're not goingto ask about somebody'd's new cooking class or how their daughter is doingafter recovering from RSV. You don't have those exchanges that add up tosomething more powerful or meaningful, and people end up feeling more isolated,even though they may be on zoom all day long.

00:19:06 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But it's also equity issues. So let's talk about a realresource issue. How am I gonna feel a sense of being valued in an organizationif I know my peer is making more than I am for no reason other than that theynegotiated or the identities that they have helped?

00:19:22 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So things like pay equity are the foundations of belonging,because if we don't have the resources to actually say I value the environmentI'm in and it values me.

00:19:37 Alida Miranda-Wolff

It's a moot point, right? And then there's reciprocity andthis is what I think is most difficult for organizations, but where you canintroduce some practices that are really useful. So reciprocity on a team isvery different than the 1:00 to 1:00 we think about. If I think about areciprocal relationship with my best friend.

00:19:55 Alida Miranda-Wolff

It's different than if I think about a reciprocalrelationship with my five person team.

00:20:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So reciprocity is not tip for tat. It is not. I did you afavor. So you do.

00:20:05Alida Miranda-Wolff

Me a favor.

00:20:06Alida Miranda-Wolff

It is that if I need help, I genuinely believe and trustthat the people around me will fulfill my request for help or need for help,and that I believe they will come to me for their needs to be met and that it'snot always 1 to 1 so.

00:20:22 Alida Miranda-Wolff

This colleague may be the person who steps in and helps mewhen our site crashes, but it's actually this other colleague that I help whentheir mom gets sick and they need to take a sabbatical.

00:20:34 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So it's the idea that in the system we're all picking thingsup and offering here to one another. So that ultimately all of our unmet needsare met by the people within that contained group. That is very hard to do. Butthere are practices that we know at ethos can ultimately lead to betteroutcomes. So for example.

00:20:55 Alida Miranda-Wolff

If leaders praise people for how well they contribute andwhat they contribute, as opposed to that they're a superstar or rock star. Ifthey give praise to groups of people as opposed to individuals, or comment onthe behaviors in which folks engaged.

00:21:12 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Like I want to give a real shout out to Britt and Monk todaybecause they went out of their way to support Maria Amelia in creating this newprocess that benefits the whole team that starts to develop the competency andthe expectation that we're recognized for how we contribute to the.

00:21:33 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Whole well-being of the team.

00:21:36 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Other things are put it in performance evaluations.

00:21:40 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Because we really, really reward people who go off on theirown and shine. And I don't want to ever say we take that away. But it meansthat we create and foster more competitive environments and environments ofbelonging are fundamentally cooperative. The last thing I'll say about that isyou can think about it in terms of the.

00:22:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Sports team, which, by the way, I don't know anything aboutsports, but I am surrounded by people who play sports and my husband.

00:22:08Alida Miranda-Wolff

Playssoccer, right?

00:22:10Alida Miranda-Wolff

He is not in competition with his fellow players on hissoccer team. They're in competition with the other team. They're cooperatingwith one another and there's something that I'm going to switch sports for asecond because Trevor Jenkins does this really well on our team and he talksabout in baseball, there's a concept called sacrifice bunting.

00:22:30 Alida Miranda-Wolff

In baseball, where you could go for the home run but youdon't, instead you bunch because it supports getting the whole team aguaranteed win versus maybe getting you the Super flashy, showy win.

00:22:48 Alida Miranda-Wolff

We want that kind of dynamic at work, which of course,you're never ever going to put yourself out on the line like that unless you dohave those meaningful relationships and you have the resources that allow foryou to say I'm not out here alone, only looking out for my own interests.

00:23:06 Jonathan Munk

Alita, that's that's really an eloquent way of framing this.One of the things that I think.

00:23:12 Jonathan Munk

As we look at the market in general, right that that we seekind of as a trend and I think as a CEO myself, I've seen this and and as aleader I've.

00:23:22 Jonathan Munk

Seen this where?

00:23:24 Jonathan Munk

Even the topic of Deeb, even the topic of belonging, we Ithink there's a tendency to immediately think about specific individuals whoare categorized as being diverse or are categorized as being inequitable or orthat don't feel belonging. And and I think there's there's a.

00:23:45 Jonathan Munk

A little bit almost.

00:23:48 Jonathan Munk

A misappropriation or a miss definition on what does it evenmean when we talk about DEIB? Like, who are we talking about? Right. And Ithink the idea that you're putting forward here, this that's maybe differentthan what a lot of leaders who understand or are trying to understand. What dowe mean when we talk about the EIB?

