The Inclusion in Progress podcast started in 2019 as a way for DEI Consultant, Kay Fabella, to share her thoughts and insights with others — and now Inclusion in Progress is now a team that spans EMEA, APAC and the Americas! This Thanksgiving weekend, Team IIP is honoring the spirit of gratitude, reflecting on the past year on how far we have come as a company, and our growth as individuals and as a team. We also want to celebrate hitting 100 podcast episodes and three years of the podcast, which wouldn’t be possible without listeners (like you!) from over 35 countries worldwide. To mark this milestone, we take a look at three of our most downloaded episodes in 2022.
In this episode, our listeners will finally be able to hear the different voices of our team and have a look into how we strive to understand each other, no matter how different we all are. We have a conversation about the state of DEI, how our definition of psychological safety has expanded at work post-pandemic, how our team embraces and leans into our differences to grow, and how important self-care and community care are for well-being. We also reflect on how we have inspired others with the industry stories we’ve shared on this show — and our own experiences as a multicultural remote team.
Welcome to the Inclusion in Progress podcast where we give you the ideas, actions and insights to help you build more equity at your workplace and in the world at large. I'm your host, Kay Fabella, international expert on diversity, equity and inclusion, a Filipina American living in Spain and your guide in navigating this DEI journey. Having worked with teams at companies such as Philips, the IMF, Red Hat, PepsiCo and more, I know firsthand that the work of inclusion only works when everyone has a seat at the table. Regardless of your personal entrypoint into this conversation: your race, ethnicity, gender, ability, age, sexual orientation, country of origin, or educational background, we all have a role to play in creating inclusion for all and it starts with us having conversations we need to create the change we wish to see. So let's dive into today's episode.
So here we are friends… Episode 100!
It now means that we have reached double digits in our episodes, and three years as a podcast. If I was able to toss emojis at you through the airwaves, those emojis would probably be the celebration horn, those bells with the confetti, the champagne glasses clinking and the Red 100 emoji because, of course! It's a milestone that we really wanted to celebrate and commemorate with you, our listeners from over 35 countries, because this show wouldn't be possible without your continued support. I often say to the team that what started as a podcast brought our company to life.
At the time I launched this show in 2019, I was still operating as Kay Fabella Consulting. I was primarily working with individuals from underrepresented backgrounds on how to increase their capacity for self advocacy, whether through sharing their message through their businesses, or within their corporate environments, and I had been offering DEI services to companies on the side for a few years at that point, but I was really hesitant to claim the title as a DEI practitioner. At the same time, I was frustrated by the fact that many of the individuals that I was working with were people who had been edged out of corporate environments because - in their words - their organizations, their companies, made them feel like they had to leave part of who they were at the door to sacrifice parts of themselves in order to survive and work their way up the corporate ladder… And this was especially true for people I worked with who were women and non-binary folks, people of color, people with disabilities or with neuro divergence, or whose background or country or language of origin made them and “only” in the rooms that they walked into at work. Everyone I worked with had reached a breaking point. If they hadn’t already quit their jobs to start their own venture, they were definitely not planning on sticking around in their companies for long.
So that got me to thinking… well, why is it that so many companies are failing to keep their best people? What is it about how these companies are structured, how they are being led, and how they're making people feel that was leading to so many people I was working with feeling like quitting their jobs was their only option? And how can I share what I'm hearing in these conversations with others who might feel the same way?
And so I was privy to a lot of really great conversations and I was motivated to share what I was learning and decided to launch the Inclusion in Progress Podcast towards the end of 2019. Then 2020… the year that reshaped our workplaces and our world happened. And all of a sudden the DEI services that I had been offering but rarely promoting publicly were exactly what organizations needed. And, thankfully, I was in a position to begin expanding a team to help me to meet the needs of our client partners, which now include the likes of Red Hat and Instagram and many more.
So for today's episode, I wanted to introduce you to the folks on Team IIP who helped take us from Kay Fabella Consulting to Inclusion in Progress, LLC.
