Dr. Stefanie Johnson - Inclusify

Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson is an associate professor of Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics. She is a fellow in the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) and the American Psychological Society (APS). She has published more than 60 journal articles and book chapters and she has presented her work at over 170 meetings around the world including the White House. Media outlets featuring Stefanie’s work include The Economist, Newsweek, Time, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, HuffPost, Washington Post, Quartz, Discover, CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC. She has appeared on Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN, and CNN International.

Learn More About Dr. Johnson's Work

• Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson - Leeds School of Business - University of Colorado, Boulder
• Personal Website 
• Book - Inclusify
• Inclusify Leadership Matrix - Self-Assessment

Quotes From This Episode

• "The data used to derive most leadership theories and recommendations was collected by male researchers from male leaders, and it was analyzed and interpreted by mostly male scientists."
• "And even in terms of effectiveness, men and women are pretty similar. At least the most recent meta-analysis on the topic says, there's not a difference in effectiveness. And if there is a small difference in recent years, it actually favors women - that women are somewhat more effective than men."
• "Women's motivation for leadership doesn't tend to be one that's about having power over other people."

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• Book: What's Wrong With Leadership? by Ron Riggio (Ed.)
• Optimal Distinctiveness Theory - Brewer, M. B. (2003). "Optimal Distinctiveness, Social Identity, and the Self". In M. Leary and J. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of Self and Identity. (pp 480–491).
• TV Show: The Morning Show
• Book: Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
• TV Show: Athlete A (Documentary on USA Gymnastics)

Transcript

Scott Allen : 0:00

Today on the program, I have Dr. Stefanie Johnson. She is an associate professor of leadership and analytics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Good morning, Stefanie. Thank you for being with us.

Stefanie Johnson : 0:12

Oh, thanks for having me.

Scott Allen : 0:13

You you have written it's one of the more powerful passages that I've read lately. And it was in this book, What's Wrong with Leadership? And I think Ron Riggio had edited that volume. And you wrote a chapter, you co authored a chapter, and it's titled, Leadership is Male Centric. And in the conclusion, the two of you say the following, and I think it's just very, very powerful. And it's not something that is often thought of, or I think many people had been blind to for decades and decades, but it goes like this - "The data used to derive most leadership theories and recommendations was collected by male researchers from male leaders, and it was analyzed and interpreted by mostly male scientists." So when we look at that kind of canon of literature, there's a flaw. And I'm so excited to talk about both this article but then also your most recent book in Inclusify, because I think both are incredibly relevant, timely, important topics that we have to put on the the radar of leadership educators. But you've been incredibly successful, whether it's grant funding, whether it's being in the MG 100, the Marshall Goldsmith 100, on the 2020 thinker's 50, kind of under the radar list and in your work has been featured in so many different news outlets. You've been doing incredible work. Tell us a little bit about you. And then maybe we can go back to that quote, because I think that quote is an important starting point for our conversation.

Stefanie Johnson : 1:51

Yeah, absolutely. That's such a nice introduction. Thanks. So a little bit about me. So I, as you said in the introduction, I'm a management Professor at the University of Colorado, although I was trained in industrial organizational psychology, and my area of study is leadership, and in studying leadership, I think it's pretty hard to ignore at least it was for me the disparities across race and gender, in things like how we view leaders, but also in the ways that leaders are able to create more diverse, inclusive environments. So that's really the sweet spot that I said is where leadership intersects with diversity.

Scott Allen : 2:34

Yes, yes. Well, in in this article, I mean, it was, it was a really, really great read and again, opened my eyes to some things that maybe I hadn't seen. And so you start off with some myths. And I think one of the myths was women and in men lead differently. Another one of the myths was that women are not motivated to lead. And another myth was that biases are extinct, they no longer exist. And also in the conclusion you very kind of forcefully say, you know what women and men lead similarly, women are motivated to lead and biases against women still exist. So would you unpack each of those three a little bit? And, and I'd like to hear more.

