725: Leading with Humility: Three Shifts that Empower Others, with Joel Pérez

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
We could all get better at bringing a dose of humility into our work. Inside of an organization, cultural humility starts with how leaders show up each day. In this episode, three shifts that will help us better empower others. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 725. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:39]:
And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. And one of the conversations that we are often having is how do we help people feel valued? How do we create the kind of environment or organizations where people can show up, be themselves, feel safe. I am so pleased today to welcome an expert who will help us to look at some of the practical things we can do with that and thinking about it through the lens of power and how power imbalances can sometimes keep us from where we need to go, and more importantly, how can we reframe them to do just a bit better? I’m so pleased to welcome Joel Pérez. He is an executive and leadership coach, speaker, and consultant who is passionate about helping leaders and organizations achieve their goals and develop a posture of cultural humility. He has over twenty years of experience in higher education serving in various key leadership roles, and he is the author of Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility. Joel, such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Joel Pérez [00:01:47]:
Yeah. Great to be here, Dave. Thank you for making the time, and looking forward to this conversation about building inclusive organizations that have a deep sense of belonging. So I appreciate the invitation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:58]:
And I appreciate the work you’re doing. You and I have talked several times over the last year or two since we met, I guess, two or three years ago. And I wanna start actually by asking about the title of the book because you intentionally picked a bit of a provocative title of the book. Right? Dear White Leader. Tell me about that title, and what was your thinking behind it? And how does that play out when people hear the title?

Joel Pérez [00:02:21]:
Yeah. No. I appreciate the question. So the title itself was formulated actually. It was after the murder of George Floyd, and I was feeling pretty raw as a lot of people were. And I wrote a blog post called Dear White Leader because I wanted my white colleagues, those who identified as white, to get into the process of advocating for change that I felt was necessary in organizations across sectors. And so it was a bit of a callout. And so I wrote the post.

Joel Pérez [00:02:52]:
It had an impact on people, and that title stuck with me. So when I started writing a book and working with my book coach around titling and such, I realized like very many people do when they write a book is that you need to have an audience, right? You need to have a target audience. So my target audience is white leaders that want to get better at leading inclusive organizations or teams but don’t know where to start or are feeling stuck. Yet every concept in the book is relatable to every leader. And so when I do the workshops or coach with people, we talk about that. And when I’m working with leaders from minoritized communities, they have read the book and they say, Joel, I, you know, I picked up the book, not sure where you were gonna go, but I actually really enjoyed that everything you had in there was relatable to me as a leader even though I didn’t identify as a white leader. And as white people have been reading the book, that’s also come across in that the way I integrate my journey and my story in the book, people feel like I’m journeying with them and not telling them what to do. And so, yes, it’s a provocative title.

Joel Pérez [00:03:56]:
It’s meant to get people to pick it up or open to the table of contents, but that’s where the title came from, and it’s being received really well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:04]:
I didn’t share this with you, Joel, before, but the word that is coming up so much in reading the book is power. And so much of the dynamics that we’re trying to shift many of us in organizations ultimately comes down to power. And the reality, of course, your audience thinking about white leaders, like, white leaders by and large still have power in many industries and many places more substantially than any other demographic. And so thinking about this through the lens of power is a helpful way to begin. And you frame it in inviting us to think a little differently about this on something you call the characteristics of estrangement. Tell me what you mean by that.

Joel Pérez [00:04:51]:
Yeah. So as I was writing the book and and talking about a sense of belonging, I really wanted to highlight that there’s an opposite of belonging. And so as I was writing and and that writing process, I’m like, what is the opposite of belonging? And what came to me is feelings of estrangement. We feel like we don’t belong or we feel isolated or we feel insulted or wronged, things that generally will lead people to leave an organization or a community because they feel a certain way, that’s the opposite of belonging. And so I wanted to highlight what those feelings are so people could connect. Yes. I understand what belonging is, and and that’s something the organization should aspire to. But the organization needs to also realize what are the things that keep us from creating that sense of belonging and that’s where the feelings of the stranger came in.