So by way of intro, you'll be hearing from Max from Nairobi - our OG remote worker and metrics man who helps us keep track of our relationships and our clients, and the reason that we held our first in-person retreat in Kenya this year. Nobody complained, it was amazing!
You will also hear from Niña from outside Manila in my parents’ country of origin, the Philippines - our resident Gen-Zer who helps with research and content creation and keeping us up to date on the DEI conversation in different parts of the world.
You'll also hear from Libby, who is also from the US and, like me, she is a long-term resident of Madrid, Spain. She's our newest member, our EA and Operations Officer, who is helping us with client management, scheduling and delivery, as well as keeping our team on task.
And, finally, you'll also hear from Anibal, who is originally from Peru, raised in the US and now calls Finland home. He is our brand and web designer who has helped shepherd the transition from my personal brand of Kay Fabella Consulting to Inclusion in Progress, and continues to support us with our digital home.
This is the core team that works with me day in and day out. They are incredible folks. In addition to an international network of DEI consultants that we rely on to support us with client delivery. We also are lucky to have amazing service providers outside of our team. So I wanted to give a very quick shout out to Scott and his Podcast Bay Production company who have helped us get this podcast out to you every month. And we're very fortunate to have him on our team and supporting IIP from a distance.
So in preparation for today's episode, we sat down together as a team. To review the Top 3 episodes from this - 2022. We briefly discuss each of those episodes as a team, we talk about why we think it resonated with you as our audience, and we may even share some behind the scenes discussions that we have in our Weekly Wrap-Up Calls.
So, without further ado, here is Team IIP…
So this was something that was a long time coming, I had been meaning to try and get the team on the podcast all together. Because, as we mentioned before, we have these Friday Weekly Wrap-Up Calls where we all just kind of hang out, chill, talk about all the things. And we thought, wouldn't it be great if we could all get our voices diving into - in honor of our 100th episode - the different episodes that we realized were most popular, most downloaded this year? And so you get to hear not just from my voice, but from the other folks who make up Team IIP. And so what we're going to do is dive into the three top episodes for us this year, starting with Episode IIP092: Psychological Safety for DEI Practitioners: Why We're Taking Next Month Off, when we took July 2022 off - as our first month off as a team earlier this year. Which I thought was really interesting, that was the top episode!
You know, I think that episode maybe resonated with a lot of us because we're so used to this world of hurry, we live in times of hurry; whether it's in our personal lives, trying to do all things… or in business, trying to finish and check off every task that is assigned to us and, while we're doing this, we saw them have the time to step back and reflect if what we did was actually worth any value or made any impact. And the only times you can do that is by pausing, stopping, taking time off for yourself, which is incredibly difficult to do at times because you don't want to, because we're so used to always being in a hurry, we, in a way, get high off that. But knowing that there is so much value to reset and reflect... I think it's something that, subconsciously, hit a lot of our listeners, including our team internally, and I think that is one of the reasons why so many people decided to listen to this episode, in addition to sharing it.
Sometimes you pour too much for people that you don't want much to yourself, for which becomes, as we can all, attest burnout. As always, Kay says, we have to take, like, a Pause to Progress. Yes, we've reached this point. Sometimes we pause as a team and ask ourselves, “Yes, this worked, did this work? What's the best thing to do on this, on this?” So I think, for me, the psychological safety I've gotten from IIP is, like, sometimes we just pause… not because you're not doing the work, not because you’re not doing the effort. But sometimes you have to pause, reflect and just take notes on what works or doesn't work, because I think IIP - for this year - that's something we’ve really done.