Stefanie Johnson : 3:20

Yeah, absolutely. I love myths, I think. So the women, men leading very differently, I think we have this idea that women lead in a much more sensitive way. And men are more confident and agentic is often the word we use. And there are small differences in men and women's leadership style, but the differences in their style aren't nearly as great. It's just the differences in how we interpret the very same behavior by men and women. So just because of gender roles, we'll tend to view women's leadership as more caring, I guess. Because we think women are more caring. So that's the way we interpret their behavior, right? It's just like any other bias that says, we tend to pay attention to things that confirm our expectations and ignore things that don't confirm our expectations. But there are, you know, there's some differences in that women tend to be a bit more participative and democratic in their leadership style, and men are a bit more autocratic. But when we think of like the most basic division of tasks and relationship orientation, men and women are pretty similar. And even in terms of effectiveness, men and women are pretty similar. At least the most recent meta-analysis on the topic says, there's not a difference in effectiveness. And if there is a small difference in recent years, it actually favors women that women are somewhat more effective than men. Do you think do you believe it?

Scott Allen : 4:55

Well, I want to unpack this notion, you made a really important statement there that you We can have the exact same behavior by a man and a woman, and they will be interpreted differently. Would you say a little bit more about that?

Stefanie Johnson : 5:07

Yeah, that's actually what really got me interested in this topic in the first place. It was many years ago, maybe the year 2000, something like that. And I was doing one of my first Leadership Studies in graduate school, and it was on military data, it was Air Force. And I was trying to look at the behaviors that predict promotion through the ranks at the Air Force. And I would start to see these like, behaviors that really positively predict for men, and they don't predict for women so just things like being very assertive. And this we still see this today. But being assertive is quite positive for men. But when women are assertive, that same behavior, even if you manipulate it in the lab, exactly the same, and I've done many of these studies where I just use the exact same words to describe men and women, when women do it, it's just perceived as, like overly aggressive. Because it's assertive for a woman. It's like, kind of aggressive, because if we don't expect women to be assertive, then that behavior stands out in a negative way. And, you know, women get a lot of feedback on that, like their style is abrasive. And I think they're probably just doing the same thing that other leaders are doing, but it's inconsistent with what we expect for women to be sensitive. And I don't know about you, but I feel like the same in the classroom. When I tell students, you know that that's your grade. It is it was greeted with a Scantron machine, I'm pretty sure it's accurate, being like more caring and sensitive than one of my male colleagues, because I'm a female professor.

Scott Allen : 6:46

And so, I think the second myth, which is kind of interesting, is that women are not motivated to lead. Now talk about that myth a little bit that I had never even heard that but but apprently that's out there in the literature. Hmm.

Unknown Speaker : 7:02

Yeah. So I think that's another explanation for why there's not more women in leadership is women are just not as interested in leading, maybe they're not as motivated by power. And there is actually a bit of truth to that, like women's motivation for leadership doesn't tend to be one that's just like straight, I want to have power over other people. And there is a gender difference there between men and women, but the actual motivation to lead is again, it's like really similar between men and women. And so I think that's a sort of hollow excuse for Well, "you know, why aren't there more women leaders, let's just blame women, they don't really want to do it." Or, you know, I've heard things like, "oh, they'd rather have a family. They're more focused on balance than their just their career." And all those know, there's always some truth to these things like and and some biases built in, right, like we think we expect women to be more focused on their family because they're women. So we just assume it's true, right?

Scott Allen : 8:09

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so these these biases, this third myth bias, these are extinct. Of course, it's a myth. And we'll talk about some of those biases. You just named a couple. Are there others that that you hear as you do this work that? Well, you know, women want to focus on their family or women aren't as interested in having power? What what are some other things that you hear in your work?

Stefanie Johnson : 8:32

Yeah, no, I think so. Since the Me Too, movement really got, I guess, going again, I don't think that many people believe this myth that there's no bias. Before that, before the me to movement really started, I hear this a lot like when I would talk about unconscious bias that leaders would say, "yeah, we I mean, we recognize there's racial biases are still alive. But do you really think there's still gender bias? Like we've come such a far away women are graduating college at higher rates than men. And I don't really know there's really not bias left." But there is a ton, right? Like if we can imagine many women are treated equally in the workplace. And then we see that something like 80 to 90% of women report being sexually harassed like how how can you make sense of those two comments? Like, women are treated equally, they wouldn't be harassed in the workplace. So I think there's a lot of I think it's maybe kind of desire to maintain the gender dynamic or like the gender hierarchy that many people in society still want women to be in the nurturer/family, kind of stay at home role and, therefore find it threatening when women are powerful in the workplace or have the potential to get ahead like I think it and it's not just men are threatened by women, but any women too, like women are threatened by each other. If there is there's a particularly dominant woman, I think other women, just like other men might feel that she's too aggressive.

