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Inclusive Growth Show
I love driving diversity and inclusion at the leadership level. Each week, I host insightful conversations where we explore the journey of inclusive growth, discuss strategies for engaging senior leaders in equity, diversity, and inclusion, and share practical tips to inspire and empower meaningful change.
Inclusive Growth Show
Bridging the Inclusion Gap: Insights from Suzy Levy
Are you ready to challenge the status quo in workplace inclusion?
In this episode of The Inclusive Growth Show, host Toby Mildon welcomes Suzy Levy, author of Mind the Inclusion Gap and a leading voice in DEI. Suzy shares her journey from a global consulting career to championing human-centric leadership and tackling systemic inclusion challenges.
Together, Toby and Suzy dive into essential topics like:
- The hidden costs of masking and code-switching.
- Why "being nice" is not enough for authentic inclusion.
- The interplay between privilege and workplace equity.
- Practical steps to create brave, psychologically safe spaces.
About Suzy Levy:
Suzy is an inclusion expert and consultant with a rich background spanning public, private, and third sectors. Her groundbreaking book, Mind the Inclusion Gap, is a must-read for leaders seeking actionable insights on DEI.
Tune in to discover how to move beyond surface-level inclusion and drive meaningful change in your organization.
If you're enjoying this episode and looking to boost equity, inclusion, and diversity in your organisation, my team and I are here to help. Our team specialises in crafting data-driven strategies, developing inclusive leaders, designing fair recruitment processes, and enhancing disability confidence. With a blend of professional expertise and lived experience, we're ready to support you on your journey. Reach out to us through our website.
If you want to build a more inclusive workplace that you can be proud of please visit our website to learn more.
Welcome to the Inclusive Growth Show with Toby Mildon Future-proofing your business by creating a diverse workplace.
Speaker 2:Hey there, thank you ever so much for tuning into this episode of the Inclusive Growth Podcast. I'm Toby Mildon and today I'm joined by the amazing Susie Levy. I saw Susie speak at a conference that a fellow associate of ours, sharon Amisu, runs in Manchester every year, and Susie was just a phenomenal speaker on the stage talking about inclusion, and she was at the time talking about the content in her book called Mind Inclusion Gap. So I thought I'd reach out to Susie, because I think she'll be a great guest to talk about her book on this podcast, and, as we were doing the preparation for it, realized actually we had a lot more in common than we initially thought, because we both worked for Accenture in and around about 2006 time period, so our paths would have crossed in the past, I'm sure. So it's really great to catch up with Susie again. So, susie, thanks ever so much for joining me today. It's lovely to see you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, toby, for having me, and hello to all the listeners out there. I'm excited to join the Inclusive Growth Podcast today.
Speaker 2:So, susie, I just gave a very brief introduction there. Can you just let us know a bit more about who you are, what you do, your background and a bit about your book? Mind the Inclusion Gap.
Speaker 3:Sure, toby. Well, listeners can probably hear that I have an American accent, although I've been in London for 20 years this month. I grew up on a farm with no running water, no electricity, and was the first in my family to go to university. So, and I'm not sure that's too unusual of a story when I tell you, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up and at university I tested all sorts of courses and things and I ended up working for a global management consulting firm, accenture, although it was called Anderson Consulting at the time, because I joined in the late 90s and I did so because I found I got bored.
Speaker 3:I really loved problem solving and the idea of having new challenges put in front of me all the time just sounded absolutely fascinating, which is a long way of telling you I love problem solving, and I ended up working in the inclusion space because I found that solving human problems and, in particular, challenges we have, social challenges we face within society are some of our greatest and more naughty problems. So I started out my career doing things like launching the Xbox and a bank merger for Lloyds and HBoss and sort of traditional change management, if you will, with big, complex organizations and I slowly moved over to things around inclusion, diversity, culture and real sort of gnarly. Leadership issues, basically because I found them the most interesting problem of all. And once I sort of dipped my toe. Leadership issues, basically because I found them the most interesting problem of all, and once I sort of dipped my toe in the water, I couldn't, I never wanted to go back. Basically I never found the other, more traditional change quite as exciting.
