Description of the video:

Alrighty. Good afternoon and thank you for coming, everybody. My name is Patrick Kelly, one of the members of the ITLC Workshop Action Team. Today, we are happy to present a workshop on increasing diversity and reducing bias in hiring hosted by Morgan Bell. Morgan is an HR business partner with UITS Human Resources here at Indiana University and is also a member of the ITLC Diversity and Inclusion Action Team. Today's workshop is cosponsored by the ITLC Diversity and Inclusion Action Team, as well as the IU Women in Technology Teams. If you'd like more information or to get involved with the ITLC, please visit our website at itlc.iu.edu. And before I hand it off to Morgan, there are just a few housekeeping items to address. Joining me are team members Francis Fernandez and Marina Krenz. You will see them listed as cohosts during this meeting. Please feel free to message any of us if you have any questions or need any assistance. Please make sure to keep your microphone on mute during the workshop, although we will have time for questions and answers during the workshop and afterwards. The slides from the presentation and a captioned video recording will be made available on our website at a later date. Thank you and we hope you enjoy today's workshop. Thank you, Morgan. The room is now yours.

All right, thank you, Patrick. Let me share my screen. All right, can everyone see me? All right, so thank you guys for joining me today for my talk on increasing diversity and reducing bias in hiring. So just a brief introduction into who I am and what we're going to be talking about today. My name is Morgan Bell, like Patrick said, and I am an HR business partner for UITS, the HR team. I received my bachelor's degree from IU in 2018 where I have a major in sociology and minors in gender studies and human resource management. And when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree, I started working as an HR assistant for the College of Arts and Sciences. And then once I graduated, I joined University HR on the talent acquisition team, first as a coordinator, and then later as a specialist. And then about a year a half ago, I made the transition over to UITS and joined the HR team as an HR generalist, and now most recently, as an HR business partner. And so what we're going to be talking about today, first we're just going to go through a broad overview of what is unconscious bias and then I'm going to talk to you guys about some different types of bias. There are tons, so I have just chosen some of the select few that I feel like we see pretty often during the hiring process. And I'm going to give you some tips on how you can try to reduce bias in the hiring process. And then we'll also go through how you can try to increase diversity in your candidate pools. And lastly, we'll talk briefly about the interviewing process. So to dive on in, what is unconscious bias? So unconscious bias, also commonly called implicit bias, are the learned attitudes or stereotypes that exist in our subconscious and can involuntarily affect the way that we think and act. We are constantly inundated with information as humans, too much for us to process, which is why our brains develop shortcuts to help us process all of this information and assist in decision making. Unfortunately, these shortcuts can lead us to make decisions that aren't truly based in fact. Everyone has unconscious bias. It's not something to be ashamed of. It's something to be aware of so that you can do something to help combat it. And so how do we eliminate unconscious bias? To put it simply, you eliminate unconscious bias by making it conscious. By acknowledging that you have bias, you take more care to think through your decision making instead of letting your brain take those shortcuts. And by learning about the different types of bias, you can take active measures to avoid them or recognize them should they arise. You can learn more about your own biases by taking Harvard's Implicit Association Test. I've taken a couple of these tests and they're simple mental exercises where you're asked to categorize words and pictures, but they can help you give a better understanding of where your biases may lie. So there are a few strategies that you can apply across the board that will help you reduce unconscious bias. The first is to start conducting redactive resume reviews. I'll talk more about these later on, but redactive resume reviews are when you have someone remove content from a resume. With the intention of reducing the resume down to the essential information, the education and experience. And reduce potential bias that could come from identifiable information. You can also work on reducing bias by having diverse hiring committees. This brings different perspectives together and blends the mindset of everyone involved, helping you to think through things in a different way and stop your brains from taking those shortcuts. It's also important to have multiple people involved in the hiring process to help hold everyone accountable and make sure that the process is done in a fair and equitable way. And speaking of fair and equitable, the next thing that you can do to try and reduce bias is to use consistent hiring practices. Decide on a hiring process and use it as broadly as you can across all of your hiring and with each candidate you speak to. And lastly, do not research your candidates on social media. Don't do it. All you're doing is exposing yourself to potential bias. So before I move on to my next section, I wanted to stop and see if anyone has any questions, and if you do, you can throw them in the chat. [ Silence ] Okay. It looks like maybe no questions. Oh, there's one. "What about candidate who includes links to LinkedIn? Aren't they inviting us to look at their profiles?" That's a great question from Renee. Yes, they are inviting you to look at their profile. However, when it comes to reducing bias, that's not what you want to do even if they are saying, "Hey, it's okay." You know, that is something that you still want to not do that, at least until they make it further into the interview process. Maybe once you have brought them in to in-person interviews and you've already met them, then maybe it would be okay to take a look at their LinkedIn profile. But personally, I suggest not looking up any form of social media. [ Silence ] Okay, so some of these questions I'm seeing I am going to talk about a little bit later in my presentation. Some questions about how do you do redactive resume review. Lots of good questions, but I'll answer that a little further on. But then if you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask me, again, at the end, and I'll be sure to address that. Oh, another great question. "We've had potential candidates provide links to their website when they are graphic designers to get an understanding of their work. What do you recommend in that situation?" So it's always great, especially when you have creative positions like graphic designers, that you may want a portfolio from someone. If you do go out to their website to take a look at their work, I would just be careful to stay away from anything like an about us section, about me section, something like that. But what I would personally recommend is actually just to reach out to them and ask them to send you a portfolio of their work. Yeah. All right, so now we're going to talk about some different types of bias. So the first type that we're going to talk about is gender bias. Gender bias is the favoring of one gender over another. Usually this is men being favored over women. However, it can be in the reverse. This type of bias is especially important to be conscious of working in the IT area because that is a field that is largely dominated by men. And you can reduce gender bias by conducting redactive resume reviews. And you can also reduce gender bias by supporting employees who identify as women or female in their pursuit of leadership opportunities. I know that the thought of losing an employee can - to a promotional opportunity can be a little daunting. But we want to encourage our employees to pursue opportunities that are good for them and good for our organization, even if it means potentially losing them from your team. So next, we'll talk about age bias. Age bias is another type of bias that can be prevalent in the IT area. Age bias, also referred to as ageism, is