Scott Allen : 10:17

Sure. Sure. Well, and that brings me back to that quote that I opened up with that. I would just love to hear your opinions. How do you think the reality, that most of these theories were developed by I could just think of, you know, Bernard Bass and transformational leadership, or Blanchard and Situational Leadership? I mean, a lot of these kind of foundational, Fred Fiedler, right - Contingency Theory. How do you think that impacted the field that that these theories are developed by man the research was conducted on men, it was the data was interpreted by men. Talk a little about how you think about that, because I think it's a fascinating conversation.

Stefanie Johnson : 11:04

Yeah, I think bred feelers is an interesting example, because much of his research on contingency theory was actually done a military sample.

Scott Allen : 11:12

Yes. Yes.

Stefanie Johnson : 11:14

That's just like a lot of men, right? In the examples.

Scott Allen : 11:17

Where did that go? Where did that theory go? Stephanie, because really meta analyses thing. This is the this is the this is the stuff here.

Stefanie Johnson : 11:27

Maybe was too complicated and holds up as much outside of that military context.

Scott Allen : 11:33

Yeah, yeah.

Stefanie Johnson : 11:34

But, you know, it reminds me of this, I read this book, and oh, the name is escaping me. But it looks at health disparities between men and women. And so that's kind of the same thing that you know, even our research in medicine. Drugs were developed by male doctors, for men and tested on men. And then we give those same drugs to women. Or the crash dummies used to Designed seatbelt safety, or man shaped. Again, tiny women can be decapitated by their seatbelt if they're...because if they're small and seatbelts were designed for someone who's average, you know? 5' 10". And so I think this is very pervasive. It's not just a leadership thing, but I think when a lot of these early, early work was done this that was the state of society men were doing the work and Fred Fiedler, I mean, what year is contingency theory? 1963?

Scott Allen : 12:34

Early 70s I was I was a baby.

Stefanie Johnson : 12:39

It makes sense, right? But I think so a lot of the theories like charismatic leadership theory, if you look at the leaders who were talking about as being charismatic, these kind of like bigger than life, very visionary, smooth talking leaders. A lot of the examples that come to mind are men so we've defined charisma. by a male behavior rather than female behavior, and I think that's why so many of our leader leadership theories are very leader centric, like it's, you want to understand leadership, you just look at the leaders behavior rather than considering, you know, how followers are involved in, you know, obviously, we see much more of this. In more recent years follower-centric theories and LMX, like a more relationship focused theory, but I think some of the older theories are very, like, male, very male view of leadership, and we know and women lead, they tend to take a much more participative approach and get more input and, and that isn't the core of what we think of when we think of leadership theories. But I think it's changing. I mean, I think that's the good news. Like, if you have worked with millennials, and this is very, this is a bias, right? Here's my stereotypes, but recently, they want to have input. They want to have a say, and they Want to participate in decisions that affect them. And so, in many ways, I think as leadership evolves, it's becoming more, I guess, I don't know, feminized, less just leader centric, but more about a dynamic group dynamic.

Scott Allen : 14:14

You know, Stephanie, and all of these conversations you were asking me before we went live about, you know why I started the podcast. And, and I think I'd mentioned that I needed something to do with all of my nervous energy as we were, as we were kind of shutting everything down during the first few days of the pandemic. And I also mentioned that I've learned a lot. But a theme across many, many episodes has been this, this focus on the relationship between the leader and the followers. And that was not something I was expecting. But conversation after conversation. I mean, Ron Riggio just said, Look, you can't have leadership without followers. It doesn't exist. It's co created by both and and of course, Barbara Kellerman calls it the leadership system, the leader, followers, in the context. Back to Fred Fiedler. But, it's been it's been a common theme through all of our conversations. And I think we're going to start seeing that emerge. David Day, we were speaking the other day that podcasts will go live in a couple of weeks. But he he highlighted that as an opportunity that we, we talk about leader development. In his case, he calls it leadership development, the team and the group, developing them as a whole, and that's a whole wide open space that we just haven't explored. So I think you're right.