Speaker 3:So I've sort of sucked in, toby. So that's how I got here. I run a small consulting firm. I help clients with their most pressing human issues. I also sat on the board of a number of government departments. I was a non-executive director at the home office for six years, on the Department for Education board for just over a year and my clients tend to span across third sector, public sector and private sector, which is a little bit unusual. But I see almost the same sorts of problems manifest no matter which part of society we're looking at. But that's me, toby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see the same. I also work across private sector, third sector, charity sector, government, local authority, that kind of thing, and there's lots of transferable issues. And actually that kind of leads me on to our next question, because in your book you discuss some of the shared challenges like masking, affinity, bias, things like that. Can you just elaborate a bit more on how these challenges affect inclusion and what organizations should do to address them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I should first start by saying you know, when I wrote the book, I originally wrote kind of one chapter on individuals with a disability, one chapter on LGBT community, one chapter on race and ethnicity, and I ripped that book up. By the way, I never published that one. Writing a book isn't easy, but you learn and you grow along the way and I decided I really didn't want to write a chapter specific about different diverse groups. I really wanted to be able to share with readers what were the similarities, and not just intersectionality, but actually 80% of the problems we're facing, no matter what group we're talking about, are similar. They may manifest differently. So if I take masking, which is often a term used in disability circles, it's called editing in LGBT terms, or covering or code switching when we're talking about race, and what it describes is the process by which someone morphs themselves.
Speaker 3:They shapeshift, they change elements of who they are, how they look, what they wear, how they speak, in order to be closer to whatever the powerful norm, either in their organization or in their society, is. So if the powerful norm is really masculine and traditional quote masculine traits are valued. Women will dial down femininity. They'll dial down vulnerability or emotion. They'll hide aspects of their life.
Speaker 3:Gay individuals will remove the name of their partner, they will change you know even the pronoun or tell less stories about what they got up to on the weekend, because they're editing in order to see that they're safe, either physically or psychologically. You know, are they physically going to be okay in this scenario, or is the client going to be okay, or might they be a little bit homophobic? And if you don't know that, you don't want to risk, let's say, a business deal just by telling a story on the weekend. And so, whether we call it masking, editing, covering, code switching, it comes with a consequence, because when individuals morph themselves to fit into that sort of normative behavior, they lose a bit of who they are in the first place. So let's say you're an ethnic minority and you change your name in order to make it more anglicized and easier for other people to say and make yourself a bit less different. Or you change your hair and make it more white and.
Speaker 3:Western. You lose authenticity and you give away something and it changes the way relationships form. I use the term affinity bias when you ask me the question, and actually I don't do a lot of teaching on bias because I think people often reject the idea of bias because they don't want to be seen as biased. They don't believe they are biased. But if we talk for a moment about high affinity, high trust relationships, which are really critical in the workplace and in life, the type of relationship where you not only get on but you believe in each other and you have a level of intimacy it's just that sort of yummy goodness connection between two human beings. In order to have that level of high affinity, you need both parties coming to the table with a level of authenticity and vulnerability and unfortunately, the more you're masking, covering, code switching or editing, the lower the probability that you're showing up authentically and it affects relationships and it's one of many things that affects the high affinity, high trust relationships, and so there's a significant consequence, in addition to it being tiring, by the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, it's ringing some bells. I really like what you're saying about authenticity because, um, I was born with my disability and then I came out as as a gay man when I was about 29, 30 and, um, I read the book the velvet rage, which was written by an american psychologist about. The subtitle of the book is um, growing up as a gay man, gay man in a straight man's world or a world designed by straight men, or something like that, and it was really interesting because every time the author mentioned gay man and he was talking about things like not being authentic and things like that I thought I could just switch the word gay man for disabled person and it would just be as relevant to me, which I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 3:What's interesting on the disability front. Because of the type of disability you have, you can't edit, cover or mask it right, which is really interesting. Similarly, an individual of color they can't mask that they have brown or black skin, so there are certain elements of you know, I can't mask that I'm a woman, but I still might be editing right, and so I think the interplay between the two and it must have been interesting for you having one that was visible and one that was invisible, if you unless you chose to disclose that about yourself and the sort of juxtaposition of the two, I imagine Toby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because one of my characteristics having a physical disability, being a wheelchair user it's very obvious. It's something I can't really hide. But yeah, I can easily hide my sexuality from people, but I think there's still the editing that's going on. So, as a disabled person a lot of disabled people they learn to become people pleasers because it's a way of not necessarily being a burden in a relationship or the workplace, that kind of thing. One of the things I really like in your book is talking about how being nice can hinder inclusion, that the inclusion is not about necessarily being nice. It's something I come across a lot when I talk to clients. Actually, they say isn't inclusion just about being nice to one another? And I think respect is at the core of being inclusive and creating a sense of belonging and things like that. But what do you mean by being nice and what do you think organizations should aim for instead?