Joel Pérez [00:05:45]:
And that’s why I wrote about them because I think it’s important for organizations to think about their culture, the culture they’ve created, and how these feelings may get in the way of retaining your talent, helping your leaders be successful, meeting the needs of your, you know, if you have your clients, your customers. If you actively create these feelings of estrangement, you’re not gonna be very successful. And maybe you will have some immediate success because you’ve done some things, but ultimately, that success isn’t gonna be sustained because you’ve created this environment where people feel like they don’t belong. And so that’s where the feelings of estrangement came from. And so there are a few which are perfectionism, sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, paternalism, either or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, progress is bigger, objectivity and right to comfort. And there’s a lot there to unpack, but I think it’s important. Some organizations may not fit all of them or have all of them present, but you may have some. And then once you recognize what those are and you realize that you want to do something about that is then thinking about how do we reframe that or how do we something about that is then thinking about how do we reframe that or how do we rethink those things so we don’t do those things, and we create that sense of belonging that we wanna create.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:13]:
I’m reminded of the lesson from the difficult conversations book of what, twenty, thirty years ago of, intent does not equal impact. Right? Like, a lot of these characteristics, and we’re gonna look at a couple of them here in detail, is often started with some good intention. You know, someone, either culturally or a practice that got put in, but the impact has been very much, different than the intention behind it.

Joel Pérez [00:07:40]:
Mhmm.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:41]:
I think by and large, like, a lot of us in our listening community, like, try to intend well or trying to do the right thing, and yet sometimes we don’t notice the thing that’s right in front of us culturally in our organizations that’s getting in the way from a power dynamic. And so let’s look at a couple of these. And one of the the very first thing that you highlight on your list as a characteristic is perfectionism. Tell me about what is it that shows up with perfectionism that becomes a challenging dynamic that can lead to estrangement?

Joel Pérez [00:08:13]:
Yeah. So in my own experience, I worked for people who expected me to be perfect. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing per se because we aspirationally want people to do good work. But when you put such a focus on people doing exactly the right thing, what happens is if someone makes a mistake, either they send an email out to the wrong person or had a typo or just even the smallest thing to to bigger things, right? It could be a mass email that went out and it was really not very good information. It didn’t go across really well. And then your supervisor calls you in and berates you or makes you feel really small. Well, the likelihood of you taking a risk moving forward is not gonna be very high because you’re afraid of making that mistake because the person, the supervisor, the leader wants everyone to be perfect. The reality is we are not perfect.

Joel Pérez [00:09:10]:
Right? So if we’re gonna create an innovative organization and Pixar talks a lot about this, right? Really trying to create an organization where people feel like they can contribute from all parts of the organization. Well, if you’re going to do that and be successful at it, you gotta allow people to try things and make mistakes. It’s what you do when those mistakes happen as a leader that’s gonna lead to being helpful to people. So instead of having this high expectation that everyone’s gonna be perfect, if you really want them to try some things, a reframe would be, and I talk about this in the book, is instead of focusing on the mistake and making the team member feel bad about what happened, create the space for reflection and make that experience an opportunity for growth. And that’s where having a growth mindset is an important aspect, not only for yourself as a leader, but helping your team members, helping the people you work with, the people you lead have the similar type of mindset so they’re going to learn from their mistakes. It doesn’t mean people aren’t going to make mistakes and have to be held accountable, but you still can create a space for people to learn from those mistakes. So an important thing is to reframe that and work towards like, yeah, I want people to do good work, but what’s the cost of that if I’m not willing to let people make mistakes or allow them to try new things that may be really helpful for us as an organization because they’re fearful of making that mistake because of the way I treated them when they made a mistake the last time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:38]:
I’m sure one of the things you notice, and I know I do too, is someone who is falling into this trap as a leader or maybe culturally in the organization thinks about what they’re doing as I’m setting really high standards and I’m holding people accountable for it, which to your point is good. Yes. Of course. We all should have that. Right? Sometimes, like, we think we’re doing that, and we don’t see the perfectionism that’s creeping into some of that. And I’m curious, like, how do you help people to parse those two? Where is it I have high standards and I’m holding people accountable where it’s bleeding into something that becomes actually destructive, estranging, where people are feeling that they don’t belong?