00:24:09 Jonathan Munk

Is that this is really about everyone, right? You, you, you,you write about this, right? Everyone brings their uniqueness to the table.

00:24:18 Jonathan Munk

Their background, their experience, their gender, theiridentity, their skills, their beliefs, whatever it is right, everyone isbringing everyone you know their own self to, to the table. And so when we talkabout belonging, I think that one of the concepts that really resonates for meis that this is not about.

00:24:37 Jonathan Munk

A small group of diverse people that we need to bring inwith us, but it's everyone's coming together with everyone else to create a aspecific type of culture and and and one of the things that I want to just askyou about related to this is.

00:24:53 Jonathan Munk

We we've seen, you know in in 2021-2022 big investments inDI be you know, departments being being started around EIB and we're nowbeginning to see what you've called like, the disinvestment in DEI and in factthere's a tweet that that.

00:25:13 Jonathan Munk

A a a product manager, a prominent product manager fromMicrosoft, and Meta. This is what they tweeted. They said companies caringabout DEI was a 0 interest rate phenomenon. Now this is essentially saying, youknow this, this is a bad investment for companies. Right and and.

00:25:33 Jonathan Munk

Almost. You can see leaders in some skeptics saying, seewhat we see, what we mean like this was never going to work. It didn't work.And now there's almost this backlash against investing in.

00:25:45 Jonathan Munk

DEI.

00:25:46 Jonathan Munk

B. And I'm sure in the seat that you're sitting in, you'veseen some of this happen. I'm curious to just get your thoughts.

00:25:54 Jonathan Munk

You know, are we framing this up the right way?

00:25:58 Jonathan Munk

Are there have we made mistakes as we think about what doesit mean to create truly ADIB friendly environment and that culture of belongingthat you so eloquently talked about and and what what can we do about that? Youknow, if this is the case, we are definitely seeing disinvestment in DIbusinesses.

00:26:18 Jonathan Munk

Or or DIY initiatives across businesses. What what do yousay to companies that are maybe maybe beginning to question, should we makethis investment and and how should we think about moving forward from here?

00:26:32 Alida Miranda-Wolff

There's a lot to unpack in what you're sharing. The ideathat there haven't been gains from diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.I'm just going to talk about this in terms of the market too. You wouldn'texpect to buy a stock and then cash out as a millionaire two days later andthat's essentially what has happened.

00:26:53 Alida Miranda-Wolff

In organizations, so they made their investments in 2020 andas soon as 2021 started pulling in.

00:27:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Investments. So I think it's a little bit disingenuous tosay that, oh, well, look, we showed you we put all this money behind it and allof these resources behind it and there was no gain. Well, you really didn'tstay with it very long and that's been true $7.5 billion were pledged to DDI.

00:27:23 Alida Miranda-Wolff

The initiatives in 2020 and that had been halved by 2021based on the data, I don't know that that is part of this story that is gettingpushed.

00:27:33 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Forward, but yes, there's absolutely been a decrease infunding and investment in this. In 2023, there was a 40% decline in jobpostings for diversity, equity inclusion and belonging positions. These wereteams that were disproportionately impacted in the tech layoffs that took placethroughout the year.

00:27:53 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And something else that I think is really interesting is wehad a 30% gain in terms of the diversity of people joining organizations in2020, especially when it came to racial diversity. We are now in 2023 at pre2020 numbers. That means we didn't just lose the progress we made.

00:28:13 Alida Miranda-Wolff

We went back even farther.

00:28:17 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And this is something that I just want to highlight, whichis we have used this narrative about DI B not working to essentially hurt thepeople. The entire industry exists to advocate for, and that's primarily black,brown and indigenous people.

00:28:37 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Who are now less employed than before George Floyd wasmurdered, so.

00:28:42 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I want to make sure we have some facts on the table thereand I want to say there are a lot of things that are super problematic aboutdiversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. There is a great story in New Yorkmagazine that cut about the diversity, equity, inclusion and belongingindustrial complex. And the reality is that most firms, including mine.

00:29:02 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Are built on consulting, which means you have definedproblems. In order to make money and you have to align yourself with the peoplewith the money in order to stay in business. This is not.

00:29:16 Alida Miranda-Wolff

The author, Donna Haraway, who is incredible in so manyways. She's also a futurist.

00:29:24 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Going the term non innocent, these are non innocentrelationships. These are not objective relationships and so there are a lot ofproblems within the space. Plus there was a huge upsell and people who weredoing diversity, equity, inclusion of long and work in 20.

00:29:40 Alida Miranda-Wolff

20 without a whole.