I think, if I'm listening to a theme from all of us, we knew the last couple of years were challenging for everybody. We had all lived through some version of that. And, you know, this being a pause that we all needed, a place for us in the DEI space, especially, to really reevaluate all the things that we had to support and all the things that we had to hold space for, for other people, and how much of that required us to pour into the people who were depending on us. And so, you know, I love that Max picked up on our Pause to Progress value as one of the reasons this episode might have resonated because it's something that I say often on the team that, if we aren't able to kind of pause and synthesize all the things that are happening around us… Unfortunately, we had to live through a time, recently, where all of us were forced to pause. But I think not everybody took that pause and the lessons with them forward. And so DEI practitioners especially - and I include myself and our team in that - really focus so much on giving that we don't realize often that the people that need us to be at our best are actually getting an empty cup, right? And so I'm really proud that we took something like our systems, and our day-to-day, and our behaviors, and the ways that we talked to each other on a team… we leveraged that and utilized that in deciding to take this month off. I hope that listeners who come back to this episode, even if it's two years from now, can still take inspiration in the fact that, you know, there's never a bad time to step away when it comes to either your mental health or your ability to be that person that other people need you to be and, most importantly, to really sync with yourself on, “Is this still in alignment with me?” which I think pauses are necessary for.
Now, here is a clip from our most popular episode from 2022, Episode IIP092: Psychological Safety for DEI Practitioners:
We also want to reconnect with our moments of joy, not just our pain. And I think this has been a running theme in the podcast for some months now because DEI is strategic and emotional labor. DEI is a lot of constant emotional labor and unpacking your own trauma and your own triggers, oftentimes. So the emotional labor that I'm alluding to now has also been true for us on Inclusion in Progress as practitioners. We've been with client partners through racial injustice… through multiple racial injustice moments. It's hard to keep track of different levels of and layers of COVID, grief, these rapid, rapid shifts in how our workplace looks like, and what people expect and navigating the remote and hybrid conversation. We've supported client partners through several mass shootings in my birth country the US just this year, through the war in Ukraine, for those who are here in EMEA where I'm physically based, there are ongoing refugee crises, and so much more. And so, when you are tasked with holding space for client partners who are humans and are people that are navigating all of those things, you have to put your own feelings aside in that moment. But it doesn't mean that those emotions disappear. You have to find a way to decompress and process them in a healthy way. Which is not always easy to do.
So working in a space where you live in, oftentimes the pain of others that you need to live in to be able to understand DEI sometimes also triggers having to revisit your own pain, right your own experiences with non-belonging, which I've shared very openly about on this podcast before. But the same is also true for our own team, right? And for different reasons. And when you are surrounded and plugged into not just others' pain in your work, but also the real-life pain of so many people who are hurting from the last couple of years, it can mean that it's harder to reconnect with your joy, which is something that I really want all of us to reconnect with as a team, to be able to pour back into ourselves so that we can continue supporting each other and those who look to us for help.
You know, this is a tricky [conversation] to have. Because it doesn't mean that the work isn't still serious. It doesn't mean that the work is still not urgent and important. But it also requires us to draw from all of our faculties and our ability to really draw from our highest selves, which we can only really find in either moments of pause or moments of joy. And if you're just sitting in pain day in and day out, that takes its toll over time. So we can't wait to reconnect with our own moments of joy, whatever that looks like for each of us on our team.
So now the team and I will dive into our second most popular episode from this year, Episode IIP091: How Can We Have Conversations in DEI Without Shaming Each Other?
As you all remember, we have been having many conversations about how the DEI or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion conversation has veered very heavily into shaming one another, or it feels kind of horizontally shaming other people, at least if you plug into, you know… you all know my thoughts on Cancel Culture. We don't have to go over that in this episode! But this idea of the DEI conversation rightfully became an amplification of voices that hadn't been heard for a very long time. And some folks might have taken that microphone and that amplifier and run with, “Let me just tell you what's not right,” instead of ways that we could constructively move the conversation forward. And that was the thought process behind putting out this episode, at least when we first talked about it, and then tried to distill it into Episode 91.
I have to say, this is my favorite episode that we've released this year! Probably also because I learned so much from researching for it and preparing for this episode. I think it all boils down to… relationships are built on good communication and when it comes to, you know, the DEI space, when we're talking about different kinds of people and different people's experiences, we tend to… I guess, the trend seems to be that people make it about themselves. And when it comes to the topic of shaming it's like there's so many people trying to, as Kay said, grab the microphone and say that this is how this is affecting them or this is how that is affecting them and the episode really helped me realize that you'll never really understand how it feels, and there’s not really that expectation from a certain group of people that we will ever understand how they feel. But it's not about, kind of, claiming that emotion from them. It's about supporting them and really learning how to be an ally and really listening that's important, and not talking over people.