Stefanie Johnson : 15:36

Yeah, I agree. I think you're really hitting the nail on the head that it's, we train leaders because they're the important ones, right? But it's, why don't we train teams, when they're the ones interacting together and we give leaders 360-feedback, why don't we give that to team members? like and there's team member exchange theory. I think that's getting a little more close to what we really experienc in organizations that it's, it doesn't do any good just to train leader like you need to train everyone, so they have a common language and understanding. And that's just a lot more effective than just doing top down - "Oh, just teach the leader and the leader will transfer this information, everyone."

Scott Allen : 16:19

Exactly, exactly. It's like It's like having a baseball team and you've just trained the coach. Exactly, rather than any sense. It makes no sense whatsoever. So let's move let's transition the conversation into and Inclusify your your new book. And I'd love to hear about maybe two or three things that you really enjoy talking about from the book.

Stefanie Johnson : 16:43

Yeah, so I think that the book really stems from this research on leadership and diversity. And probably my more recent findings in the last four or five years are that you know, some leaders are doing a much better job. When it comes to diversity, they organizations are doing a better job, they might have systems and structures that really help create more diverse, more diversity in teams. But, when that diversity gets there, leaders aren't always equipped to deal with it. So they're not necessarily getting the most out of their diverse teams. And as I did the, you know, my work on unconscious bias and diversity. I kept hearing this themes come up of like, well, we have diversity, but we also all of a sudden we have higher turnover, and more conflict. And I'm not getting you know, all of the things that I expected, this creativity of ideas and innovation. And interacting with leaders and their subordinates, I think what it pretty much always came down to is you have diversity but not inclusion. And so that's the point of Inclusify, is to say, "okay, so diversity is good. There's a business necessity, it's an imperative. And you have to be effective at actually managing diversity and making sure that people feel that their voices can be heard." And that's where inclusion comes in. So some things, I think that were interesting in terms of findings. One is, you know, I was, I don't know if surprised, but happy to see in my research that pretty much all leaders want to be inclusive. Hmm. Like, have you ever met a leader who's like, No, I don't want different ideas. I even the ones who don't, right, even the ones where they just really want to hear themselves speak, they still think that they want to be inclusive. Right?

Scott Allen : 18:44

Yeah. Or think of themselves that but then you get into what is it the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

Stefanie Johnson : 18:49

Yes, exactly. There's a very common ways that leaders...I just call it a misstep. It's not that they are doing it. wrong, but that they could use just like a small pivot. And that would help them in their leadership inclusion journey. And so I think the first interesting thing is that people really want to do this, but they're making mistakes. And the second interesting thing is that, man, those mistakes are so consistent. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't trying to write a book. I wasn't...I just kept seeing these, like very consistent patterns emerge. And I would think, "Oh, my gosh, have I interviewed you before?" or I would interview leaders and their subordinates and subordinates would say, like the exact same words about their leader and it was these like prototypes that come up and ways that leaders were trying to get it right. Just don't. Yeah, so one is focusing too much. Well, I guess maybe I should talk about the model I use, Optimal Distinctiveness Theory. And it basically says that if leaders want to create inclusive environments, they need to make sure that people feel like they belong, like they're accepted or valued, but also have their uniqueness recognized so that you want to be distinct, right? I want my uniqueness to be seen, but only to an optimal level. I don't want to be a, like an outcast.

Scott Allen : 20:21

Yes.

Stefanie Johnson : 20:22

And so that's what the idea behind Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, but in organizations for these leaders, there are some leaders who I saw were fantastic at creating belonging, and they hired on culture fit and they built culture, and they made everyone super cohesive, as long as they acted exactly the same as everyone else in their group.

Scott Allen : 20:43

Wow.

Stefanie Johnson : 20:44

And that's a problem, right? Because you're not going to get different perspectives if everyone's just the same all the time. And the reality is, some people aren't the same in that group, but there's no way that everyone's identical but they're not voicing their different views. Because they've been acculturated to fit in rather than stand out.