00:29:42 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Of prior experience, past knowledge or even identities thatwould give them lived experience to participate. So there was harm and damagedone in these spaces because of a lack of understanding because of beingreactive because of not being part of a larger vision or project that spansmultiple decades.

00:30:02 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Generations, which is key to this kind of work intransformation.

00:30:07 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But the last thing I'll say is part of this disinvestment isbecause we've seen a decrease in worker power and we need to be really clearabout that. From 2020 to 2022, we did not have enough people to do the jobsthat were available. This is one of the reasons we saw such a rise in unionsbecause for the first time in three decades.

00:30:27 Alida Miranda-Wolff

We had a market where employees had more power than theiremployers for a variety of reasons. One reason that folks don't name theyalways talk about the stipends we got from the US government. I want to bereally clear that that wasn't enough money to just completely opt out of theworkplace. What happened is that a million people died and that many of themwere workers.

00:30:48 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And so we had a significant shortage of people who couldactually.

00:30:53 Alida Miranda-Wolff

OK. Well, we saw a market contraction in 2023 and we sawincreasing interest rates really decreased the amount of investments thatorganizations were making, their headcount numbers really plummeted. And as aresult, the power shifted from workers who could make demands on organizationsto organizations who were holding the cards.

00:31:13 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives areexpensive.

00:31:18 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So what happens when your employees who are asking for thesethings? And by the way, continue to ask for these things based on the data wehave, there is not a decrease in sentiment amongst employees, but there is inleaders.

00:31:33 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So there's an interesting divide there. It's just thatleaders don't have to do it anymore because ultimately people need jobs, andthey're the ones who hold those jobs in a way that wasn't happening.

00:31:47 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But there was something that monks said that I want to touchon for a second, which is this idea of diversity, equity, inclusion andbelonging being about what identities you hold in a sort of deference politicskind of way. And I want to be clear that any really serious thinker in thisspace is against standpoint epistemology.

00:32:07 Alida Miranda-Wolff

For deference politics, the idea that you bow down tosomeone because of the adversity that.

00:32:12 Alida Miranda-Wolff

They faced or the marginalized identities they hold. This isin a force of elites to make sure there's infighting between marginalizedgroups so that they do not form a coalition to fight for better conditions. OK,if we are saying the only person who is allowed to talk about racial inequity.

00:32:34 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Is a black trans person who is a descendant ofsharecroppers. Then what we are doing is purposely creating fissures betweencommunities of people who should actually uniting.

00:32:47 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Horses. I know. I'm going all over the place with this, butthere is a reason the Black Panthers were focused on a rainbow coalition. Theyhad adopted white supremacists into their coalition to advocate for betterwages, access to food and shelter, and greater safety from police. They wereworking with Puerto Rican gangs.

00:33:07 Alida Miranda-Wolff

They were working with the disabled community. In fact, ifyou know anything about Judy Human, her autobiography, being human came outright before she passed away. I highly recommend it. You know that the biggestadvocates for getting the Americans with Disabilities Act through. We're theblack Panthers.

00:33:25 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So when we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion andbelonging, I like to talk about the work of olufemi Tayo, and I'm going toquote him directly from a book he wrote called Elite Capture that came out in2022. What he says is we start from different levels of privilege or advantage,but this journey is not a matter of figuring out who should bow to whom.

00:33:48 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But simply want to figuring out how to best join forces. Aconstructive culture puts outcome over process and ultimately it is focused onend results or specific goals.

00:34:02 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Over avoiding complicity and injustice or promoting purelymoral or aesthetic principles. So if we're really going to pursue belonging inthe workplace, what we're focused on is how do we build a coalition thatultimately leads to in perhaps non innocent, messy ways a more?

00:34:23 Alida Miranda-Wolff

An accessible world for everyone. Understanding that becausewe have systems in place that have helped marginalized materialized andhistorically resilient groups down, we need to correct for that and make surethat they are platformed that they are invited, that they are decision makers,that they're involved.

00:34:42 Alida Miranda-Wolff

In the process.

00:34:43 Alida Miranda-Wolff

There is a big difference between saying you as a white CISman can't speak to this because you're the problem and you're privilege andbias to saying, hey, you have a platform, you get to speak a lot of the time.We want you here in the room. But can we hear from some other?

00:35:00 Alida Miranda-Wolff

People, those are very different and they're talked about asif they're the same in this space. And ultimately what I'm concerned with iswhat a good future looks like and a good future is not one in which we aredivided because that is what makes us weak and vulnerable to those who.

00:35:16 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Have more power.