I think this episode was a very important one that we came up with, that we prepared for extensively this year. I don't know. I feel like we have to say that because, as Kay said, Cancel Culture! You never really know what nerve you're going to pull with some people or what button you're going to press. So yeah, we prepared for this a lot. And it ended up being one of my favorite episodes, because we don't really come up with an answer for it, you know? We pose a very difficult question that, in all honesty, doesn't have an answer. Again, it all just boils down to the willingness to listen and to have difficult conversations with people that you don't share experiences with. And, I mean, I would like to say that, with Team IIP, that's really something that I've come to appreciate and come to hold dear, that we all come from different backgrounds, we're all in our different corners of the world, and we're all just striving to understand each other. And I feel that we came out to this episode because we wanted to share that experience with our listeners - that it is possible, and not everything indelicately said needs to have an uproar of a reaction. We can just see where people are coming from and try to help them understand.
When it comes to this episode, and how can we have these conversations without shaming each other? You know, as DEI practitioners, I believe the work we do comes from a place of love, and we have this love and care for others, and we want to share this love with them but, at times, the manner in which it is communicated doesn't sound caring to those receiving it, even though we do care. And, just like, whether it's being a parent or being a grandparent, you want to share these wisdoms, these lessons with your children, but it comes off, at times, in a way that the listener, whether it is the child or a client… they hear it in one way and they feel shame and feeling shame is one of the lowest emotions we humans experience and we don't want to experience the shame because shame translates into we, as the version we are, are not being approved of and we are having fingers pointed at us and shame leaves us in a very vulnerable, scared position which feels very negative. And, at times, the way in which we communicate this, we have to understand that even though it sounds one way to us, it may not sound that way to them. So we have to be extremely aware. Am I saying this in a tone that would either push them away, or would allow them to accept this message? And then I think that is another skill set on top of the information we're trying to share, that not every DEI practitioner has. And I think others resonate with that.
I know… Actually, he's not present on our conversation today, but a person I have to shout out to is Scott from Podcast Bay, who makes our episodes sound as awesome as they do, who said Episode 91 actually changed his life and his family in a very, very powerful way that he could immediately apply and see results from. But I think one of the things I'm grateful for that the team models is a place of psychological safety where we know that it comes from a place of love and a desire for wanting to see our fellow humans do well and thrive and figure out what their version of a most happy, thriving, fulfilled life on this planet looks like. And if we lead from that place of shame, as we say in the episode, it actually shuts you down on a physical and a biological level. And so that person in front of you is no longer able to receive that information. And so again, you know, coming back to Niña's earlier point of… we don't have the answer - we actually say - we don't know! We don't know how to have this because it's still, you know, in the bomb-throwing stage of a revolution, there's not really much room for subtlety and nuance. And so what ends up happening is we use tools that are rooted in, maybe, centuries-old beliefs or things of what we think we have at our disposal that we sometimes, without meaning to, it's a pattern that we fall back into. And one of those tools, as we know that, one of the largest tools of oppression that has held up our world and our society for generations is shame. And so the only thing that we hope is posited in this is, as we're still figuring out a way forward in our workplaces, in our world, who we are on the other side of the pandemic, of racial injustice conversations, of trying to figure out how to create spaces where LGBTQ+ people and disabled folks and everyone has an opportunity to move forward in a way that's aligned with who they are and who they want to be in the world. We can't just fall back on what we think we have at our disposal, but simply posit this idea that we can reimagine a different way!
So here's that clip from our second most popular episode from 2022, Episode IIP091: How Can We Have Conversations in DEI Without Shaming Each Other?