Speaker 3:That's a great question and, by the way, I love that. Respect is at the core, because you can't throw respect out the window, right? And I'm also not telling readers or listeners to throw niceness out the window. So what do I mean by it?
Speaker 3:Well, I think I recognized, as I went on my own inclusion journey and my journey is filled with lots of mistakes as an average nice person who was asked to own inclusion and diversity for the company I work for, I made mistake after mistake after mistake and as my lessons began to accumulate, the understanding that I was going about it all wrong started to really awaken in me. And that first lesson actually was around editing With 15 of my LGBT colleagues 12 of whom were out at work and three of whom were not over a two-day authentic gay leadership course in the mid-2000s. And somewhere on day two I had this epiphany, because prior to that moment I thought out, was when you told your mom and dad that, as a gay, bisexual or lesbian individual, you just you said hey, you know, hey, everyone I love, this is me, and you were kind, of job done Right.
Speaker 1:And it's a really naive.
Speaker 3:I mean it's ridiculous to think about it, although I was speaking to an audience yesterday and somebody came up to me and said, up until the moment you told that story, I was sitting in the same bubble of naivety and I really appreciate you sharing it, because so it's nice to know that I wasn't the only one, but we've got work to do. So I, I recognized in that moment that out was every, every instance in the future every new team, every new holiday you go on, and whether it's safe or even legal to be yourself, you know every new person you've never met before, including a taxi driver on an hour long ride home who keeps asking about your wife, toby, and at some point you're like my partner, even knowing that maybe you might not see this person ever again, right? So my point in sharing that is because I was relying on being a nice person but not getting myself educated. I missed out on really important inclusion skills as a heterosexual person, which I am. You, if you don't understand that, out is every moment in the future and it takes a conscious discernment of am I safe? Is this going to be okay? Could there be a consequence to being myself in this instance, then you don't make it easier for someone to come out. You're not there in case there is a consequence like a homophobic client who wants to, you know, doesn't want to do the deal anymore, or something like that. See, I was sitting in a very passive role and unfortunately, nice often affords us a lack of education. We just go. I'm going to double down on my niceness. I don't really need to get skilled at inclusion, I'm just going to be a good, good egg.
Speaker 3:And then the second bit that niceness does and I was guilty of this and still am to some extent I like everybody to get along. I don't actually like really volatile or uncomfortable situations which is a bit of an irony, given my job requires me to host them all the time. I really don't like them. I want everyone to like each other and to have that level of respect and sort of joyfulness. I like to swim in the joyfulness of it right, and I think as a nice person you can sometimes accidentally overdo the can't we all just get along, because actually there are some pretty fundamental differences and some of those fundamental differences are negating the ability to live and thrive for others and that's not on right, and so going into those uncomfortable spaces and talking about some startling facts and there are a lot of startling facts about our world requires a level of grittiness and uncomfortable and, by the way, we don't do uncomfortable for the sake of it.