Scott Allen : 21:05

Yeah, you had mentioned millennials a little bit ago and I see some of this happening with millennials in organizational life where people understand that they need to, to hire a younger workforce in a dynamic workforce. But then, when those people are brought into the culture, some of the old ways of being don't necessarily fit, right? So it's almost as if what I hear you're saying is some people subconsciously or consciously have the mindset of what we've we've hired for diversity. Here we are, and then they haven't changed the culture. They haven't changed norms. People to your point don't necessarily feel like they fit in. And and that's where the challenge occurs. I mean, I would you agree that in some ways, a similar thing happens with younger men and women in the workforce?

Stefanie Johnson : 22:00

Yeah, absolutely. And I think younger does, again is a stereotype. But I think millennials have been raised to think that they can be themselves. Right? They expect to be able to be their unique selves and bring themselves to work and

Scott Allen : 22:20

Rightfully so! Right?

Stefanie Johnson : 22:22

I mean, yeah, but everyone should think that, but I would say, you know, people and at least the baby boom generation, if you're thinking along race lines, or sexual orientation, or even women, like, I think the norm of the day was to fit in. So women in 1980s dressed like men, and at work right. And people of color, tried, I think, to fit in with sort of white societal norms. But I don't know I don't see millennials wanting to do that and no one should really want to do that. But there's more room. It's diverse enough, our society is diverse enough to say, we actually should be making room for all these differences and that we're going to benefit from them. And that's the maybe the third most interesting thing in writing the book was just compiling all of these data on the overwhelming business case for diversity and inclusion.

Scott Allen : 23:23

Wow. So say more about that.

Stefanie Johnson : 23:24

Yeah, I mean, there's tons of data on corporate boards and executive teams that having more diversity in prints everything from stock prices, to return on assets, to innovation innovations. The I think the biggest one and probably explains some of the other findings, that when you have different views, you're better able to come up with novel ideas. And so in at least one study that looked at diversity of companies over time, they found that when companies became more diverse, they actually created more new products each year. And then you see in other studies that took it a step further and looked at innovation, that those effects for diversity are strongest in organizations that value innovation or need to be innovative. And it just makes a ton of sense, right? And like, especially, we haven't talked too much about COVID, other than like, the, kind of the reason you started this podcast, particularly I think in this time is, everything is changing around us. We need innovation. And that means we need diversity of thought, and then we need to ensure that we're hearing those voices and that's inclusion.

Scott Allen : 24:35

Yes, for sure. What other insights did you have in the process or even after the process of publishing the book, what have you heard from others? Or what other insights have you had?

Stefanie Johnson : 24:46

Either one of the things that stands out is a lot of people who have read the books, or the book friends of mine, or you know, acquaintances, have reached out to say, "Oh my gosh, I am one of these people who think I'm doing a good job at diversity and/or inclusion, and I'm not like I'm, I've been doing it wrong." So I think that's been interesting. Like, for example, some women have reached out. There's they there's little prototypes, right? The leader who's very strong on culture, but not uniqueness is a Culture Crusader. But there's lots of men who see themselves - "Yeah, I am a culture crusador," but more surprisingly, there's women who reached out and said, they are a Team Player, which is the kind of female version of a Culture Crusader, who isn't necessarily like what we call a Queen Bee. You know, they're not trying to hurt other women, but they certainly aren't making space to bring other with them. Because they have this feeling of "I made it It must be possible to make it and if you're not making it that's on you."

Scott Allen : 25:54

Wow

Stefanie Johnson : 25:55

And there's, you know, several female colleagues and friends of mine said, Oh, my God, That's me, or that was me, you know that some in much of my career, but now, I'm trying to change that, particularly since Me too, and having recognition that our experiences are not universal. They're our experiences. Yeah, I think that's been kind of cool. Another similar one is there's the white man who, or often it's a white men who, love diversity and inclusion, but are really entering inclusion as like the savior. Like, "I'm gonna save the women who can't get ahead." I call these the White Knight and this isn't it bad. You know, these are bad, but it's like, how do you pivot is by the realization that inclusion isn't about you, saving women, it's about or, or people of color, it's about giving them the space to be successful. Hmm. So several male colleagues, and this is interesting, like every woman I talked to about the White Knight is like, "Oh, I totally had that boss." Who's like we should definitely promote Stephanie we need a woman. And then everyone else in the room just winces, right? Like, ah! The men are like, this is so annoying. The other women are like, Oh my gosh, is making all women look bad, but no men apparently have ever realized that this White Knight exists. Have you ever heard of this idea?