Now, it's helpful for us to also address the fact that we are operating now in multigenerational workplaces. And in a future episode, we want to talk more about how to manage a multigenerational workplace, particularly when you have the shifting expectations of up to five generations at once, including those from Gen Z and Baby Boomers side-by-side. So I can't have the conversation about shame without addressing Cancel Culture. I have talked about it before in a previous episode, but honestly, we're lightyears away from when we recorded that.
Now Gen Z, particularly, have learned that “canceling,” i.e. harmful, sometimes public, shaming is a powerful tool to amplify the voices of those who were previously underrepresented, and even motivate action from not just private companies but also governments. So there's so many thought pieces on Cancel Culture… but, in summary, critics of Cancel Culture view the movement as a modern form of Mob Rule because, according to them, cancellation prevents open debate and, after all, the ability to entertain different ideas and perspectives creates the conditions for social progress and justice. In fact, some of the greatest breakthroughs in human history, they would argue, have occurred when cultures have shared and exchanged contrary ideas. Whereas critics of Cancel Culture say that they can actually execute opposing viewpoints without any sort of context or further desire to engage in the conversation.
Now, those who support Cancel Culture as an important tool in achieving, particularly, social justice, which is a big part of the reason why the DEI conversation is so powerful these days, really utilize the internet, in particular… so social media, providing a platform for those who are historically underserved, or underrepresented to share their views, their opinions and their lived experiences. Now, for example, Twitter offers an outlet for groups that were excluded from the institutions such as politics or education, or the media to have a say, and today historically-excluded groups are no longer reliant on establishments that were built when they weren't in the room. Every person with access to the internet can now write an opinion piece, can share their story and, where needed, speak truth to power. So put another way, those who support Cancel Culture would argue that it represents the voice of the voiceless.
But there's also a deeper layer of social and cultural and historical context that can be applied to this debate, that Cancel Culture doesn't actually exist! Instead, this term Cancel Culture has actually become this convenient sort of red herring, right? Because those who use it will actually silence protests that are legitimate and rooted in accountability and try to maintain the status quo instead of acknowledging what has been brought to the table by those who are leading the canceling. And so, from this perspective, what we're seeing is actually an authentic attempt to write where wrongs happened historically and push for meaningful, sustainable change. So, so-called Cancel Culture was, as we know, instrumental in making the #MeToo campaign go mainstream, or making sure that Black Lives Matter is used on Twitter and has been used on that platform and Instagram since 2014, and even rallying millions of people globally to protest against climate change. So it could be argued that canceled culture is actually a synonym for legitimate criticism from groups who, until recently, lacked the means to express themselves and are the focus of many DEI initiatives in the workplace today.
So, with that said, Cancel Culture: the main thing that I want to highlight is who is sending shame and who is sitting in shame more in these conversations? And if you look at that, in the Gen Z and Baby Boomer context, there are generations who are approaching how they talk through what is considered “appropriate” and professional in different ways, how they approach speaking and communicating over technology in certain ways, differences in their idea of how they actually give feedback, or whether it's appropriate to shame somebody in public because they think it's called accountability, or even preferring to pull someone aside in private because they prefer to give the feedback in a way that they hope won't actually bring shame to the person. You have such different views across the generations of how to actually navigate hard conversations, that it's really, really difficult to have them without addressing the differences in how people perceive [the conversations] should happen.
But I want to wrap up on a final piece here, which is: if shame, or Cancel Culture, or whatever you want to call it is potentially holding us back from DEI work moving forward? And potentially helping us lose allies and people who can support us and moving it forward? How can we invite a new way to sustain ourselves in DEI work that doesn't involve leading with shame into conversations?
I don't have an answer. I'm just hoping that from this place of a real desire to see change that benefits everyone, a real sense of pain for those who are actually trying and feel constantly shamed, or those who are so hurt that they feel that shame is their only option. I think there has to be a better way. And it starts with acknowledging ourselves.
Because all of us are complicit in holding up inequitable systems. Which means that all of us are responsible for the behaviors and choices that will lead to the inclusion we all want to see.