00:35:18 Jonathan Munk

Yeah, and Alita the as a I'm sure as a CEO you see this aswell. One of the things that I just value so much as we think about like how doyou build an organization with this in mind and what business justification isthere.

00:35:33 Jonathan Munk

To invest in this, it is a big investment and and you you.

00:35:37 Jonathan Munk

Touched on this early on right, which is.

00:35:39 Jonathan Munk

You're planting seeds. It takes time to sow those seeds andbear the and and seed those bear fruit. And so you know this investment, thisdisinvestment, that's almost like this short term vision of, hey, we're goingto do this. Oh, it's not immediately producing outcomes or, you know, it's a,it's a draw on the bottom line of the business.

00:36:00 Jonathan Munk

We're going to disinvest from that as a as a leader.

00:36:04 Jonathan Munk

I'm curious like how do you think like what should we besaying to CEO's?

00:36:09 Jonathan Munk

Those on the call like what should they be, you know, sayingto CEO's who are maybe incredulous or doubtful or unsure about how do we thinkabout making this investment and.

00:36:21 Jonathan Munk

My just to give my answer to that, my answer to that is.

00:36:25 Jonathan Munk

As a business leader.

00:36:27 Jonathan Munk

We are better off.

00:36:29 Jonathan Munk

If we have.

00:36:31 Jonathan Munk

More diverse opinions, backgrounds, experiences, voicesrepresentation in the room. Our product will be better. Our messaging will bebetter, our service will be better. Will better serve the the diverse set ofclients and users that come to us for the the things that we provide them. Andto me that feels like a very.

00:36:52 Jonathan Munk

Sort of organic way to put to put business sort of acumenand and and and almost dialogue and language behind it is to say if we reallywant to have the best shot at being successful as a business.

00:37:07 Jonathan Munk

We really owe it to ourselves to, if anything else,represent the people that we're selling our stuff to and to be better as a, asa team, have that sort of mutual representation. And so just what, what, howwould you react to that? Does that align to you and and if not, what is themessage to a CEO who's maybe?

00:37:27 Jonathan Munk

Not sure if this is the right investment to me.

00:37:29 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So the first thing that I'll say is I think there is alittle bit of a problem in diversity, equity inclusion and belonging circles.And that folks say well, you know.

00:37:42 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Businesses are 30% more profitable if they're more diverseand we will have a more successful business. There are plenty of businessesthat never invest in this and in fact engage in egregious and horriblepractices that make lots of money and are very successful. This is not aneither or situation.

00:37:59 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I think what it comes down to is who is the CEO that I'mtalking to and how do they make their decisions? Do they make their decisionswith logic? Do they make decisions with emotion or do they make decisions basedon credibility or reputation? If I'm talking to somebody who cares about theemotional?

00:38:19 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Consideration. It's not just it's the right thing to do.It's thinking about why you are a CEO to begin with. And I'm gonna mention myfriend Elena Valentine, and she runs a company called Skill Scout. She's a CEO.

00:38:31 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Though and I heard her say this probably four years ago andit's never left me, which was even though she runs a social impact techcompany.

00:38:41 Alida Miranda-Wolff

She realized early on that where she was going to have thegreatest impact in the world was not going to be in her product. It was goingto be in how she ran her company because she could directly impact thosepeople, those lives in that community. And so everything that she did to runthe company itself.

00:39:00 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Was where she was going to be able to do good and fulfill ahigher purpose or meaning.

00:39:06 Alida Miranda-Wolff

This is something that I feel very deeply as a CEO and forfolks who are moved by more of an emotional argument, I remind them of, whichis why did you become a CEO to begin with, and most of the CEO's I know, theyhave vision, they have a lot of excitement. Maybe they are profit motivated,but they have also this desire to be good stewards.

00:39:27 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Of the groups they're responsible for.

00:39:30 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And ultimately, when done right, that's what diversity,equity, inclusion and belonging does. Now, there are CEO's who don't respond tothat or say, hey, that's not my responsibility. That's what my people team doesor people can go get that in a different place. It doesn't have to be at work.And from a logic standpoint, where I will go to is, I have just finishedputting together all the metrics for the ethos strategic plan.

00:39:53 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Our customer retention rate is 100%. We have 165 clients andsince 2019 we have not lost a single client.

00:40:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When I look at why we made a very big change in 2019 to howwe do the work, which is you have three or more people on any engagement youwork on with us, that's to meet our own representation criteria that we set, itcreates a lot of continuity because if people leave the organization, we don'tlose that institutional knowledge.

00:40:23 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And we don't lose the relationship with the client. It meansthat the work is done more ethically and it just means that what we deliver ismuch higher quality because you have people to gather deciding whethersomething is good enough or not.