the stereotyping of someone based on their age. Society tends to portray IT as a young man's game. And sometimes we even see this bias in our own processes. For example, the grandma test. This is something that I learned about when I came to UITS, and the grandma test is essentially testing technology for how user friendly it is, i.e., could your grandma use it. But language like this furthers the societal assumption that people who are older are unwilling or unable to learn new technology, which is not true. And it also furthers the societal assumption that young people are better with technology, which is also not true. I am living proof of that. There is a reason that I am in HR and it's because I am not great with technology. I remember when I was in my undergraduate degree I has a group project where I had to create a website and I was so frustrated. I was about to throw my computer out the window. So age really has nothing to do with it. And you can reduce age bias in hiring by redacting information from resumes that may suggest age, such as the year that a degree was obtained. So, for example, let's say that your team is taking on a new project that requires you to use a new system that everyone on the team is unfamiliar with. You're going to have to select someone on your team to go and get trained in this new technology. And then they will become the project manager who will then come back and teach the rest of the team on that technology. And so you're having to select a person for this promotional opportunity and you find yourself wanting to select Ryan. He is the newest addition to your team, but he's proven himself to be a real go-getter, and you think that he would pick up on the newest system the quickest. But where is your evidence for that? Age bias may be playing in to your decision to select Ryan instead of one of the more senior members on your team who has more experience and knowledge of your team's processes. So next, we have name bias. This is the tendency to prefer certain names, usually white-sounding names, over others. So name bias goes hand in hand with racial bias. Studies show that applicants with traditionally black-sounding names are 10% less likely to get an interview compared to applicants with white-sounding names. This type of bias is most often seen in the interview - I mean, sorry, in the recruitment process when a resume or an application is thrown out without an in-depth, thorough review. And by redacting names from resumes, you can help combat name bias by making the review process all about the qualifications. Beauty bias. This is the favoring or positive stereotyping of people who fit cultural standards of beauty and beauty bias can also go hand in hand with racial bias. You can fight this kind of bias by redacting pictures from resumes, not researching your candidates on social media, and conducting phone screens to learn more about your candidates. Before bringing them in for in-person interviews. So next, we have the halo and the horn effect. So first impressions are important, right? Well, when it comes to bias, first impressions can certainly make a difference. The halo and the horn effects are the way that our perceptions of someone can be altered positively or negatively based on very little information. Someone who is affected by this type of bias is going to ignore any new information that contradicts their viewpoint. So, for example, let's say that you are on your way to an interview, and you're driving, and you're drinking your coffee, and you hit a pothole, and coffee spills all over your shirt. When you walk in to your interview with a big old coffee stain on your shirt, you may not make the best first impression. But it doesn't actually have anything to do with how qualified you are for the role. You're just having a bad day. But a hiring manager may see you show up to an interview with a coffee stain all over your shirt and think, "This person is not going to be a good fit for this job. Clearly they're sloppy. They aren't going to be organized enough to do this work." In this situation, the hiring manager is letting the horn effect influence their decision making. And next, we have affinity problems. This is the tendency to want to hire people that we have something in common with because they make us feel comfortable. So a term that I'm sure you're all familiar with is culture fit. You want to hire someone who's going to mesh well with the internal culture of your team. However, hiring managers often mistake affinity bias for culture fit, and this leads to a team - to a workplace that lacks diversity. And so, for example, I am a member of the queer community. And I know that I tend to feel most comfortable when I'm surrounded by people who also identify as a part of that community because we have a shared lived experience. However, if I let my comfortability with members of my own community influence my hiring decisions, then I'm being affected by affinity bias. And then we also have effect bias. This is allowing emotions to drive our decision making. So, for example, let's say that you have had multiple employees resign at once, greatly reducing your staff count and forcing everyone on your team to take on a larger workload. You may be feeling tired from all the extra work that you're doing and angry at the employees who left without giving you two-weeks' notice. And scared of what the future of your team is going to look like. We often hear hiring managers say something like, "It doesn't really matter who we hire. We just need someone in a chair." And this is an understandable attitude in the moment. But it can lead to very bad hiring decisions that are going to create larger problems for your organization later on. As a hiring manager, it's important to let cooler heads prevail, and take a step back from those emotionally-charged situations, and make carefully considered hiring decisions. An easy way to remember it is HATS, hungry, angry, tired, and scared. You should never make any big decisions when you are hungry, angry, tired, or scared. All right, confirmation bias. This is processing information in a way that confirms your own beliefs or assumptions about a person or situation. So I think that this Venn diagram does a great job explaining confirmation bias because you have your beliefs and then you have the facts and evidence. And where they overlap, that's the evidence that you're going to believe, and where they don't, that's the evidence that you're going to ignore or explain away because it does not match your belief. So, for example, let's say you are looking at a resume where a candidate has a bachelor's degree from a community college. And you make the assumption that because they did not attend a university, they aren't going to be a good fit for this position even though they fit all of the minimum qualifications for the job. Once you have made that assumption, confirmation bias is going to have you interpreting all of their experience as irrelevant. Perhaps telling yourself that the positions aren't comparable or that your company operates at a much higher level than the experience listed, and that's all before speaking with the candidate. Next, we have contrast bias. This is comparing and contrasting candidates against the previous. So contrast bias can lead hiring managers looking for perfection, which is unrealistic. When interviewing, you should compare candidates and their answers to the position to gauge the relevancy of their answer or experience. If you're always comparing candidates to each other, then no one's going to be good enough because everyone has strengths and weaknesses. You can reduce contrast bias by comparing each candidate and their answers to the interview questions to the position and not to each other to gauge the relevancy of their answer or experience. So for an example, let's say that you have Candidate A who did super-well in an interview and answered nine out of ten of the questions perfectly. But maybe didn't provide an ideal answer to Question Number 3. And then you have Candidate B, who didn't do very well in the interview overall, but they answered perfectly to Question Number 3. A hiring manager who's clouded by contrast bias is going to get caught up on comparing these two candidates, wishing that Candidate A had answered Question Number 3 like Candidate B did. Instead of focusing on the importance of the question and how it relates to the