And I'm wanting to come back to Brené Brown here, before we wrap up, on her podcast episode on shame and accountability in July 2020, right after George Floyd's murder. She said, “Shame is telling someone they’re a ‘bad person’, accountability is telling someone they’re ‘not doing their job.’” Moving away from name-calling and telling people what to stop and start doing... I honestly think there's got to be a different conversation that we could lead. How can we ask people to do their job - meaning mitigate their biases, continuing their learning and unlearning, to speak names into rooms where they haven't been heard before, and fight for the opportunities that would remove barriers to advancement and access for historically excluded groups at work - if we're shaming one another? Instead, let's move towards accountability, remembering that this is a shared responsibility for everyone on all sides of the equation of DEI.
So Episode 91 on the topic of shame within DEI is a much larger, nuanced conversation, and we really hope you listen to the full episode. And, if you are tuning into Episode 100 as a long-time listener of our podcast, we’d invite you to please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast app. Every review helps us as Team IIP reach the listeners and DEI leaders who would benefit from the resources and conversations we share here on this show! If you would like to leave Inclusion in Progress a review, we’ll leave instructions for you to do so at the link in the show notes.
Now the team and I will dive into the third most popular episode from 2022, Episode IIP081: How to Spot Signs of Burnout in a Remote Team (Before it Happens).
Research shows that burnout may fall into one of three umbrella categories. The first is exhaustion. Makes sense? Usually the first sign of burnout because prolonged stress is actually draining your mental and physical health and can make you feel tired all the time. The second is cynicism symptoms that include things like feeling disengaged from work, disillusioned about your contributions, being super critical of your own work, and even impatient, irritable and quick to anger with coworkers or those who are around you. And the third thing is inadequacy, you may consider giving up or thinking that it's not worth putting in the effort to get your job done because you feel maybe frustrated or stuck, or uncreative and you're having a hard time getting started and staying productive. Maybe you're overwhelmed by your workload and feeling a lack of any real satisfaction when everything's done, which can also fall under this category of inadequacy, too. So exhaustion, cynicism, and inadequacy are the three sort of umbrella places that burnout tends to fall under. Again, [I’m] not a mental health expert. And symptoms of burnout may be a little different for different people. But if you notice more than a few of these, your team members may already be deep in burnout territory, or very close to it.
If we look at this episode, How to Spot Signs of Burnout in a Remote Team (Before it Happens)... I mean, all of us have had some kind of mental health journey, genuinely, over the last couple of years. Whether it was pre-pandemic, or during the pandemic. Everybody's going through their version of, you know, figuring out triggers and trauma and unpacking what they've had to let go of, what the uncertainty of the world, the uncertainty of their situation, personally, at work, etc. And so really trying to open up this conversation about trying to be proactive in terms of how do you create that space for psychological safety, even talk about burnout on a remote team, where you don't see one another, to really try to be a lot more proactive and having that conversation rather than reactive.
I think we can also do a part two on how to spot signs of burnout, period. Because burnout is real, and people are looking for information and for answers, because nobody wants to burn out. So yeah, it's in the top three for me because it's practical, you know, it's - it's real. And if we can learn to educate ourselves to spot the signs before so that we can readjust so we can continue with our lives and our work lines. So we don't burn out. I think that that's what people want. And that's why it was popular.
Yeah, I mean, 100% agree with Libby. I think particularly resonant with our listeners is the remote team part of this episode because it may have been a little bit easier - maybe not! - but maybe also a little bit easier for people, to kind, of realize when they were getting burnt out when they were in a physical workspace with all of their co-workers, all of their colleagues, but a little bit more difficult in the remote world, because there is such a blurred line between life and work? This episode was very important because there's a lot of people who are transitioning from office to remote work to back to the office and, with that, we’re having to recalibrate what life means to them now. As we said earlier, the pandemic really forced us to confront ourselves and that includes a pretty big shift of priorities. So, life may not have been what it was before, or there are certain things in life that are being prioritized that were not there before, or were just not as emphasized as before and, because of that, moving from remote work to back onsite or even moving permanently into remote work has its own struggles, for sure. And, with that, there are a few more things to look out for when it comes to burnout. We're all struggling to come up with this work-life balance and I think this was popular for the same reason that our Episode 92 was popular: because people, I'd like to think people come back to it. This is like a gentle reminder that these are the things that they're looking out for, and that it is possible to work and not get burnt out.