Speaker 3:I don't ever recommend anyone jumps into an uncomfortable conversation because they want to be an uncomfortable. We do those uncomfortable conversations because we believe there's something wonderful on the other side. So, as a nice person, being able to embrace the uncomfortable with a purpose and move through a challenging conversation moment or multiple moments, I think is really important. So we have to kind of let go of, can't we all get along? And I'm just going to double down on my niceness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it reminds me of the work that Brené Brown does around safe spaces and brave spaces. So she talks about the need to have safe spaces, creating that psychological safety for people to be able to speak up, share ideas without any fear of backlash. But she questions who are we actually creating safe spaces for? Are we creating safe spaces for the majority? And if you feel like you're in the minority or that you're underrepresented, it still might not be a safe space for you, and therefore we need to foster brave spaces where we go deeper. We have awkward and therefore we need to foster brave spaces where we go deeper. We have awkward, challenging conversations, because that's where we grow and learn. And then the other thing that you reminded me of is I love her work, but the work around radical candor and where radical candor is about challenging directly and caring at the same time. And a trap that I fall into is what she calls ruinous empathy, which is where you care but you don't challenge directly, and I don't think that's helpful either.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's not always easy to challenge, right, challenging sometimes in the moment it requires a sophisticated level of thinking to know what to say or how to say it. Challenging knowing that sometimes there'll be a consequence, and not just a consequence in the person that you challenged, because you might challenge on behalf of someone else who goes, hey, I don't need your help, right, thanks for nothing, right? So there's a whole host of reasons why we don't often step in and do those challenges. I think sometimes recognizing that just because you didn't do it in the moment doesn't mean you can't go back and that. Is it right to challenge it right now? Is this the right moment where someone's going to hear it? Or actually, could I challenge it a bit more privately and a bit more thoughtfully after the moment?
Speaker 3:I mean, this has nothing to do with inclusion and diversity, but if I think, as a parent, my eldest daughter, if I challenge her in the moment, the probability is it's going to go down like a lead balloon and I'm going to get teenage pushback, right, yeah. But if I let a little bit of time go and then we step back and I say do you know that thing that happened earlier? Can I talk to you about it, and here's why I want to talk to you about it and I think we you, me could have done better. And when we have that sort of separation from the in the moment, I get a completely different reaction from her right, and so I think ruinous empathy sometimes is not just because we're trying to be empathetic, it's because it's hard to know what to do in the moment, right, really hard. And I would encourage somebody, if they felt they've had those moments, to sort of go. How can I not go back but approach it now from a less emotive, more thoughtful still, with the same candor?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean it's sometimes difficult to know what to do in the moment because you're just so caught up in the whirlwind of it. There could be all sorts of things going on. Also, it just might not be appropriate. You might be in a client meeting and it's probably inappropriate at that time to call your boss out on something in front of an important client, and it would be more respectful and sensitive to actually just have a private word with them afterwards. Anyway, and also something I've learned is that it's difficult for some people to process things in real time. I've been working with a neurodiversity counsellor and coach and she was telling me there's this kind of phenomenon or principle I don't know what you would call it that a lot of neurodivergent people experience, which is around kind of delayed processing. Yeah, it's really difficult to actually process thoughts, feelings and emotions in real time and it takes a while for these things to to solidify that's true about introverts and extroverts as well.
Speaker 3:Terby and I work really closely with a ceo who's hugely introverted and I show a lot of extroversion traits, although I'm not entirely sure you're 100 one or the other other, right, because I really like my alone time, I love it, I crave it with the type of job I have. But we'll have moments where she'll go okay, that's enough input. I'm going to go away now and I'm going to come back to you. Right, and she's really good at telling me you've now poured enough ideas and energy in the cup is now exploding and I can't process any more and I need to sit with this for a while and then we'll come back on it. And I think the ability to even say that as well, knowing we're all different in how we, let alone in knowing how to challenge something in the moment, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about defensiveness now. It's something I've come across quite a lot when I work with some leaders, particularly when we're talking about difficult subjects like the effects of privilege on the decisions that we're making, how we might be affected by implicit biases. Can you just share with us some examples of how you've met defensiveness when you've worked with senior leaders and how you get the balance right between holding up the mirror and avoiding a threat response when you're talking about difficult EDI topics? Great question.
