Introducing Pamela Fuller

- [Narrator] This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - [Presenter] We have with us today, Pamela Fuller with Franklin Covey. Pamela's work has always been tied to issues of inclusion with an emphasis on exploring the impacts of bias and pushing just a bit to make progress. For more than 15 years, Pamela has worked in both the public and private sector supporting clients and solving complex problems. She currently serves as Franklin Covey's thought leader, inclusion and bias, as well as a global client partner responsible for supporting some of the organization's most strategic accounts. Her solutions oriented and client centric approach has resulted in unique solutions that exceed client expectations and achieve results. Pamela works with clients to match the right solution to organizational strategic priorities and is particularly adept at designing tailored competency based programs to solve her clients' most pressing needs. Through this work, Pamela has designed programs that have made an impact on hundreds of thousands. Yo, hundreds of thousands of participants to include Franklin Covey newest offering, "Unconscious Bias, Understanding Bias to Unleash Potential." Prior to recurrent role, Pamela served as an EEO and diversity analyst and trainer where she conceived and implemented proactive diversity programs to include human capital planning, training on unconscious bias and microaggressions and statistical workforce analysis. She also served the nonprofit community for nearly a decade, executing marketing, communications, special events and fundraising strategies. She is highly sought after consultant. I mean, come on. After everything I read, clearly she's a highly sought after consultant, speaker and strategist having addressed leaders across the world on leadership topics to include unconscious bias, high potential leadership and building an inclusive and effective culture to include the United Nation systems, US Federal Government and the Fortune 500. My goodness. I mean, come on, You all. Like, if that doesn't get you off your seats, that don't get you paying attention to something. I mean, oh goodness, Pamela, welcome to the show. How are you doing? - [Instructor] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I am good. I don't know that you ever get used to hearing your bio read. I think there's a humility that we're all raised up with that makes that feel so strange. So anyway, I'm just thrilled to be here and engage in this conversation. - [Presenter] Man, you know, let's just get right into to it, right? Like a critical part of any conversation is language and clear definitions. I think like, you know, the DNI space is, its been existing for a while, but I feel like we're seeing a shift in the past handful of years where I don't know, like just the intention around the work is just that, more intentional. And so before we even get into this whole conversation, like can we get your definition of inclusion and bias? - [Instructor] Absolutely. I think inclusion, as I think about inclusion, I think we know we're being successful with inclusion when it is a metric of performance. If everyone in the organization feels included, valued, respected, then they are able to perform at their best. And I think that's really important, that connection to performance because quite often people talk about diversity and inclusion around sort of a moral responsibility, - [Reporter] Right? - [Instructor] Or it being the right thing to do. And while I firmly believe all those things, I think that a conversation about the right thing to do is not as compelling in an organization as the impact on performance. So yes, it's the right thing to do for lots of reasons. Ultimately as a business or an organization, the reason it's most important is to ensure that we are positioning everyone to perform, to meet whatever our goals or results are for the organization. And people can't do that if they feel inhibited or encumbered or disrespected or ignored or tolerated, right? So inclusion is a sense that everyone feels they can contribute their best self and that they desire to do so, because if I'm not included, I don't even want to give you my best ideas, right? And I think bias, as we talk about bias, we define bias at Franklin Covey and in our new offering around, we define it as a preference. A preference that we might have about a person or place or thing, a circumstance. And the word preference, I think is really important to the definition because when we think of bias, we often think of it being inherently negative. We think bias is a prejudice or a stereotype and if it's inherently negative, we get a little bit defensive about it. So people bring up bias and a lot of people in organizations, particularly people who don't feel like they've been on the receiving end of bias might get really defensive. You know, I don't have bias or I don't have prejudice. I don't have stereotypes, I sort of treat everyone fairly. But if we define it as a preference, we speak to what bias really is. It's a natural part of the human condition of how the brain works. And we have preferences that on their face don't have value, but they impact our behavior. And that behavior has a result that can be negative or positive so bias is preference as we have about... Whether your desk is messy or gender or race, you know, bigger, heavier issues or the sorts of qualifications people have or where they went to school. Where they're from in the country, all kinds of things. And that impacts how we interact with other people, how we handle circumstances, how we make decisions and those decisions or that impact again goes back to performance. So I think that these terms are really valuable when we can tie them to performance because that's the result of inclusion and bias.