Scott Allen : 27:22

I have not. But I am a white man...

Stefanie Johnson : 27:27

you'll have to take the quiz at https://drstefjohnson.com/matrix/ and see if you're a white knight.

Scott Allen : 27:32

I'm gonna have to reflect Yes. Say more about this concept.

Stefanie Johnson : 27:36

It's just the idea that if if men, and it's true for women too, and people of color can be a White Knight but I call them shepherds are approaching diversity with this idea of, "we need diversity for diversity sake" not promoting women and people of color because of their competence. Then it creates a lot of backlash and we see this I mean even And now with Black Lives Matter movement, how many people have you seen with the "no black lives don't matter all lives matter." When you make something about diversity, there's always going to be people who who refuse like they're like "no," but if you make it about competence like this, "we should be promoting these people because of their ability and what they add to the organization. We need more women, we need more women of color, because it adds to it benefits the organization" and people are more likely to get on board, some of the White Knights, for one thing it made their female employees feel less competent, to have this person saving, trying to save them all the time. And it caused backlash from men who thought, "now I'm never going to get ahead because I'm not a woman." And this person only wants to promote women. And so it's just less effective than it could be. If instead of creating a divide, you're actually bringing people together.

Scott Allen : 28:58

talk more about that, Stephanie. So What are some indicators or some hallmarks that someone is working to bring people together? Rather than kind of be the White Knight?

Stefanie Johnson : 29:09

Yeah, I think it's just bringing everyone into the conversation and, "how we can be a more effective team." So very similar to what you said, at the beginning of our conversation of, you know, why do we focus just on the leader, we should be focusing on everyone. And we know that organizations that have white men involved in diversity and inclusion efforts are far more successful at those efforts. And if we're leaving them out of the conversation, for one, we're missing out on diversity of thought, right? Like I sit in a lot of rooms of women in science, and it's all women talking about how we're going to promote more women in science and we're kind of preaching to the choir, and we're not getting any other views. And if we knew how to do it, we probably would have done it, right? So I think one of the big pieces of advice is to bring everyone together into the Diversity & Inclusion conversation. So you're focusing on not just how to advance women and people of color and women of color, but how can we create a more inclusive workplace for everyone? Because we know that organizations that have white men involved in diversity and inclusion are more effective and that you're going to bring in just like a diversity of thought and perspectives on how we can create more equality, you know, different views.

Scott Allen : 30:25

Yeah. Yeah. But and I just literally this podcast is dropping tomorrow, and I had I had met with Lauren Bullock and Dan Jenkins, they have what's called the Leadership Educator Podcast, and Lauren had a really nice, because we, we, I basically said to them, I said, "so what gaps are you seeing?" and they kind of they kind of started talking about this as a potential opportunity, because this topic, because there isn't a lot out there. I mean, your work and of course, there's the work of Barbara Kellerman, Alice Eagly and some others that have have written in the space, Julie Owen has a new book called We Are The Leaders We've Been Waiting For. But Lauren said something that stood out for me it was pretty powerful. She said, "you know, entering these conversations, it's a mixture of efficacy, confidence and vulnerability, and sometimes acknowledging your own ignorance." So what I'm hearing from you is you, you kind of avoid this White Knight, if you enter the space, that's a very, very important piece as to how you enter the space. And then you're creating the context not necessarily feeling like you have to be the, the savior of the situation. It's about creating space. Is that is that accurate? Is that a piece of this?

Stefanie Johnson : 31:44

I think that's a really a perfect way of saying it. And it's a space that in fact, everyone's going to be more effective in. Often think of, you know, in very command and control, autocratic tendencies, some people call it "toxic masculinity,: like those kind of environments. We know that women and people of color and women of color don't thrive. But in fact, no one thrives in that environment. Everyone suffers. And we just, this is an opportunity now to create more inclusive spaces for everyone, including white men and you know, including persons with disabilities, including LGBTQ it's, we can we have the power to actually post COVID. Since everything is broken, we have to rebuild everything. We can rebuild our organizations in ways that are better than they were before. And so at least there's some positive outcome of this awful experience that we've all been going through for the last five months, the positive outcomes that we can actually do better when we put it back together.