position. So a quick pop quiz. Lee is a hiring manager looking to hire a software engineer. He conducted blind resume reviews. He followed by a phone screening and then he has narrowed it down to two candidates that he would like to interview, Lauren and Corey [assumed spelling]. Now after the interviews are conducted, everyone on the hiring committee thinks that Lauren is the right person to hire. However, Lee thinks that Corey [assumed spelling] will be the best fit and decides to hire him, anyway. What type of bias could have factored in to this decision? Anyone wants to throw some answers into the chat? We'll see what you guys say. All right, yes, I see an affinity bias. Yeah, that definitely could be affecting this situation. And gender bias, as well. Yeah, that could definitely be a factor in this situation. So good job. You guys passed the test. How about another one? So let's say that you are reviewing a resume for someone who graduated from MIT, and you see that they went to MIT, and you are instantly impressed, and know that you want to talk to this candidate. But as you continue looking over the rest of their resume, you notice that they haven't stayed in a single position for more than a couple of months, and some of them even less than a month. But since they graduated from MIT, you're thinking that it must be a problem with those other companies, not with the candidate. What type of bias could account for this type of thinking? Yes, the halo effect. Confirmation bias, too. Yeah, both of those. Good job. Everyone gets an A. So before I move on to my next section, does anyone have any questions about that section? [ Silence ] Okay. So now we're going to talk about increasing diversity in the candidate pools. And so avoiding gender bias in your job openings can help you gain more applicants who identify as women, leading to greater diversity in the workplace. There are a few simple things that you can do to help avoid gender bias in job postings. The first being removing pronouns from job postings. Removing pronouns will help you recruit more candidates who identify as women or gender nonconforming. You can also remove language bias using tools like Gender Decoder. This is a tool that you can use for free where you just copy and paste your text into the website and it will highlight the words that are gender coded. And that way, you can either try to remove those words completely from a job opening or you can try to balance the gendered language in your job opening. So that it contains both masculine and feminine words. You can also remove superlatives like expert from your job opening to help you recruit more candidates who identify as women and who value a more collaborative versus competitive workspace. And research has shown that while men will apply for a position if they meet only 60% of the qualifications, women won't apply unless they meet 100% of the qualifications. So keeping your requirements to the bare essentials needed to perform the position and not adding tons of preferred qualifications can help you recruit more candidates who identify as women. So a few more. One of the best selling points to candidates are the benefits and IU has tons of family-friendly benefits that you can use to help recruit more candidates who identify as women. You can talk about our generous PTO plans, paid parental leave, flexible working hours, or remote work, just to name a few. And candidates also want to know that they're joining an organization that has the same values as them. So talking up the inclusive culture of your team or any current JEDI work that you're doing, that's justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Any of those efforts you can talk up in the department information as a great way to let candidates know the kind of environment that you support. And then lastly, you can go straight to the source. You can advertise your position on job boards whose main priority is diverse recruitment. And here are some examples of those job boards. So if you maybe don't have a ton of budget for advertising your position, I have some free or lower-cost options. You can advertise to the Black Career Women's Network for free, as well as Pink Jobs, which targets candidates who are a part of the LGBTQ community. And you can also advertise your job for free on LinkedIn. That's not a, you know, diverse recruiting board. That's just something that I like to make sure that everyone knows about because it's a great way to get information out there about your position. And you can post with Diversity for Social Impact for $69 for a 30-day posting. You can also post with Career Contessa, which targets women who are in the early stages of their career, and you can post with them for $100 for a 30-day posting. If you do have a little bit of budget to work with to advertise your position, there are some additional options. You can post with diversity.com or blackjobs.com. You can also post with the Professional Diversity Network, and when you post with them, you will also post to all of their affinity sites. And that includes Ability Careers, Pride Careers, Women's Career Channel, Military to Career, Asian Career Network, Black Career Network, and iHispano. You can also advertise with workplacediversity.com and Hispanic Latino Professionals Association. Okay. Does anyone have any questions there before we move on to the next section? Someone asked if I will be providing a link to my presentation. I won't personally, but ITLC. I have sent over my presentation to them, so they will make it available for everyone. And does IU post on any of these specific job websites by default? No. These are not the websites that we post to by default. There are some websites that automatically scrape IU postings, but these are additional ones that you can select to post with. All right, so now let's talk about interviewing. So just briefly going over the interview process. The first thing that you're going to do is select your hiring committee and begin screening those resumes. Once you've started to narrow that pool down a little bit, you'll start conducting phone screens, talking to your candidates, getting to know a little bit more about them. So that you can continue narrowing down that candidate pool. Then you'll move on to first round of interviews followed by optional second-round interviews. And hopefully, by the end of that, you're able to make a selection for who you would like to hire. But if not, there's nothing wrong with considering it a failed opening and going back to the screening process. So selecting a hiring committee. Your hiring committee should reflect your team's commitment to diversity. Committees should be as diverse as possible and avoid tokenism. And you should consider including people who are outside of your team but who frequently partner with you. Constituents or stakeholders who are familiar with the position and what it requires but can bring a different perspective to the search than the people who are currently on your team. So redactive resume review. Redactive resume review, which is also most frequently called blind resume review but I find that language to be ableist so I have created my own term which is redactive resume review. And this is the process of removing demographic, identifying, or personal information from resumes before you begin reviewing them. This focuses the review process on what really matters, the qualifications, and can help reduce many types of bias, as we've seen. You'll want to have a third party remove identifying or personal information such as the name, address, phone number, e-mail, graduation date, educational institution, and hobbies. So this is a graph that does a good job of explaining how to do redactive resume reviews. So you'll want to remove the name and the e-mail to help prevent race or gender bias. You'll want to remove the address and the phone number to remove bias - to prevent bias based on location or socioeconomic status. You'll want to remove the school name from the education section to prevent bias based on perceived prestige of a school, which goes hand in hand with socioeconomic bias or school rivalry. Unfortunately, we do hire people who went to Purdue. And you'll also want to remove the graduation date if it's listed and this is going to help reduce age bias. You'll also remove any volunteer experience or hobbies. This is additional personal information that can introduce