Speaker 3:I think, first and foremost, I find it really really helpful to be honest when individuals in the inclusion and diversity profession caused the threat response. So I think, starting there, sometimes, for example, the historic ADI agenda has drawn incorrect equations like diversity equals gender, equals women, which it drew that equation for a very, very long time and, by the way, only a certain type of woman, probably a white, affluent, heterosexual woman. We also sometimes make diversity equals race equals being an individual of color. You know there are. Sometimes we make these direct equations and ergo everyone else who's not in that is left out. And I think one of the first things you can do strategically is make sure that your overall inclusion and diversity initiatives look across the full breadth of diversity. Don't get caught in the trap of being one or two diversity strands and everything else is just never talked about. Right. Because when you look across all of diversity age and socioeconomic and disability and sexual orientation, and you know sex and gender identity when you look across the whole gamut, nobody's left behind, nobody right. And also even when you go even farther, for example, and you say sometimes diversity means the difference between the different professions, so we might have a front office and a back office, a fee earning example, and you say sometimes diversity means the difference between the different professions. So we might have a front office and a back office, a fee earning and an operational, and you'll have different power dynamics in an organization that have nothing to do with diversity category, but they might have to do with the type of workforce you're part of and you'll have, you know, a two-part workforce. So recognizing diversity is huge and it's not just protected characteristics is first and foremost and then second, I think, creating a space where people can talk about the emotions they have toward the agenda.
Speaker 3:I often, when I have more time with an audience, we talk about what do we love about all this focus on inclusion and diversity and equity and belonging. What do we dislike? Or maybe what are we afraid of and where do we not know enough? And when you ask an audience, those three questions, that second question in particular, what are you afraid of? It allows individuals in the room to give a voice to something that maybe they've never been given a voice to. And it's okay to not love everything about team diversity right, and sometimes we have to get those things out Interestingly. What you'll find is usually there's a correlation between what someone's afraid of and where they don't know enough right, and where they lack knowledge, information or skillfulness, right? Oh, and similarly, it's helpful to show that different people in the room are afraid of different things, that we're all not coming from the same place.
Speaker 3:I think the third thing is acknowledging things like because you use the word privilege. If we're going to talk about privilege, we also have to talk about how privilege feels. Like an accusation, it drives a lot of guilt and frustration and it feels unfair to be labeled as privileged because nobody asked for their privilege, right? I didn't ask for white skin. I have white skin. It is a privilege.
Speaker 3:So there's an element of naming guilt, shame, frustration, all of these sort of icky emotions that might be coming up and allowing and going. Do you know what? We're not going to roll around in guilt. That's not why we're here. You roll around in guilt. That's not why we're here. You're not bad people. That's not what we're suggesting. So let's just take all those really negative emotions, name them and put them to the side and then let's look at the more skillful learning.
Speaker 3:So I think in my long-winded three-part answer, toby, I think some of it is. You have to give space for that challenge and frustration and let it out. At the same time, you can talk to someone, let's say, a heterosexual white man who's really frustrated with the inclusion agenda, and say there's a place for you, right, there's a place for you and your unique needs. But this is an and right. I believe men of all types, all shapes and all sizes should be part of the inclusion agenda and we should be including them, and they do have unique needs, however, and I want their help to fix the world for women. It's not an or. I don't celebrate International Women's Day and don't celebrate International Men's Day, which was yesterday, by the way. I celebrated it with the men in my life and with clients, and we talked about the unique needs. I also expect them to do better for the unique needs that women have, and so holding up the mirror can be an and.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it reminds me. A friend of mine was really prolific in the disability rights movement in the 90s and was part of introducing the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995. And one thing that she said to me is that disability rights would not have changed if it wasn't for the support of non-disabled people both in the establishment but also outside the establishment as well. And that really stuck with me and, I think, with privilege. One thing that I like to talk about is the difference between earned and unearned privileges. This is something I learned from a colleague of mine.