00:40:36 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And this is ultimately what the McKinsey study is similarDeloitte study found. When we have teams that work well together, right,because diversity and of itself is not enough, in fact, diverse teams that aredysfunctional underperform homogeneous teams that are dysfunctional, they haveto be kind of grooving together. They ultimately produce higher.

00:40:56 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Quality or better quality outcomes so.

00:40:59 Alida Miranda-Wolff

You'll have a better product. You'll have better customerretention. Most likely you'll better be servicing your customer, but this isgoing to be more true of some folks than others. If I sold jet engines, mycustomer base is not super diverse. If I sell sneakers, my customer base isprobably extremely diverse and having people on that team who understand whatthat community cares about.

00:41:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Is going to have a more direct link to being able tounderstand the mind of a customer, and then for folks who are making gut baseddecisions, this is what I will say.

00:41:31 Alida Miranda-Wolff

There is this sense of OK, going back to what's the rightthing to do, but also what is the environment that I want to be part of, youknow, James Baldwin wrote the policeman, which I exist, will not the the thepolice in which I fit will not exist until I make it.

00:41:51 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And so the gut decision is you have control to make theplace that.

00:41:56 Alida Miranda-Wolff

You are part of.

00:41:58 Alida Miranda-Wolff

What do you want that place to be? What do you want it tolook like? What do you want to be able to do or not do? And when we invest inthings like belonging, if you're cultivating a culture of belonging, it's notjust the people who work for you. That experience it. It's you too.

00:42:16 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And that is something that I have found to be actually amuch more appealing argument than I expected.

00:42:22 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But CEOs are people, too, and they have needs that need toget met, too. And work is probably the most social environment. They're partof, at least in terms of the hours they're spending with other people.

00:42:37 Jonathan Munk

Really helpful. Yeah. Brick, go ahead.

00:42:39 Britt Brewer

No, no. I just, I just had a quick follow up. There's somany things to unspool. Like I, I want to talk about the permanent managerialclass. I want to hear your thoughts from Robin D'Angelo. There's just likethere is so much I feel like I want your your playlist of ideas and thoughtsand book recommendations, and I'm definitely.

00:42:54 Britt Brewer

Going to read.

00:42:56 Britt Brewer

Like capture? That sounds amazing.

00:42:58 Britt Brewer

And I guess you know.

00:43:00 Britt Brewer

Honestly, this is more of a compliment, but I would.

00:43:03 Britt Brewer

Say you know.

00:43:03 Britt Brewer

Your your pragmatic but also you know emotionally soundapproach to this. It really resonates. And I just wish that more I didn'trealize that there was, you know, different sort of schools of thought in thisspace. And I just wish that schools of thought like yours.

00:43:18 Britt Brewer

We're a little bit more prominent and I know.

00:43:20 Britt Brewer

That they're not.

00:43:20 Britt Brewer

As flashy as you know, CEO's, self flagellating and and youknow, sort of more punitive approach is but yours. I mean what you're talkingabout with teamwork and it's all true, you know, that's why that's why sportsmovies make you cry. Because it's people working to.

00:43:35 Britt Brewer

The other so just wanted to say kudos, I mean all the thingsthat you're talking about really.

00:43:40 Britt Brewer

Resonate so yeah.

00:43:43 Britt Brewer

So I'm going to kick it over to to Mark. Do you want to askthe your final question that maybe we?

00:43:47 Britt Brewer

Can take some questions from the audience.

00:43:48 Jonathan Munk

Yeah, I I would love. So if anyone has questions, who'swho's listening in would just love, please drop those into the chat at anypoint. We'll be going through those and and selecting a few to to field fromthe from the listening audience. Today I I did. There's really two questions Ihave you know.

00:44:08 Jonathan Munk

One of them is.

00:44:10 Jonathan Munk

If you're in, if you're in a situation where budgets areshrinking.

00:44:15 Jonathan Munk

Where maybe approval is is harder to get.

00:44:18 Jonathan Munk

If you had to pick one thing to start with, what would thatthing be like? How how would you advise anyone who's listening and has a desireto do something meaningful and take, you know, take a step that's going to makechange inside the organization? If you don't have the full budget? If you havepart of a budget, what would you recommend?

00:44:37 Jonathan Munk

That person do.

00:44:39Alida Miranda-Wolff

Yeah. So.

00:44:41Alida Miranda-Wolff

We're going through this with a lot of our clients. One ofthe things we're really fortunate in at ethos is we didn't lose any clientsdespite the shrinkage, yes, and a lot of our clients did some pretty majorlayoffs this year. They just shrunk what we do with them. And what I'll say isour number one offering now is essentially train the trainer.