bias and doesn't offer much to the position. What you'll want to keep are the work experience, the skills, and the certifications, because this is the information that's truly relevant to the position. So the interviewing structure. When it comes to interviewing, you're going to want to follow these key guidelines. First is that all of your interviews should be structured. This means that you have a set list of questions for every candidate and every candidate is asked those same questions. This is going to help to make sure that candidates are treated equally and gives you a baseline to judge your candidates against. With structured interviewing, you're going to have a set list of questions going in to the interview. So decide who will ask which questions before the interview starts and do not ask a diverse hiring committee member to ask questions related to diversity. This is a form of tokenism that we want to avoid. And as you ask the questions, ask them exactly as they are written. This ensures that all of your candidates are treated equally and no candidate is given an advantage based on how the question is phrased. Panel interviewing. This can be really intimidating for candidates but it offers a lot of benefits. Panel interviewing allows you to get multiple perspectives on an interview and having a diverse interviewing panel is going to help you expand that perspective even further. Panel interviewing is also beneficial for candidates as they get a variety of answers to the questions that they may have. And behavioral-based interviewing. This is the idea that past behavior predicts future behavior. In behavioral-based interviews, you'll ask candidates questions about their past experience that directly relates to the skills needed to perform the job that they're interviewing for. So if you're hiring for a position that is largely customer-focused, you may ask a question like. "Tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult customer. How did you handle the situation and what was the resolution?" Learning about how the candidates has handled tricky customers in the past is going to give you a better understanding of how they would perform in the role. And lastly, understand that many candidates are not familiar with behavioral-based interviewing. So it can be a good idea to prepare your candidates for the type of interview that you're going to be hosting. You can tell them about the STAR methods. STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result. And this method will help candidates better understand the type of answer that you're looking for with behavioral-based interviews so that they give you all of the relevant information. So what questions do we have? So we do have one here. "What if the volunteer experience is directly relevant?" Yes, if it is directly relevant volunteer experience, then please do keep it. What we want to avoid is volunteer experience that may also include identifying factors for the candidate. So if I were to say, you know, that I volunteer with a Pride organization, that may be something that you want to redact because that can give information about the candidate. [ Silence ] Oh, yeah, and how do we handle follow-up questions? Should they be allowed? Follow-up questions are definitely allowed in the interviewing process and those are going to depend on the candidate's answer. So you don't have to be consistent in your follow-up questions. Penny, I can see a question on here that says, "So maybe remove the organization info." Can you expand on that question a little more? Ah, re volunteer experience. Yes, so if you can just get rid of, you know, like say someone did volunteer experience in web design. If you can just get rid of the specific organization that maybe has some identifying information and just focus on what the actual content of their volunteer experience was, that would be best. So Renee asked, "Are there any training materials available for people who we want to help with redacting? It seems like a pretty detail-oriented, nuanced job." We don't currently have any trainings available, but that is a great idea, and if that's something that, you know, people are interested in, I would be happy to create a training. That way you could start adopting that practice within your teams. [ Silence ] Does anyone else have any questions? Oh, it looks like maybe I missed one. Okay, so how does a cover letter fit in with this process? That's a good question. So that is something that can be kind of flexible. So I would recommend doing the first screening of resumes without taking a look at the cover letters and doing it redacted. And then once you start to narrow your pool down further, then you can start to look at the cover letters. Are there any other questions or any that I missed? [ Silence ] So I'm not seeing any other questions coming in, but I will leave you guys with our contact information. You can contact us at - oh, one just came in. "Do you have recommendations for what to ask for references and what type of info to share when ask for a reference?" So that's a good question. So references don't typically come in until the very end of the process. And at that point, you know, we are less concerned with bias in the process because someone has most likely already been selected when you're asking for references. Another great question. "So sometimes the cover letter explains a desired job change. Sometimes we remove resumes based on seemingly unrelated experience. How would you suggest handling that?" So my recommendation when you're doing those redactive resume reviews. Is if you think that you have one where this may be a situation that you want to know a little more about the candidate's history. You know, maybe they seem to have some good experience but maybe they have a weird gap in employment or something like that that doesn't seem to fit. You can keep them in the mix and keep them in the mix a little longer until you do get to that phase where you start going through cover letters and looking for that additional information. [ Silence ] So I'm not seeing any others come in. We'll see - oh, there's another one. "So do you have any best practices for putting together job postings that don't imply an unnecessary educational barrier to entry, i.e., this position does not necessarily require a four-year college degree?" So, Ava, if I think that I'm understanding your question. It sounds like maybe you're looking at how to put together a job posting if the qualifications maybe seem too high for what's really required for the position. In which case you may want to look at reclassifying that position so that the requirements are a better fit for what the job truly entails. If I understood you correctly. [ Silence ] Yes, yes. Like removing gendered language, but removing, you know, a bachelor's degree. Yes, you can definitely look at reevaluating that position. And speaking of gender language, thank you for bringing that up. If you use a tool like Gender Decoder and you find gendered language that you want to remove. Unfortunately, with a lot of the career navigator information, that information is automatically pulled into our job postings and we don't have a ton of flexibility with changing it. So what you can always do is trying to balance those terms by using both masculine and feminine terms. Or you can reach out to your HR business partner and try to work with compensation to get that language adjusted at the University HR level. [ Silence ] Okay, so it looks like maybe there are no more questions now. So I'll go ahead and give you guys our contact information. If you think of questions later on or you want to follow up with me on anything that I talked about today, you can reach out to the UITS HR team at uitshr@iu.edu or you can reach out to me personally. My e-mail is bellmo@iu.edu. >> All right. Thank you, once again, to Morgan for this great workshop. I hope you all found this enjoyable, and educational, and are able to take something back to your respective teams, as I know I can. The slides and recording from today will be posted on the ITLC website. And if you have any questions or would like to get involved with the ITLC, please feel free to reach out to me, or to David Goldberg, or visit our website at itlc.iu.edu. And thank you, once again, to our cosponsors IU Women in Technology and Indiana University Inclusion Action Teams. And thank you all for coming. Have a great day.

