Connecting inclusion to performance

- [Interviewer] You've talked about performance quite a bit, in terms of, you've said the term and you've talked about tying it back. Can you give us like a practical example of what it means to tie inclusion to performance? - [Pamela] The easiest thing for people to relate to is an individual examples to say, if I feel encumbered in any way, if I feel, so, I worked for a, I'll give you an example personally. So, I worked for a woman for a long time who, on its face, identity wise, we were very similar and she sort of self-identified herself as my mentor. And I worked with her and I would complete projects for her in briefings. In the federal space briefings are a big deal so you sort of work on them. They're very detailed and consulting as well. Like you prep a deck for a presentation and the details are important. - [Interviewer] Right. - [Pamela] And it gets reviewed by all the important people, and then someone delivers it. And so, at the time I was much more junior and I wouldn't be the person who delivered it but we'd be in these meetings and because I'm the one who prepared it, the person who prepared it knows all the details, they know why the period is in that specific place. - [Interviewer] Right, right. - [Pamela] And so I'd be, there would be questions and she clearly wouldn't know the answer to those questions. She sort of look at me and I would answer the question and then sometimes, I would like throw in my two cents about it because that is my way and she would say. And whenever I had like, I never sort of got too big in my boots or like had too much of a thought about it, she would stop me in front of everyone and she would say, Pamela, as your mentor I think that's a private conversation we need to have and need to give you some guidance on that. - [Interviewer] Wow. - Let's not, that kind of thing. And so, I think that. - [Interviewer] So, hold on. Hold on before you just fly past that. (laughing) If me has someone said that to me, I look at them like, like what you can't. So, what did you say? What did you do? - So, power was at play, right? Like I was in that, at that time in that role I was a contractor wasn't even like a full-time employee. I was a kind of an onsite contractor for this work. And so, in front of all these senior leaders and at the behest of my boss, I didn't really feel like I had an option. I mean, I needed my job. So, I would sort of shut up and just, oh, sorry about that. Look forward to talking with you about it privately. Right? - [Interviewer] Yeah. - [Pamela] And just try to move through and control my facial expressions. But when we think about performance, that's very limiting. And so, that only had to happen, I'm a quick learner. Like that only happened a handful of times before I understood that I didn't really need to be giving anyone my best ideas. And I frankly didn't need to be putting my best ideas into these briefings. Like if she was going to do them and she didn't need my thoughts. I think it's the same as, you often hearing diversity in terms of inclusion, best practices about amplification which came out of the Obama White House, the senior policy women realized that they were being skipped over. I mean, that is a direct connection to performance. You've got this idea or you have a, you're all trying to solve a problem. You have a suggestion and it's ignored. I mean, how many times do you keep doing that before you just decide, like, you know what, I'm not going to do it. Like it's not worth it. - Listen. - Right. It's not worth it. - It takes, I think. And it's funny because the older I've gotten the shorter my fuses with that stuff. Like if I take the time and I really put together things because at a certain point, you live life long enough. You don't really need validation on every single thing. So, you know, if you put a good idea forward and people just glaze over it or they ignore you or they co-opted in some way, it's like, ah, okay. All right. I'll keep those to myself from now on. - [Pamela] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I think these sorts of slights are limiting to performance. And I think if we were to look at like team dynamics, the boss who minimizes certain people while elevating other people that inhibits performance and you rely on, I mean, management is the highest calling in a manager's role, you have infinite impact because you're impacting the performance of your entire team. And you're very much a connector, when you think of sort of middle management. You're a connector between the frontline and then the operational or strategic perspective in the organization. And so, you look at a manager who's doing that over the course of their 20 year role career as a manager, managing people. And what sort of impact does that have on performance of that team over the long-term and how that team interacts with other teams and how we solve problems. So I think, and I think in, you look at retail and of course, like the common example is the Starbucks incident, a couple of years ago or Sephora last year. I mean, - [Interviewer] Yep. - if that's not inhibiting performance I don't know what is. The performance in retail is whether you have consumers who are buying. - [Interviewer] Right. Right. - [Pamela] And so, if you've got whole groups of the population who you shown through this mishap and through this behavior that they're not welcome in your space, or you're not interested in them consuming. I mean, that has a serious impact on performance.