Joel Pérez [00:11:21]:
Yeah. That’s a good question, because you’re right. I mean, I’m not telling people don’t shouldn’t have high expectations. I think you should. I think it’s creating an environment in your organization or in your unit where you let people know that, yes, you have high standards. Right? You you want people to do good work, but you also want people to be creative. So if they make mistakes or take risks, what the ground rules will be when the mistake is made so that people understand that they’re able to they may make mistakes, but that you, Dave, or you, Joel, are gonna be okay with that in the sense of, like, let’s take that let’s take this as an opportunity for you to grow, to be better at the work that you’re doing and not immediately write them off as bad employees. So really going back to what you asked in creating that sense of belonging is naming some things upfront, being totally transparent in the way you lead, and leading with clarity is how I talk about it when I coach leaders is what are you doing to lead with clarity? And you start by having these conversations upfront when you’re onboarding people.

Joel Pérez [00:12:31]:
So that way when it happens, they know I made a mistake. I gotta go tell Dave or Joel right upfront instead of trying to hide it. And then when people start trying to hide their mistakes, that’s when it becomes toxic and destructive to the organization because then we find things out after the fact or we get blindsided, and then that’s what raises the intensity or the anger in us. Like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe Joel messed that up. Well, if Joel felt like he could come to just acknowledge it and knew what my response was gonna be, he was probably gonna he could probably feel more comfortable coming to me instead of waiting until I discovered it myself when I’m angry.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:12]:
You know, one of the nudges I love that you just said there is having the conversation about how as a leader manager, insert title here, do I handle mistakes when they come up? And having that as part of the onboarding, the delegation when you’re first, like, passing along work to someone, having that conversation upfront so that, a, when it happens, you’re more likely to get that positive response, someone to do that positive reflection and create the space for it. But b, for yourself as a leader, you’re a lot more likely to be able to set aside the emotion of the moment. Because so often, we only talk about mistakes right after it happened, and we don’t talk about the how we talk about mistakes in any other context, do we?

Joel Pérez [00:13:57]:
No. We don’t. We’re afraid to, or we’ve been conditioned in the way we were raised, in early jobs we had that we don’t want to acknowledge we’ve made mistakes because there’s this built in or baked in expectation in the organization that everyone has to be perfect. And that’s where it can get really bad is when you don’t allow people for them to feel like they can not be perfect. Right? That ends up creating that environment where people isolate themselves, they’re fearful. And maybe as a leader, you start managing with fear because you put the fear of God in everyone, right? Or to the point where they’re not willing to raise an issue or willing to acknowledge that they have work to do because they’re afraid of what’s gonna come down on them. And that’s where you get into the toxic work environment where people just aren’t happy, and so they decide to leave. And so then you have a retention problem.

Joel Pérez [00:14:51]:
You’re not retaining your talent at the level you know you need to in order to be the organization you wanna be.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:57]:
And as we know, when those kinds of dynamics show up in the organization, the folks who are in underrepresented demographics, those are the folks that feel most estranged. Those are the people who lead first. All of a sudden, there’s died. I mean, this all fits together, and yet I’m coming back to also what you said early on is, like, yes. Of course, there’s implications here for inclusion and belonging, and this is also good for everyone. Like, getting better at this practice is good for the entire culture of the organization.

Joel Pérez [00:15:25]:
That’s right. It it is, yes, the the minoritized communities may feel isolated to strangers. They leave, and that’s an aspect. But if you’re gonna be an excellent leader, I think this posture of culture humility is gonna help you no matter who you’re leading, or whatever demographic groups they’re a part of because ultimately you wanna create an organization that is gonna thrive, and these are aspects that you need to address in order for that thriving to happen.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:54]:
One of the other characteristics you highlight is a sense of urgency, and that can be an estrangement characteristic. And this is one of those that I would say almost maybe not universally, but 90 to 95% of the time when the phrase sense of urgency comes up in the context of an organization or culture, it is framed as a good thing, a positive. Like, we want an organization where people have a sense of urgency, where they’re moving quickly, where they’re making decisions. When does it go bad?

Joel Pérez [00:16:24]:
Yeah. Well, when it can go bad, I I give a couple of examples in the book. One is the Barnes and Noble decision to, highlight certain authors during Black History Month where they, in turn, by doing that, colored in the author’s faces so it looked like they had blackface. And that went awry, which then caused a a social media storm against them. Right? And so they had to backtrack. My guess is someone had to make a decision. It’s my my guess is I don’t know how they make decisions at Barnes and Noble. But what if you would have had people around the table talking about this and how we’re gonna market this, showing, you know, the artwork and all that.