00:45:02 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Where we're looking at who is responsible, who will holdthis day-to-day. And we're teaching them how to not only build strategies, butimplementation plans and execute on them. So it's that old adage you teachsomeone to fish. I think a really worthwhile investment is to look.

00:45:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

At realistically, who has to do this every day?

00:45:24 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Because it's gonna be someone UM. Hopefully it's more thanone person, but.

00:45:29 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Most likely in your organization it'll be a small group ofpeople or one person, and then making sure that they have the support that theyneed from training resources or advisory work. So one of our clients had amajor event take place in their organization and they went from a DIB team of.

00:45:49Alida Miranda-Wolff

7:00 to1:00.

00:45:52Alida Miranda-Wolff

We have consulting hours without one person. We meet withthem every other week and they've been able to really make headway ondisability inclusion on neurodiversity based accommodations and initiatives onrebooting their inclusive leadership program, but they have needed a soundingboard, and they've needed someone to chat.

00:46:13 Alida Miranda-Wolff

With and areas where they're not expert.

00:46:16 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Similarly, we have worked a lot with employee resourcegroups to make sure that they have folks who can be advisors to them outside oftheir organization who have knowledge and skills so that the things are alreadydoing can be done thoughtfully, intentionally and with confidence. If you havea limited budget, I would recommend that.

00:46:35 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Approach more than a single training initiative training.

00:46:40 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Is really valuable.

00:46:41 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When you are introducing something into an organization.

00:46:46 Alida Miranda-Wolff

UM and teaching people how to do something or when you'rereally evolving and already versed organization in a deeper area, but justdoing implicit bias training it doesn't work. We know it doesn't work. Thereare bazillion studies about it. If folks are interested.

00:47:02 Alida Miranda-Wolff

In it it's super vendor, OB at McMaster University, wrotethe most comprehensive analysis of why unconscious bias training doesn't workand instead what he proposes is the website model, which is.

00:47:14 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Make your leaders understand how to use their power responsibly,how to develop social confidence in their team members, and how to cultivate awhole healthy social environment that really creates space for multipleaccommodations and cultural awareness. And that's what leads to those outcomes.So I would say the shift from.

00:47:34Alida Miranda-Wolff

300 persontraining.

00:47:36Alida Miranda-Wolff

Two more targeted learning and coaching initiatives isprobably the best place to go. Similarly, something I would say is assessmentsare really useful. I will never turn on the equity audit. You have to know whatthe problem is to solve it. So without the research and data especially drivenby employees, it's not possible to do.

00:47:56 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But rather than commissioning again, firms like mine for$100,000 engagement have a firm like mine builds you your own assessment toolthat you can use every year.

00:48:07 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And then you pay for it once.

00:48:11 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And you can do it and maintain it, but ultimately the bestinvestment is going to be something that you can maintain over time. It's notabout what you create, what's new, new, new. It's about what's consistent. Andthen honestly, this is probably going to be somewhat controversial.

00:48:27 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Well, but.

00:48:28 Alida Miranda-Wolff

The one thing everybody should be doing is auditingcompensation regularly and ensuring that compensation is both internally equalbased on identity groups. So with that data segmented and aligned to thestandards of the place in which you're situated, so the market.

00:48:51 Jonathan Munk

Britt, I'm curious to get your your thoughts here on on someof the the night stand and reading habits as well what what are you readingright now and and we'll ask I'm sure you'll have questions on with the lead.

00:49:05 Jonathan Munk

On that too.

00:49:06 Britt Brewer

Oh boy. Well.

00:49:09 Britt Brewer

One thing that I want to hear from.

00:49:10 Britt Brewer

Alita is how she.

00:49:10 Britt Brewer

Gets through two to three books. I am my my nickname at workis Doctor Books and so both for work and for just.

00:49:20 Britt Brewer

Sure, I consume a lot of books. I'm currently reading the JEdgar Hoover biography, which is excellent and not short, but I highlyrecommend it. It is really good and definitely deserved all the awards andpraise that it got.

00:49:36 Britt Brewer

On everyone's night stand.

00:49:38 Britt Brewer

I'm I'm probably going to say that.

00:49:44 Britt Brewer

Anything from James Baldwin? I was very excited to hear you,James Baldwin quote. I know that's a very sort of like.

00:49:48 Britt Brewer

Eye roll. Instagram.

00:49:49 Britt Brewer

Answer, But he's probably my favorite author, so that wouldbe my night stand.