Description of the video:

Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us. My name is David Goldberg. I'm chair of the ITLC workshop Action Team. And today we are happy to host a workshop on becoming an ally presented by Catherine Matthews. Catherine is a Senior Consultant with Indiana University talent and organizational development and is an expert on teaching leadership and professional development. And has been a longtime friend and collaborator with the ITLC, including our IT Leadership Boot Camp, as well as the upcoming Statewide IT pre-conference. We are incredibly thankful for the time that she'll be spending with us today and we're excited for us all to become better allies together. Today's workshop is also co-sponsored by IU Women In Technology, as well as the diversity and inclusion action team. If you'd like to know more information or get involved with any of our teams. Please visit our website at ITLC.IU.edu. So thank you and we hope you enjoy today's workshop. Catherine room is now yours. Welcome, everyone. I am so glad to be here with you all today. It's been a while since I've facilitated for this group, maybe even pre-pandemic david. Those certainly I have enjoyed IT boot camp during the pandemic, but I'm very glad to be here with you all. As David said, my name is Catherine and I have the great, good pleasure of doing oh my goodness, my computer just locked me for a second. Excuse me. I always love it when I'm recorded and have moments like that. So my job involves big picture things like strategic planning and change management initiatives. I do individual coaching and teamwork and then workshops like this. One thing that I want to say before we get started is we're not going to cover everything, right? There's all kinds of stuff that we can talk about around allyship. And I have just pulled some, um, I believe, important and useful pieces out of allyship, but we are not gonna be able to cover everything. So I want you all from the very beginning here of this workshop to keep in mind that this session is just a starting point. Maybe some of you are already well on your allyship journey, but it's just a point in time over a lifetime of work. So I want us to think about that. I might give advice that some of you disagree with. I might not give advice that some of you wish I had. I accept that and I hope that you all will. Whoa, what we'll be able to accept that as well. Though I will say if you think I make any serious missteps are transgressions in this workshop, I I encourage you to contact me directly so that so that I can receive that feedback and process it for the future. I am I am a work in progress and I hope that you-all will help me learn. So we're going to dive right in. I wanted to put something here as a chat opportunity so that we could warm up a little bit as we think about allyship. So if you're willing, please put into the chat your responses to the first question. Okay? It'll be easier for me to, to track if we're all answering the same question at the same time. So let's see what happens here. Thanks David. Kicking us off there. Alright, action over intention, using my privilege to take concrete actions, tearing down systems of injustice. Great. Thank you both for that. Anybody else? What do you think about? It doesn't have to be a definition. It can be a value or a purpose or support for one another and a way to build trust, empathy. Now they're just rolling in taking part in justice movements, supporting people, artists in business, joining efforts. I apologize you all if I miss anybody's creating space for authentic belonging. Belonging is a key piece here. Hey else, standing up and speaking out for those who are underrepresented? Yeah. Genuine relationships. I see listening to needs of others doing what is within my ability to support them. Pointing out when someone has wronged someone else. Alright, great. Okay, so we're getting a little, a little warmed up. Then let's switch to the next question. What benefit do you see? Why do we do this? Why are you here? Okay, I see another authentic interactions. Okay, make life better for others for the world. What else do you have? Benefits? To minimize inequities? Encourage diversity of thought and learning, improve the work environment. Hopefully educate. Yeah, We are in higher Ed after all, we should all be learning all the time. People need to feel safe and have a sense of community and making them feel included. I think that connects to the response earlier about belonging. I'll give you about ten more seconds. See if anybody there we go. Helping others, promoting others, learning from others, improving culture to continue to learn to be a better colleague, friend, teammate. Alright. Improve as a leader. Yeah, great. Thank you for that. I appreciate they're still coming in. Create a supportive atmosphere. Sure enough. Alright, so being an ally is about recognizing the ways that you haven't had to experience something, likely something very negative, simply because of who you are, right? You haven't had to deal with it because of something about your identity or your experience, really at a core level. And then using that, that privilege, that privilege in solidarity with marginalized or underrepresented groups. I tend to use the word marginalized, but, but I know that underrepresented is still a pretty common term in higher ed. Then there's an extra piece. So I need to recognize my privilege. The ways that I have not had to experience certain negative things. Using that privilege for other people to challenge the status quo. That's what we're about. And I think that your answers in chat really have, as I scroll back through them a little bit, really have touched on all of these elements. So you all, and thank you for that. One thing to know about allyship is that it involves discomfort. It involves being open to experiencing discomfort. It involves listening and learning. So we're going to talk about those pieces. More specifically as we go through today. You all mentioned a lot of really, really good benefits. I would like to throw in just a few more ideas or perhaps repeat some of them. You know, when we're, when we are using everyone's talents. And that's, the goal here, is to use everyone's talents. That means that individuals get to give their best. That also means that individuals get to receive the best from other people. The team benefits. As a result, the people we serve work for the reasons for our workplace missions. They benefit as well. And of course, it is just again that belonging piece. People, people need to have the opportunity to be who they are in the workplace. We hear, i'm I'm part of a team within EHR. And so I hear a lot. People bring their whole selves or should be able to bring their holds wholesales to the workplace. But that is often not the case for people in marginalized populations. They just simply don't get to bring their whole selves to the workplace and we wanna be able to encourage that. Ken has asked a question here. Does the term allyship always involve pairing privilege with marginalization? Can I think I would like you to give me a little bit more on your question here. Make sure I understand what you're saying. Alright, I guess I'm surprised to hear that. It's definitely even. That it's a privilege person and sticking out for a marginalized person couldn't just be, I'm your friend and therefore I'm going to advocate for you. Does it have to be about classes of people? Okay, thank you very much for that clarification. In the context of DEI, I would say allyship is understood to be that kind of pairing. Certainly we can be friends with each other and we can advocate for each other out of that place of friendship. But in DEI terms, allyship is a specific concept or a specific notion. And we're going to have a slide in a little bit about the kinds of differences that are possible for us to consider. So I appreciate that you've asked this question here at the very beginning. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna say again, in DEI terms, ally ship does mean advocating on behalf of others who are often in underrepresented or marginalized spots. Yes. Dei, diversity, equity and inclusion. And also it has become, I don't know if I'm going to say common yet, but more common to see DEI B, which is diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, because belonging is its own concept. Alright, just checking the chat to make sure. And yes, Peter. Thank you. And Jessie, thank you for that. Dei J. I actually haven't seen that one, so I'd say I've already learned something new and it's whatever. What time is it? 12. So that's fantastic. Thank you for that. So for those of you who are leaders, you have a really as a special impact through your role. There. There has been some recent research that says what leaders say and do can account for about 70% of how individual employees feel around inclusion, around welcoming, Around welcome or belonging. So leaders have an outsized impact. But I will argue that we are all leaders in some way. And we all have the opportunity to, to be welcoming and inclusive and to contribute to a sense of, of true belonging in the workplace. And I want to pause here and say that there are 45 people. Will not counting me, I guess, but there are 45 people here who, who see themselves as having an opportunity to make a real positive contribution to the workplace and to the lives of colleagues. And I am thrilled, thrilled to be here with you all today. So there is David was right. I will provide the slides after the session is over. I'm also going to provide resources. So you'll have some places to continue exploring as you, as you would like and as you as your schedule allows, right? But one of the resources I used, I'm Melinda Briana Kepler and she just this well, I guess now it's 2021 this, so this past year wrote a book on being an ally. And she's, according to her research, when a person has at least one ally in the workplace, their likelihood of feeling psychologically safe rises by 35%, 35% just because they have one ally in the workplace. So think about the impact that you all are going to have, that you do have and will continue to have. It's just incredibly significant. They are 81% more likely to report feeling that they belong. 79% more likely to report being satisfied with their workplace culture. Again, allies have a huge impact on the workplace and on the lived experiences of colleagues. So we're going to dive in now, see what we can get two. Alright, so you can see this quotation here by the author I just mentioned. Allyship is empathy and action. We're going to talk a fair bit today about empathy. I believe that you all are here for action. So I think this is going to This is going to sum up really what we're trying to do today. Empathy and action. Allies use their influence wherever they are, whatever their role is, to bring people from underrepresented or marginalized groups into new circles, into new opportunities, and then they actively support their colleagues in that space. So we are talking about action. We're not talking about being behind the scenes. Mentors were not. Certainly mentoring is good and I value it and I encourage you to do it if you are not a mentor for somebody. But we're talking more about public action today and ways to make these issues and our colleagues more visible and more engaged. Not for their lack of trying, but for a system's lack of welcome. And by the way, I didn't say, if you all have questions, of course put them in the chat. I will try very hard to keep up with that. If you feel that I have overlooked somebody or missed somebody, please just tell me it takes a village to raise a Catherine. So just let me know if you have if you think that I've missed something in the chat, I'm happy to be called out in that way. Also, if you have questions or comments, please signal and let me know because this is, this is a learning experience for everyone. And so let's see. Will the resource have the citation for definition? Yes. As a matter of fact, it came from an article. I have that ready for you off with the link. Alright, so the first place we're going to start today is around individual differences. And these are, as you can see on the screen, characteristics that distinguish one person from another. So I'm going to list them here in just a moment. But I want, I want us to be open to the list. Some of these are differences that we traditionally think about and others are not. And so I want us to recognize that individual differences in the ways that we can be drawn to or be repelled from or want to support or not want to support people. They can come from lots of different kinds of difference. And so some of these may not seem very familiar, others will seem familiar. It is not an exhaustive list. So if you see that I have left out something that's important to you, please put it in chat and I'll ask David for the chat transcript after the session is over so that I can make adjustments to this workshop. Thanks David. A little thumbs up from there. Alright, so here are just some of the types of difference. Intelligence, I abbreviated CQ, EQ and IQ. So those are three different kinds of intelligence, cultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, and of course, the IQ that we generally think about, the intelligence quotient. So I just wanted to point out what I had done there. So you can see lots of different kinds of difference here. I'm just going to give you a few seconds to look at this list. So we're gonna go into our first breakout room. And I would like you all. Jesse says, IQ has a pretty troubled past. Yes. Certainly. Certainly. The reason. It is still a standard measure or not a standard measure. It's still an often considered thought around in the workplace around how people might be different. But Jessie, thank you very much for reminding us of that. I actually do most of my work around emotional intelligence. And then I have a colleague who's certified in cultural intelligence. So those are the two that my team focuses on and cares about. So thank you for that, Jesse, I really appreciate your comment in chat. If you all have not seen it yet, please do look at it. Alright, so for the breakout discussion, you've got three questions on the slide here. I want I want us to spend a little time thinking about our own patterns or our own behaviors, our own thinking. And it's just useful for us too. To engage with our, our own thoughts and behaviors. So that's what I want you to do in the breakout, but I'm gonna give you all about 8 min to work on this, you will be in groups of three, I believe. Though, you might be in four depending on how the, how the math goes right on a small group like this. You don't have to answer all of the questions but individually, so each person doesn't need to answer all three. But I would like for you all as a group to consider all three. With 8 min and three people, you really are going to have about 2 min per person plus a little bit of, hi, how are you time? And then and then when we come back, I'll ask for a handful of volunteers from the groups to share their discussion thoughts. I ask that you only share what your group has okayed for you to share. So e.g. if David and I are in a group together, then I can certainly share my own answers to my own quest to these questions. But I wouldn't share David's unless he gave me the go ahead. Alright. So I just want us to be mindful of that. What we can borrow the Vegas line, right? What happens in breakout discussion stays in breakout discussions unless you want to share and everybody has agreed to that. Okay. 8 min, I'm going to set a little timer here, though. The warning to come back will come at 7 min and don't be me and go to click Dismiss and then exit the breakout room. I do that almost every time you'd think after years of Zooming, I'd know better. Alright? So I'd like to hear from maybe three groups. If you don't mind, you can take yourself off of mute and just share some thoughts from your breakout discussion. Okay. I'll