Joel Pérez [00:17:06]:
And for and even though you may be coming up on a timeline for you to take the the time to just say, who’s missing from this conversation? Who do we need to include that may have been helpful? It’s not a foolproof method, but at least including as many people that may be impacted by what you’re trying to do as an organization so that you make better decisions so the likelihood of of having a making a mistake like that decreases as opposed to increases when you have just one or two people making the decision. So I always like to go back to what Scott Shigaoka said, which he’s been on a guest on your show, is that who else? So who’s missing from this conversation? Who do we need to bring in is gonna be really important? It’s not to say that you shouldn’t have a sense of urgency because there’s times where you do need to make quick decisions. But if you baked it into the system where really having these meaningful conversations, particularly around who needs to be included and including those people that ultimately people are just gonna know that they need to make sure they’re asking the question, who are we missing that we need to include instead of after the thought is, oh, we should include a Joel or we should have read it by this person after it happened, and instead really working towards making sure you do that before you make that mistake.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:26]:
You write on this. A sense of urgency may have ramifications when diverse perspectives are not sought due to the pressure to make a fast decision. And the the nudge here is give time for conversations to happen. Right?

Joel Pérez [00:18:43]:
Yeah. That’s right. I was doing, some training with the with with the leadership group, and the president of the organization was in the meeting. And when we’re done, he said, Joel, this is this is really good. He’s like, what it also made me realize is that as the leader, I have the ability to create this space, and I need to model it for my team in order for it to happen because I can’t just assume it’s gonna happen. So I need to start modeling it so it demonstrates that this is a value so that VPs, direct reports understand that they too need to do it. But you got to model it as a leader and then you got to start thinking, okay, if we’re going to if we’re truly going to create an inclusive organization and this can be problematic, How do we create the structure to facilitate the ability for people that we need to include in decision being asked to be included? But yes, going back to your point, being able to have good conversation is going to be really important and that means really thinking through how to create that structure even though the organization may not have been created with that type of structure. So that change starts happening within the organization so that more people are included in decision making.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:57]:
I’ve always appreciated the, quote, and I can’t remember who originally said it. “The greatest enemy to communication is the illusion of it.” And I think so many of these estrangement characteristics come down to this as well too. It’s like we sometimes look at these things and we say, oh, well, that’s not our organization. We’re creating time for conversations to happen. When you run into folks who, like, again, very well intended to have that thinking, like, okay. We’re doing pretty well on this. What would be the indicator that someone might look for as they think about their team, their organization that maybe sometimes we’re not providing as much time or space for conversations to happen?

Joel Pérez [00:20:36]:
Yeah. So I do this exercise where I’ll have the feelings of estrangement. I have leaders rank the organization on each of these from a scale of one to five, and then total up the score and then kind of do an overall score. And then I ask them- or I work with them on, are there people in your organization that you just need to have a conversation around these feelings to determine if they truly exist within the organization? So I do get a little bit of data. It’s not scientific data. It’s more more anecdotal. But if it’s if there’s enough people kind of there there’s enough people stating that, no. This particular issue around sense of urgency is really, really problematic, then we need to take it to someone and have a conversation.

Joel Pérez [00:21:19]:
So it’s gonna take some self reflection and then organizational assessment and then, of course, recognizing how do we if there’s a gap, how do we close that gap so we truly are working towards, being an organization with a deep sense of belonging? So it does require some self evaluation, self reflection on the organization, and then to create the feedback to those that need to hear it for there to be some, you know, let’s let’s take a deeper dive in this. Because if you don’t do that, then the likelihood of change actually happen is not gonna be very, very, very high, and you’re gonna need to take steps to help raise the awareness that needs to happen.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:00]:
I wanna also highlight the characteristic of defensiveness because, boy, it is so human that we we all tend to just I well, I shouldn’t say all. I’ll certainly put myself in this category too, though, is that we tend to our first reaction, many of us, view criticism as threatening. It’s just a natural response. Defensiveness is one of those things that just gets in our way of being effective. Where do you see this show up when we’re thinking about how to be better with belonging?