I mean, this is the ever-present conversation. That's why Inclusion in Progress exists, right? We believe in every individual's capacity to do the best they can with what they have, and in removing the barriers to that happening as much as possible and, obviously, we've had a lot happen the last few years…
So whether it's fully remote or hybrid or going back into the office full time or somewhere in between, there are multiple things that could that are, are chipping away at us at any given moment, on a micro and a macro level. And then you have that added layer of whether you're a globally distributed team, so different cultural lenses and different time zones, as well as just the fact that you just all see the world differently, and culture is very personal to each person, regardless of what country they're in.
And so, again, I think all of this comes back to some key things we’re seeing internally as a team, with our clients, on the podcast from listeners, we're all trying to figure out: who are we on the other side of this? How do we cultivate spaces that are psychologically safe for us to even have the hard conversations that we need to know what the other person in front of us is going through without jumping to conclusions or making assumptions or telling ourselves a story about them? That would be unfair if we made those assumptions to apply to that person. How do we set boundaries for ourselves so that we don't burn out as people, as practitioners? We are also human, even though we are creating spaces for humans to be better… but we also have our limits. And so what are those limits? And how do we figure those out before it's too late, before it's harder to come back from? And making decisions from this place of not dehumanizing one another… including ourselves, putting ourselves on a pedestal of, “We have to have all the answers, we have to know all the things.” As well as for, you know, remembering that this is an ongoing conversation, that things will change, and sometimes it's okay to just walk away and say, “That's not my area of specialism, we have collaborators,” or, “That's not something that I'm able to give at this time because our calendar is full.” or, “Unfortunately, that's not something we have capacity for.” simply, and acknowledging that. And if we're able to model it as a team, you know, in our day-to-day interactions and our systems and our processes and our own conversations, and help relay those things to our clients, that's enough, right? And forcing ourselves to go beyond what we feel is possible is at a given point in time is ultimately not in alignment with our mission,and is not in alignment with what we're trying to lead for other remote teams and other clients as we help others navigate this conversation moving forward into 2023.
So thanks, Team, for helping contribute some of your thoughts on this episode! Thank you, again, to you as the listener for listening in to this podcast and all the insights. Now you know that it's literally not just me on this team, but other folks as well who are helping make this possible and we really appreciate your continued support for the podcast.
So there you have it! in honor of our 100th episode on Inclusion in Progress, we’ve now walked you through the Top 3 Episodes that you, our audience, listened to in 2022:
Episode IIP092: Psychological Safety for DEI Practitioners: Why We Are Taking A Month Off;
Episode IIP091: How Can We Have Conversations in DEI Without Shaming Each Other?
And Episode IIP081: How to Spot Signs of Burnout in a Remote Team (Before it Happens).
If you haven’t already, please go ahead and listen back to those episodes of the show after clicking off of this one. They’re really good ones and, obviously, as you’ve shared with us, they’re episodes that all of you have enjoyed!
So, as always, a huge, huge thank you thank you for listening! Another huge thank you for those of you who have been sharing these episodes with others to help support them in their DEI work at their organization or in leading these conversations with their teams. And, most importantly, for helping us make it to 100 episodes on this podcast! Again, if you are a longtime listener and you would like to support our mission to make more workplaces inclusive, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast app, we’d love to hear from you and learn what your favorite episodes have been since we started this show three years ago.
So, here’s to 100 episodes, here’s to you - our amazing listeners, and here’s to the team that you don’t hear from everyday but they are very much present behind the scenes, making this show possible to keep you up-to-date on the latest insights into DEI, the future of work, and how organizations are evolving their company cultures to support their best and brightest talent, no matter where they come from or where they choose to work.
We’ll see you next time on Inclusion in Progress!