go. First of all, I was in a group with two Patrick, So I almost left her breakout room because I'm not Patrick but my bad grade. So I work in the teaching centre here on the Bloomington campus, so we consult with instructors and help them help their students. So a difference that we have on staff as we have a few people who are first, who were first-generation students. And this is something that often I don't find out until we've worked together for several years. And it's the kind of thing where it's like, Oh, that would really be so helpful to know. So we can help instructors have a better sense of what is it? Well, some of the hurdles that some of our students are facing, there's not many instructors also first-gen students. So that's an example that I share. Oh, that's a great example. First-generation students status. Yeah, thank you. Anybody else? In my group? I talked about someone on my team who is extremely quiet. And I think there's only one person here who might know who I'm talking about. But we talked about how their quietness and sometimes hesitant to participate in meetings and conversation might cause others on the team to maybe have some sort of maybe a negative thought of maybe their work performance or their ability to contribute. And even though it's just maybe the rest of the team has a very outgoing temperament. We just steamroll them a bit. I heard a leader recently say that that introverts didn't really make good leaders. And I just went, Oh, sad about as an introvert, I was very sad. So yeah, we might have some feelings about somebody's productivity or capacity just based on whether they're quiet. Yeah, Thank you for sharing that. I'll take one more, please. Alright. I'll go. We're in group ten, and Tony and Kim, and we had all three of us are teams had a wide range of age. So going upwards, I remembered a mine. I I know there's someone who's 75 down. Others had we have graduate students, which I forgot about that on my team. I will have a graduate student working on my team starting next week. So there's a huge age difference there and sometimes how that That impacts discussions in general. Absolutely. Ages a great one for me to add back or to add into that list of individual differences. Thank you for that. I loved the generation wars. You all. I am so fascinated by them and the ways that we stereotype each other and judge each other are unkind to each other because of age. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I'm a gin xor and I think we're always ignored. So there. Alright, terrific. Thank you for this. I really want you all to think going forward about that list. And of course whether any, any other important kinds of difference we're left off. But, um, but keep it in mind because often we're simply not aware of the differences in front of us and how we might be responding or how other people might be responding to them. So just keep that in mind. Alright, so some allyship actions here. We're going to walk through these a little bit. You can see them on the screen. Show empathy, Listen, belief people stand up and advocate. Start with empathy. One of the greatest people to talk about empathy is Bernie Brown. So if you all are not familiar with her work on empathy, get familiar with it. She is absolutely terrific. She says that empathy is connecting with people. So we know we're not alone when we're in struggle. Now think about that in terms of allyship. Empathy is connecting with people. So we know we're not alone when we're in struggled. Like it's perfect, it's just perfect. You want as an ally to be able to connect to people, to sit with people, ultimately to take action for people with people. But it's to connect with people so that they feel that they are not alone when they're in stroke. There are three kinds of empathy. And they are cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, or compassionate empathy or empathic concern. The names get switched up there. Sometimes cognitive empathy involves taking in somebody's perspective or seeing it from their point of view. It really is thinking about thoughts or feelings, but it's thinking about them. The cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy involves feeling what other people feel. It involves putting yourself in their shoes to feel their experience. Even if their experience isn't a big deal to you. Even if you don't particularly. I don't want to say don't care, but you kinda don't care about that thing. It's not about you. It's about the other person and what they feel. If it's a big deal to them, your emotional empathy will kick in and you'll care because you're trying to feel what they feel. And then the last one, compassionate empathy or empathic concern, is really about being moved to action out of your concern for the other person and what the other person is going through. So there's a thinking empathy, there's a feeling empathy, and there's an action empathy. So how might this work? Let's say a colleague has come to you and has said, I'm worried that in this meeting where I've done a lot of preparation, I'm the point person on this project and I'm worried that my contributions are gonna be ignored. They've been ignored in the past. And I'm worried about this. And they come to you to say, and you say, you think to yourself, maybe that's not such a big deal. You still are the project lead. It's still your, your thing. Everybody knows that. What does it really matter? Instead? Instead of that, instead of saying, This isn't a big deal to me, you say, Oh, I got to think about what they're thinking about. Alright, I need to think about it from their perspective. It's not your perspective that matters, it's their perspective matters. So you would listen carefully to their concerns. You'd set aside your own internal monologue so that you are placing yourself in their shoes. You're not going to listen to any distractions. And again, you're not listening to your own thoughts, you're listening to their thoughts. So that's cognitive empathy. Then you need to think about a time. Maybe when you worried about not getting credit for your work, when you worried about being overlooked. Or not getting credit, that kind of thing. Maybe it's happened to you. Maybe it hasn't happened to you. But you're gonna put yourself into a position where you're thinking about what you have felt in the past. You know what it feels like to care about your professional work. You know what it feels like to want credit or two, to have your, your work recognized. And so that's going to be that emotional piece, right? So then the last one, empathic concern, you're moved to action. So maybe what you do is brainstorm with this person's some strategies or techniques for how you could respond in the moment. How you could get credit spoken for that person. Maybe you make a plan for what to say or what to do if their contributions are ignored, okay? So that is empathic concern. Think about it. You feel it, you do something about it. Empathy. What happens if you don't have an analogous experience? Maybe you've never had your contributions ignored. But can you come up with something that's close enough that puts you in a position of thinking, feeling, and acting. So a little bit off topic here, I think about having children. I am blissfully child free, but that doesn't mean I don't care about children. That doesn't mean I don't have children in my life that I do care about. If somebody says something where they're worried about children, I don't draw on my own experience of being a parent, but instead, I think about what they're thinking. I tried to put myself in the frame of mind where I'm feeling feelings about children in my life. And then I can help the situation by taking action likely partnering with the person who has shared concern. Empathy is a practice. Again, it's about connecting to people, carrying what they care about, even if you don't care about it. Trying to do something. Alright. And I see David, I now see your note there, which I appreciate it. Alright, so