Speaker 2:I talk quite candidly whenever I do workshops and things like that, that my unearned privileges things that I didn't have no control over whatsoever was that I was born a male, born in the UK, born into a family that you know we were comfortable financially and things like that.
Speaker 2:And you know, yes, I did go off to university and I got a degree and then that led me to work for great companies like Accenture and the BBC and things like that. But actually I did go off to university and I got a degree and then that led me to work for great companies like Accenture and the BBC and things like that. But actually I've benefited from all of these unearned privileges and if I compare my lived experience to, say, somebody who's got the same disability as me over living in America. I've benefited from free health care from the NHS, which has saved my life on multiple occasions. I've had access to free education. My life would be very different if I was born in the States, because I just wouldn't have had the same access to free healthcare that has saved my life. So that's a privilege as well.
Speaker 3:I think it's important that we recognize that privilege not only isn't universal, but you can be privileged in one moment and not in another. I have a friend who plays. She's in a wheelchair like you, but she plays wheelchair basketball for Team GB. Right, she has the best physio in the world. She said to me I think I might have the top of the line wheelchair, as in terms of the kit I've got and the physical support I've got, it's amazing. And yet I can't go three steps to the bathroom, right.
Speaker 3:So when my friends book dinner and we don't make a consideration, and the next thing I know, I just I can't go pee, which is really really small. Or similarly, she said to me I can have a kitchen and I know how to cook, I'm on my own, I'm completely, you know, everything's fine, but if I don't have a long handled pan or a lower hob, I can't actually boil water for pasta and cook myself dinner, right. So she's like, in one moment I'm totally privileged economically, all sorts of stuff, right, I play for country, I play sport for country. How incredible is that? And then in the next moment I can't either cook or go to the bathroom, two really fundamental needs.
Speaker 3:And so I think her story to me shows how privilege can also, you can come in and out of privilege in different moments, even with your same characteristics. So we see it as this sort of set piece thing, and it's not, and we also tend to not know what to do with it. Because I think privilege affords you a chance to be in the group who could really move the dial for change. And so when we use it as a privilege, as an opportunity to create new boundaries, new possibilities, and rather than feel guilty I've got it, how can I use it as a force for good, the privilege that I have in the spaces when I have it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. What does inclusive growth mean for you?
Speaker 3:I think inclusive growth is multifaceted. First, it's that we're not growing blindly. And I think, as an economy and in many companies that I have known in my, you know, almost 40 years of working, now growing in one direction or in a direction that benefits the same types of people is not inclusive, I think, recognizing the purpose of growth and who it benefits ultimately. Because when we look at growth in a very siloed or narrow sort of way and we don't recognize the possibility of what could be. So, if we just talk about disability and the probability of being out of work which is almost, I think, triple in the UK if you have a disability compared to those without a disability, I think the latest stats suggest that, similarly, an individual who's, for example, transgender, has a high probability of being out of work proportionally.
Speaker 3:I think our ability to ask ourselves as an organization, as a society, as an economy, are we getting the most for the most volume of people, as opposed to, are we growing quickly but narrowly? So I see growth in a much more widespread, thoughtful manner, and I think it's also because I worked for not only one big company but with lots of big companies who, for a period of time, only measured growth in how fast and how narrow, and I really like what's happening across the world as organizations are stepping back a little bit of saying is growth at any cost and leaving many behind really the type of growth that we want? And is it sustainable, by the way, because I think the more sustainable rich type of growth looks more holistically at different groups.