Joel Pérez [00:22:33]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess I would share my own story in that I shared this early on in the book, particularly as a as employee came to me to give me some feedback that wasn’t very kind to me in the way, you know, what she was pointing out to me. She did it in a very kind way. But my reaction could have been to get defensive and say, No, that’s just not the way it is. You misinterpreted that. You just need to stop doing that. Right? I would have I could have gotten defensive, but I didn’t. I chose to say, Okay, let’s talk about it because I really need you to point this out to me.

Joel Pérez [00:23:04]:
Right? And that’s that posture of culture humility. And so as leaders, we can’t have because like what you said, we have a tendency naturally to get defensive. Well, that can be problematic when we miss some things that we need to work on and that the organization needs to work on, and that’s where it becomes problematic and needs to be addressed. So, again, be becoming self aware, but then also leading with clarity and also providing the space, the psychological safety, the sense of belonging that your team members know they can give you feedback and that you’re going to be open and receptive. And maybe it’s a conversation, right? Like a conversation using curiosity, share with me more about what you observed and maybe there’s some misinterpretations that that person could have had, but you’re having a conversation as opposed to you, which some leaders do, just wanna shut that person down and just move on to the next thing. Because if people feel like they get shut down, anytime they bring something up, it goes back to that those feelings of estrangement and feeling like I can’t continue on in this organization because I’m not able to share my opinion when it when it challenges the leaders that maybe need to be challenged at times.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:23]:
Yeah. And I think there’s like a middle zone to this too of sometimes we think about a word like defensiveness and we think, oh, I’m not that kind of a leader. Like, I know the people. I’ve seen the people who, like, shut someone down when they get any kind of feedback, and I’m not that kind of a person. And I’m thinking about myself here, Joel. And I’ve I’ve done this myself, and I’ve seen other people do it too, which is someone comes to us with criticism, and we do exactly what you just described, which is we sit back, we listen, we ask some curious questions, we do a good job at starting. And then once they’ve said what they need to say, then we explain thoughtfully, kindly, and logically why we did what we did. And in some ways, it’s just as bad as the person who immediately shuts someone down.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:24]:
At least they were honest about not wanting to hear what was said. Right? Whereas I think sometimes we think, oh, because I listened, I asked questions, and then I did a little bit of explaining afterwards. I’ve caught myself doing that many times more than I care to admit. For people who are like me, who have, like, kinda gotten halfway there, but ultimately haven’t really gotten there, what’s better? Like, in a situation like that, how do we nudge forward a bit better so we’re not creating as much defensiveness?

Joel Pérez [00:25:50]:
Yeah. What I would say to you, Dave, is if I was coaching you or working with you, I would say, okay, you you you took the feedback, you acknowledged it, they shared examples, you thanked them for it. Now the question becomes, what do you do with that information? So the next step would be, okay, they share with some things that I I’m not sure that I I see myself doing that, but maybe I do. So are there people that I have around me who can give me some feedback so that I can just check myself with some people? And it could very well be like, Dave, they may have misinterpreted you. No, that’s not you. Or it could be, Actually, Dave, you do kind of do that. And then you go, Oh, okay. So if that’s the case, I’ve now heard it from several people, then now I need to act on it and go, how do I change the behavior so that I create that sense of belonging I wanna create and help my team feel like they can give me feedback and that I will respond to that feedback and make changes where changes need to be made.

Joel Pérez [00:26:57]:
Right? So the next step is is taking the feedback and then reflecting on what that feedback is and then really thinking through the examples they provided and asking some people just to confirm and or say, no, that’s not you, but they could say, no, that really is you. And then go, okay, growth mindset. I’m gonna do something with that information so that I can become a better leader because I want to get better.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:23]:
I, as you were saying that, I was thinking, like, how often so many of us I’ve fallen this trap too. Think we have to resolve everything in one conversation. And if I, like, take the extension of what you just said, Joel, which I love of, like, when that criticism comes, whenever it does, and most of the time, we don’t know when it’s gonna come, is we hear someone say something, we’re curious, we ask a few questions to clarify, and thenwhat I’m hearing is, okay, then stop. Shut up. Don’t say anything else. Thank you for the feedback. Let me reflect on it and think about it, and then go do what you said of, like, let me go think about this a bit. Let me actually if this is surprising information, I think is, like, the key thing I’m hearing.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:06]:
Let me go talk to a few other people in my life. Get a little bit of feedback and do some reflection on it. And then maybe come back and have a second conversation or a third or a yes. Like, I do see this. Here’s some things I might shift and change. And just to get out of this mindset that we have to resolve everything right away or explain ourselves that it’s just such a better way to approach this.