00:49:57 Britt Brewer

Probably Giovanni's room was probably my.

00:49:58 Britt Brewer

Favorite and then I would just love.

00:50:01 Britt Brewer

To hear Lida.

00:50:02 Britt Brewer

How you get through two to three books? Do you have any?Like, I don't. I don't. I'm very of the like. Let's not hack reading. I lovebooks. Books are the best. But you know, how do you make time for it? How doyou optimize your schedule so that like you, you can broker.

00:50:16 Britt Brewer

On my quality reading.

00:50:19 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Yeah, it was just typing in the chat.

00:50:21Alida Miranda-Wolff

Free JamesBaldwin. My copy of the price of the ticket. It's so dog eared that itjust that there's no point in dog wearing it. It's every page. So.

00:50:32 Britt Brewer

Oh, and I I my friends is is his very good friend who I knowis writing like the comprehensive James Baldwin biography. And he was givenrights to like the library and like a bunch of stuff that never been seen. Soit is coming, and it's supposed to be.

00:50:46 Britt Brewer

Amazing. So that's, that's all. See there.

00:50:49 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Yeah, Eddie has Glaud wrote a really interesting book aboutJames Baldwin that I would also recommend UM, for folks who are interested.It's called begin again and it's basically.

00:51:02 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Eddie's memoir told through the story of James Baldwin andhis life and ideas.

00:51:09 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And if folks don't want to read it, there's a through lineepisode about James Baldwin that is told through the lens of Eddie Glaude, andhe's the interview subject. So.

00:51:19 Britt Brewer

I love your line. I will definitely.

00:51:21 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Yeah, just want to put that out there. I don't want to hackreading either. I have started to say two to three books because it is myaccountability practice is is really the only way that I deal with my anxiety.So I was meditation teacher for a long time and I'm a certified mindfulness andmeditation instructor.

00:51:42 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And I would sit in meditation for 45 minutes to 90 minutesevery single day, every morning up until probably I became an.

00:51:52 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And then that practice didn't provide as much relief orclarity to me, and I couldn't disentangle during that process. And what I foundwas basically, I've always been a reader. I've always read a lot of books. Iwas the kid who won the Reading award every year for having read the mostbooks. But it's because.

00:52:12 Alida Miranda-Wolff

That is, when I truly power down.

00:52:15 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When it calmed down, and especially you know I had atraumatic birth experience, I was in recovery.

00:52:22 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I could nurse my son and I could read and write, and thatwas it. So I want to just be really careful about this is, you know, when youput a quantity to something, it makes it seem like you're trying to game thesystem or you're trying to accrue points. For me, it was more like a a boundaryof I should be reading at least two books a week because that's some.

00:52:43 Alida Miranda-Wolff

How much time I should be taking not working?

00:52:46 Alida Miranda-Wolff

We're doing something for somebody else. That's where thatmetric comes from. I've also had to get over some of my prejudices. I was avery anti audiobook person. I like to pick up a physical book. I like to go tomy library.

00:53:00 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I go to.

00:53:01 Alida Miranda-Wolff

You know, I'd go to my library twice a week and pick out thebooks I was going to read and return them.

00:53:08 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And since I had my son, I realized like audiobooks are thebest. I love them because I am spending so many hours doing laundry, cookingdinner, doing the dishes, changing diapers.

00:53:21 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Power washing the diaper bill, let's be honest. I'm doingall these things over and over again and I can't be sitting down reading evenwhen I could be sitting down reading. He wants me to be up and moving, even ifhe's independently playing. He wants to see that I am in motion audiobooks.

00:53:41 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Combined with physical books, that's been a big thing andI've recently made a switch which is almost all of my fiction fantasy, sci-fi.I'm listening to, and my nonfiction where I'm really trying to learn somethingand graph something is my physical.

00:53:56 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Book and that has been a really useful practice.

00:54:00 Alida Miranda-Wolff

For me, but the other thing I'll say is.

00:54:03 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I use the bear app to take notes. I have very specific notetaking system on books and it has made my life so so much easier. I wrote mysecond book in under six weeks because it was already written because everysingle time I read I write my individual notes on the page in my beer app I tagit.

00:54:23 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I have keywords for it and I do my Chicago style citationsfor it. I also include my own thoughts about.

00:54:30 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So I can literally pull chunks of my own writing for myreflections. Through that I can send some screenshots if folks are interestedhow I set it up. That's been a huge game changer for me and it makes me excitedto read because I realize that I'm working towards this longer term project offorming my own ideas, theories, etcetera.