Speaker 2:I agree, I worked with a client. They created their kind of big business strategy was called the good growth strategy, and I really liked that because it was about how they can grow responsibly, making a positive impact. A big part of that strategy was around their internal workings and how inclusive they were and whether they were like a great place to work and things like that, and that's where I got involved.
Speaker 3:I also think Toby growth is often the measure of success in financial terms for most institutions, most companies anyway right, for-profit companies and it ends up causing a problem because if you're chasing growth all the time, eventually A you top out and B it has a consequence, right. So? And I know we talk about balanced scorecards and we're getting much better at not just the what we delivered but the how we delivered it in performance management terms in big corporations. But I still think we don't understand the full cost, whether it's to the people and society or to the environment, when we put growth as such a fundamental measure of the value of an organization, without tethering it to what kind of growth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It just reminds me of when I wrote my first book. I found some interesting research that said that companies that focused on finances and financial metrics actually grew slower than companies that focused on people. So it was like, yeah, those companies that focused on people and culture outperformed those that actually profitably, that focused on the profit margins. So for the person listening to us today, what's one thing that they could do to foster inclusion in their workplace?
Speaker 3:Gosh, one thing is always so hard. That's such a mean question, toby. I would probably bring it back to why I wrote the book. So I don't think you can be inclusive if you don't have a fundamental understanding of what inclusion is. So, first and foremost, defining what inclusion is and going and getting the skills to be inclusive. I think we're at a moment today where there's a high expectation that we know how to be it, but there's a low skillfulness in how to do it. So I think, if you were to do anything, it's to go get yourself knowledgeable on what inclusion is.
Speaker 3:Read lots of books, read mine, mine, the inclusion graph. Read Toby's there are so many great learning materials out there. You can't be inclusive if you don't have the knowledge of how the world is being experienced by people who are different than you, or even people who are experiencing it differently that are the same in diversity terms as you. So go get the knowledge. Spend a little time deciding how you feel about that, because I think, with knowledge, you have to decide if you're going to be and have empathy with some of the imbalances or challenges we're talking about, and then I think you have to go get. Doing so knowledge, empathy action. I meet a lot of people who want to be an ally, who aspire to be an ally, but they sit in largely passive roles and I don't think there's such thing as a passive ally. So go get knowledgeable, spend some time thinking about what it means to you and why it matters, and then take the corrective action that you think is relevant for the groups you're trying to include and be an ally for.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Susie. That's really great advice. Now, if the person listening to us right now wants to follow your work, maybe reach out to you. If they've got any questions, what should they do?
Speaker 3:You can catch me on LinkedIn, susie Levy, if you want to sort of follow work, start with Mind the Inclusion Gap. It's available in most large and even many smaller bookstores. It's also on pretty much every audiobook platform out there Audible Spotify Premium it's free with. So yeah, dig in and then let me know what you think. Drop me a note on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Brilliant. Well, susie, thanks ever so much for joining us today. It's been really great to catch up with you and I've learned loads from you in the last half an hour, and also it's great to talk to like another EDI practitioner and to be able to kind of understand that we've actually got shared experiences around things like, I suppose, like shared experiences between different groups, you know, like masking or code switching or editing. That's one thing I learned from you today, actually, because I normally talk about masking but I hadn't quite connected the dots between that and editing and code switching, so that's solidified in my brain. Also, talking about the fact that inclusion is not just about being nice yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into that. So, susie, thanks ever so much for joining me. It's been lovely to see you.
Speaker 3:And likewise thanks for having me, toby.
Speaker 2:You're welcome and thank you for tuning into this episode with Susie and myself today. Hopefully, you've learned a lot from our conversation and you can start to apply some of the things that we talked about today to your own role in your own organisation and, as Susie said, to your own role in your own organisation. And, as Susie said, start with upskilling yourself and please do go and get a copy of her book Mind the Inclusion Gap, and I look forward to seeing you on another episode of the Inclusive Growth Show, which will be coming out very soon. Until then, take good care of yourself. Bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Inclusive Growth Show. For further information and resources from Toby and his team, head on over to our website at mildencouk.