Joel Pérez [00:28:25]:
Yeah. No. You’re right. I think our natural inclination is to is to wanna apologize right away and then talk about we get defensive, which then it makes it about you and not the other person. That can create some challenges. The next step is for you to get to a point where you’re able to receive the feedback and then let the person know I’ve received it. I need some time to reflect on it and not respond.

Joel Pérez [00:28:48]:
But a lot of times, we wanna respond right away, and that’s where we get ourselves into trouble. That’s where things we we say things back that are offensive or we invalidate what the person brought to us, and ultimately, that does damage to that other person, which makes them feel like I can’t bring anything up. And so I’m just gonna choose not to bring anything up, and then it then it becomes toxic and then leads to those feelings of estrangement even more so.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:15]:
A big picture thing I wanna ask you about too is there’s so much happening right now just in the last year or two about how our society, culture, politics, the news are thinking about and framing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And it’s become a bit of a politically explosive thing in especially in recent months. And you talk with leaders about this all the time who care a lot about doing well, doing right by people, creating the right kind of organization. When you talk with people, Joel, how are you inviting people to think about this time and the polarizing conversations with a bit of cultural humility?

Joel Pérez [00:29:52]:
Yeah. It’s it’s a good question. So the way I frame it for people is you know, if you wanna lead exceptionally, you wanna create an organization where everyone’s gonna feel like they belong. That requires you to think about how do you create that inclusive organization with a sense of belonging and the psychological safety that’s gonna be necessary for all your folks to thrive, whether it’s people who identify as women, part of the LGBTQ community, the black community, members that grew up in a lower socioeconomic status. And, ultimately, it’s about the goal, like, of what you wanna create so your organization thrives, which leads to being successful as an organization. So that’s the way I talk about it. In the political polarization aspect, I talk about how to have a posture of cultural humility where you’re seeking to understand versus seeking to convince, where you’re engaging in a meaningful conversation that you approach with curiosity because you really want to know where that other person is coming from, even though at at the end of the conversation, you may not get- the goal is not to convince them that you’re right and they’re wrong. It’s to truly get to a point where you have a fuller understanding so you walk away with that understanding.

Joel Pérez [00:31:13]:
And I think that would lead to much more meaningful conversations because we’re we we then humanize the other person. Right? We see the dignity and value in that other person. Mhmm. And it’s not about putting them in a box. It’s about, no, I truly wanna understand. It’s not about labels. It’s about, hey, I really wanna know like why you think the way you do and approach it with curiosity and not with this, I’m going to shut you down because I think you’re wrong and I’m right. Having this posture and cultural humility is going to help you engage in those conversations.

Joel Pérez [00:31:49]:
And that’s why I talk about, it starts with you, moves your organization, then your community, because you’re gonna be able to approach the conversations you have with people around you in your community in the similar fashion that’s gonna lead to more understanding that is super important in developing this posture of cultural humility.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:08]:
So often, we get captivated, good or bad, by what’s happening in the news, politics, all those things, and we miss the opportunity right in front of us with Mhmm. Our team, with our colleagues, with our peers that day that, like, you know, we can’t affect the larger world, but, boy, we can sure affect the relationships with the people we support each day.

Joel Pérez [00:32:26]:
That’s right.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:26]:
Joel, I so appreciate all the invitations, the nudges you’ve I mean, so much more in the book we’re not hitting on. There’s a whole bunch of other estrangement characteristics. I think it’d be really helpful for all of us to investigate more, so I hope people will dive in on this. You have been listening to the show for a bit as well. Thank you so much for listening. I’m really, I really appreciate you making this a part of your own professional development. And so you know I ask people what they change their minds on. And I’m curious from you as you have been working with people over all these years, but especially putting together this book, talking with people about it, talking with folks about the models.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:59]:
What, if anything, have you changed your mind on in the recent past?