00:54:49 Britt Brewer

I love. I love.

00:54:50 Britt Brewer

Yes, sorry, you go bunk.

00:54:54 Jonathan Munk

Yeah, it's it's a plus one to the. The journaling and thereflection side of of the learning experience. It's it's definitely been. I'venow got like 8. No, I'm on. I'm on year #10 of using a specific journaling andnote taking app and it's like, it's unbelievable to go back and reflect and.

00:55:15 Jonathan Munk

Not only like synthesize the things that I've learned, butactually sometimes I find myself going back and realizing, oh, I alreadylearned this lesson once and I'd forgotten that I'd learned this lesson once.

00:55:25 Jonathan Munk

And I got to relearn it, you know, refresh my refresh. Mykind of my, my experience again so love it. I have one we have about a fewminutes left, but I do have one, one kind of prescient question we that we thatwe ask everybody and that is.

00:55:41 Jonathan Munk

We see this really interesting trend.

00:55:45 Jonathan Munk

As we bring our product into the market and that is thisidea of the the leader reader or the literate leader, and we find a lot ofCEO's, a lot of sea level executives, tons of people that lead training andleadership programs inside of companies, including DI.

00:56:04 Jonathan Munk

They are voracious readers as well.

00:56:08 Jonathan Munk

And so my question is, why do you think that is? You are oneof them. Why do you think there is this connection between leadership andreading?

00:56:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

If it's OK with you, I didn't know you were gonna ask thisquestion, but I have a perfect quote to answer it. So if color with Holton allshe's a culture writer. He wrote a really, really fantastic book called WhiteGirl.

00:56:33 Alida Miranda-Wolff

But he's talk. He's talked about this in a, like, totallydifferent context. And so in an interview for the My ideal bookshelf book, hesaid when I started reading, I realized that books were connected to otherpeople and other people's writing, and that there was this whole world ofpeople who were connected in the vast river.

00:56:52 Alida Miranda-Wolff

It's what Gene Reese said. All that matters is feeding thelake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake. Ididn't know that there was this great body of water until I started reading.

00:57:04 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So the reason I think leaders are readers is becauseultimately what you're doing when you're reading is you're actually connectingwith more and more people and their ideas, their perspectives and and opinions.It's kind of like asynchronous community building, right? When I read AdrienneMarie Brown, when I read Eddie.

00:57:24 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When I read olufemi tylo.

00:57:26 Alida Miranda-Wolff

I am now in relationship to them to their ideas, to theirstories, to their histories. I can learn from it. I can use it. It can bring meinsight or make me mad, make me do something. But ultimately writing as atechnology is the ultimate form of communication across.

00:57:47 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Boundaries across geographies across.

00:57:50 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Full time horizons, right? I can learn from people who aredead 200 years ago.

00:57:56 Alida Miranda-Wolff

So I think that actually ties into belonging a lot of usdon't feel that we are part of a vast ocean until we start reading andunderstand that we are and we talk about how being a CEO being a leader isextremely lonely.

00:58:11 Alida Miranda-Wolff

When you don't have anyone else to talk to because you haveto keep that information to yourself because you don't want to worry the peoplearound you a book.

00:58:20 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Is who you get to talk to and makes you feel less alone.Offers you advice, allows you to be your worst self when you need to be, and isthere. It's a way of kind of pouring love into something that will always giveyou something back.

00:58:36 Jonathan Munk

That's a great answer, Alita, thank you so much.

00:58:38 Britt Brewer

I know this is bringing like some tears to my eyes. Likethis is beautiful.

00:58:44 Jonathan Munk

It's fantastic. Glenda, thanks so much. Alita, MirandaWolfe, author of first Time manager, is available for pre-order and comes outon May 8th, 2024. Please get yourself on the list. For those of you.

00:58:58 Jonathan Munk

Listening also that book and and her other books areavailable on bookclub.com if you'd like to bring Miranda's teaching andlearning arlita Miranda, right? Well, teaching and learning inside of yourorganization. Get with her. Get with us. If you book a demo with us, a bookclub.

00:59:19 Jonathan Munk

We will give to you that book as well. Thanks so much.Really excited to have you on Alita, great, great, great interview and goodluck to you as you continue to grow your business.

00:59:31 Alida Miranda-Wolff

And if Vanessa is still here, I would be happy to answeryour question over LinkedIn.

00:59:36 Alida Miranda-Wolff

Just so that you know.

00:59:39 Jonathan Munk

Wonderful. Thanks, alita. Thanks everyone. Have a great day.

00:59:42 Britt Brewer

Thanks everyone. Thanks so much. Bye.