Scott Allen : 32:49

I love I love that. It's a great mindset, right? Because I think our mindset oftentimes is our minds go to what we've lost in this situation. And and it's my more difficult to bring our mindset to what are the opportunities in this situation? What opportunities, does this afford me personally? What opportunity does this afford our organization? And I think it's very, very well said. So, you know, the title of this podcast is practical wisdom. For someone who wants to learn more, either someone who wants to develop their own leadership skills, what would you suggest and maybe for leadership educators who are listening, what would you suggest they explore?

Stefanie Johnson : 33:31

Yeah. So I would read Inclusify if you are leader who wants to work on your inclusive leadership skills. And you can take the quiz to see if you might have a tendency toward one of the prototypes (https://drstefjohnson.com/matrix/), and that'll give you tons of practical tips. And for leadership educators, I would say, try like and I do, I'm doing this too for my own leadership classes. Try to read more about leaders who are not the typical. So if you're choosing cases, if you're talking about scholars, if you're bringing in speakers, consider does, what you're sharing represent society or a very small 31% of society, which is in the US the white male population.

Scott Allen : 34:22

Yeah.

Stefanie Johnson : 34:22

And if it's not reflecting society, then I'd say, try to add some leaders who might look a little different or a little more like your students or a little more like society as a whole. And in doing so, I think that'll improve each of our own education, but also our students education, for sure.

Scott Allen : 34:39

Very well said, very well said. So as we as we close down for our talk here, I always ask a couple of questions towards the end. And so, is there anything that you've been reading or watching maybe it's something you've been streaming that's really stood out for you in recent weeks or recent months over the summer?

Stefanie Johnson : 34:58

Yeah, I watched the Morning Show. It's, I think on Apple TV, and it's about sexual harassment. And at the same time, it was like on a trip so this is pre COVID, I guess but read Ronan Farrow's book, I can't think of the title...Catch and Kill, and it's also about sexual harassment. And, maybe it was the combination of those two things maybe either one would have done it but it really reinforced just this importance of recognizing the toxicity of sexual harassment in organizations and how it's so systemic. And you know, them. There's a lot of really evil people. But what stood out to me in the book and in this is a TV show, so it's fictional, but we're the people who are like not, they're not evil people, but they're bystanders and they're, they're not doing anything about it and how that is, I mean, to me that the real tragedy that so many people do nothing, and that they could really make a change if they just like kind of stepped up, and I know both those were like very emotional for me to read and watch and I think good, good for anyone to check out.

Scott Allen : 36:15

Yes. The something that stands out to me even as you were talking as I was watching a there's a there's a mini series on USA Gymnastics, which it's not just the workplace. I mean, in athletics, what what those young women endured for years at the hands of Larry Nasser, a physician who had power. It's, it's toxic, it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. And it's hard to believe that it still exists.

Stefanie Johnson : 36:44

I know. Right? Yeah, that's why I thought watching those these like, these are recent scandals, right. And oh, yeah. And I'm sure they're still going on. Right. Although, I wonder with COVID if, like, I actually justdid a study like can we sexual harassment still exist if you've never see your co workers and we're finding it it does.

Scott Allen : 37:06

Really?

Stefanie Johnson : 37:07

It does.

Scott Allen : 37:08

In what forms just out of curiosity, what is it? Is it subtle? Is it overt is it what are you? What are you finding?

Stefanie Johnson : 37:15

I'm finding like text messaging and emails, some sketchy comments over zoom, which to me, I'm like, all this is recorded like, "Are you kidding me?" Yeah. Yeah. Scary. Dumb. Right? Yeah, number on a number of levels. a) It's wrong. B) to your point. It's being recorded, whether it's a text or an email or a zoom chat. I mean, it's hard to believe that that still exists. It just is.

Scott Allen : 37:44

For sure.

Stefanie Johnson : 37:45

Stephanie, anything you want to leave people with as we close out for the day? How can they find out more about you and more about the book? Yeah, so there's a website, https://inclusifybook.com and my website is https://drstefjohnson.com.

Scott Allen : 38:00

Awesome, awesome. Well, I really, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for this conversation. I know that our listeners will have a lot to reflect upon. And thank you for the work that you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.