Joel Pérez [00:33:04]:
I would say what I’ve changed my mind recently is that I thought as I was writing the book that I I had even though, you know, I share a lot of my journey, my story, that I had a particular way of doing things right, that this is the way it’s gonna work. And what I’ve had to change my mind on is that I I still have work to do, and I need to continually create space and become more aware of what’s happening around me, particularly when it comes to my family. And we have four kids. They’re all very different. And I’ve had to change my mind on how I approach conversations around topics that can be volatile and polarizing with my kids. And I have to not shut them down, but I have to be open to the conversation even though I may say, well, they’re 13. What do they know? No. They know a lot, and I have to be open and approach that conversation with the posture of cultural humility the same way I approach it with a colleague or someone I supervise or lead.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:08]:
Joel Pérez is the author of Dear White Leader: How to Achieve Organizational Excellence through Cultural Humility. Joel, thank you so much for your work and your time. I so appreciate it.

Joel Pérez [00:34:18]:
Thank you for having me, Dave.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:26]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode five eighty four, the starting point for inclusive leadership. Susan MacKenty Brady was my guest on that episode, and we talked about some of the key principles for bringing inclusivity into the workplace. And one of the invitations that she made for us is to be a bit more of an upstander. Often, we, are aligned, but we’re not necessarily taking action to support inclusivity. A lot of invitations on how to do that better on episode five eighty four. Also recommended episode five fifty one, how to use power responsibly. Vanessa Bohns was my guest on that episode.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:07]:
Extraordinary research she’s done of thinking about how we often think about power and how we perceive other people thinking about power for us. And oftentimes, we don’t recognize the power that we have in many of our relationships and especially in our positions of leadership and our relationships and especially in our positions of leadership.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:21]:
And a wonderful reminder from her to recognize that, but also the implications of that in how we lead episode five fifty one, an important compliment to this conversation. And then finally, I’d recommend episode five sixty five, how to discover what people want. Tiziana Casciaro was my guest on that episode, and we talked about how to really discover truly what people want inside of the organization for their own careers. And one of the things we talked about in that conversation is what are the kinds of things that people really do latch onto for their self worth and what’s important to people. And there’s six that we talked about in that conversation. And, unsurprisingly, one of them is material resources, but the other five aren’t. And it’s important for all of us in our leadership roles to be thinking about the full picture of what motivates people, what helps us to find self worth, episode five sixty five, a great starting point for that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:20]:
All of those episodes, of course, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And I’m inviting you today to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com because it’s gonna give you access to the entire library of episodes I’ve been airing weekly since 2011. You can track down exactly what you’re looking for, everything searchable by topic. And one of the other key benefits of the free membership are my book and interview notes. I went through Joel’s book in detail, read the whole book, took highlights of most of the things that I thought were really important to bring into this conversation. And like most of the conversations here on the podcast, there isn’t enough time to go through everything. And that’s why I always take notes and share my interview and highlight notes with you after most episodes, including this one with Joel. And it’s inside of the free membership.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:08]:
You can click on interview and book notes. You can see the full list of all of the books and interviews and my PDF notes, that you can download and utilize for your own learning. And they’re also linked in every episode. Access to that all part of the free membership. If you go over to coachingforleaders.com, you can set up that free membership and you’ll be off and running with that. And, you know, just this last week or so, one of our members asked me and a group of us who were in a session together. How do I handle a situation when I really wanna give people raises, but there isn’t the budget for it in our organization, at least not in this season of, budget pressures. What do I actually do? And I think many of us have been in those situations.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:52]:
Maybe it’s a raise or maybe it was other resources we wanted to provide or starting a new program, and we were excited about it. Our team was excited about it, but the budget realities in the organization weren’t going to support it right now. How do you handle a situation like that? How do you move forward? What do you say? What kind of research should you be doing and thinking about those conversations, and how do you approach it strategically? That was the topic of one of my recent journal entries. Five things in a situation where you can’t give raises, maybe you want to. And what do you actually do? Five practices that you can move forward on to take action on. It’s one of the recent journal entries you can get access to. Plus my weekly journal entry that comes to your inbox every single week. It is one part of Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:36]:
If you’d like to find out more about Coaching for Leaders Plus, just go over to coachingforleaders.plus for details on the weekly journal and much more. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday, I’m glad to welcome Paul Akers to the show. We are gonna be discussing making work better through simplicity. Join me for that conversation with Paul. Have a great week, and see you back on Monday.