that's empathy. Again, if you all have questions at any point, please let me know. So you're going to try to connect with other people so that they do not feel alone. I'm listening. This is active listening class, right here we are. And I want you all to think about how you, how well you listen and how you can improve your active listening. I recommend practicing active listening and all of your conversations. Even the ones when you are washing dishes or you're driving in the car, whatever it is, really tried to listen to people. Becoming skilled in listening is a practice. Empathy is a practice. Listening is the practice. You see a theme here, right? Being an ally is a practice. If someone's courageous enough to share their thoughts and experiences and perspectives with you, honor it. You can do that by listening, creates space for other people's opinions. In your team meetings, in your project meetings. Create space by putting your phones down or any of your devices down and simply listening. Think about good questions that you can ask, not intrusive or invasive questions, but rather questions of curiosity and support. I would say, don't rush to share your experiences when somebody is sharing their experiences, just make that that space for them on or what they are trying to share with you and don't make it about you. It's very human to try to say, oh, I have an experience like that. I will go ahead and tell you I lost someone to homicide many years ago and I had somebody tell me that she understood how I felt because her ferret had recently died. Try not to turn the conversation to yourself. Simply listen and try to focus on as best you can what the other person is saying. It's very human to try to connect. But it can. Go very badly awry. And so I asked you all to keep that in mind. When you are listening and wanting to be 0. Lochia, I hope that's how I should say that. Lochia. Bless your heart. That's that's all I got for you. I'm so sorry. It is tough. So when you're listening and you want to improve a situation, here are questions. Again, you're going to get these through the session, but I mean at the end of the session. But here are just some good questions for you to consider, right? If you wish, there was one thing your colleagues would do to make it better. And I put brackets in marginalized communities. So it could be for women of color, for colleagues with disabilities, for first-generation college students, whatever it is, What would that be? If there was one thing we can stop doing every day, what would that be? These are not the the really invasive and teach me about your experience. Kinds of questions that can be tiresome, but rather questions of curiosity toward action. All right, So here are some, just take a look at those questions and think about that. Would you be able to receive the answer without defensiveness? Because that's a key piece of listening. It's not about you. It's about the other person. And so if you're concerned that you might feel defensive, very human, right, very human, then practice with yourself a little bit and think about maybe some of the things that people could say. Then say it out loud so that you can get accustomed to hearing that feedback. That practice really is around what desensitizing yourself to something that might be unpleasant. And again, the focus is all on the other person. So it's a worthwhile exercise. Some listening tips there. So show empathy. Listen, believe people. When people tell you what their experience is, believed them. Don't deny their experience. Don't don't tell them that they're wrong, Don't tell them it didn't happen. Don't tell them, they're misinterpreting. Just believe them. Similarly, if somebody says, Hey, Catherine, you micro aggressed me in that meeting by doing blah, blah, blah. Then I need to resist saying, oh, that's not what I meant or that's not how I intended it. If I focus on my intent, I'm focusing on me. If I focus on impact, I'm focusing on the other person. So believe people when they tell you what their experiences are and resist the temptation to shift and explain a way or give alternate explanations for what could have happened. Next. Stand up. Good allies don't hide in the shadows. They take opportunities toward action. And so you might attend events like this or attend to other workshops. You might read an article or a book. You might have a good conversation with somebody, but you are engaged in the process. Research is pretty clear that if you get, if we respond to negative comments or behaviors in the moment, it's more impactful. And it's often unfortunately more impactful, impactful when it comes from an ally. So here's our opportunity. We can speak up when we hear demeaning jokes, or when somebody uses a stereotype, or when somebody uses harassing language. It's, it will be very important if you haven't already done so to do some real research around microaggressions, what they are, what the impact can be, and really learning about specific kinds of microaggressions. Because if I don't know that something is a microaggression when it happens in a meeting, I can't respond to it. I can't stand up against it. So I need to educate myself on the different kinds of microaggressions. In my resources. I have some some materials around microaggressions, so hopefully that will be helpful. If you're worried about standing up in the moment and you're not sure what to say. I encourage people. I've seen this advice from lots of resources as well. I encourage you to write out words like what, what might you say? And then practice. Again, practice, right? It is a practice. So what might be some good things to say? If you have ideas, throw them in the chat. I have a few, but I bet this group has some really good ideas as well. If somebody tells an off-color joke or makes the stereotypical remark, a remark using stereotypes might be able to say, wait a minute, I don't understand what that means. Can you explain that? That can really kinda break up the moment in a really clear and powerful way. I would. Some people think that you can just say something like That was incredibly awkward or that didn't seem right. That kind of thing. You might also be able to say, I'm not uncomfortable, I'm not comfortable with that. Try not to say so. And so isn't comfortable with that because you don't know that they are uncomfortable. And you don't want to put yourself in the position of speaking for someone else's, speak for yourself. That off-color joke made me uncomfortable. That comment using a stereotype made me uncomfortable. Oh, we've got some here, we've got some very nice. Try embracing polite and comprehension and creating the equivalent of speed bumps, e.g. I'm afraid I don't get the joke moving on. I think I've lost the thread of the conversation. What about I didn't quite catch that, but what I understood was, yeah, very nice, polite in comprehension. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that veil. One thing I will say is if you witness a micro-aggression or discrimination and you feel bad for the victim of it. Do something in the moment. Don't say nothing, and then go find that person later and say that really sucked for you. And I'm really sad about that. That happened to a friend of mine who's a faculty member. She's a woman of color and she was in a meeting and another faculty member just started yelling at her and got way off topic and was yelling at her. And nobody said anything, nobody called him on it. And and afterwards several people walked up and said, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. That was terrible. He shouldn't have done that. That's not who we are as a faculty. And my friends said yet in her head, she was like You did. It is because you let it happen. So if you don't practice standing up so that you have a true and solid response instead of a more hollow response after the fact? I believe that's not an appropriate way to phrase it or I don't believe speaking of x is appropriate today. Yeah, those are great. You all have great ideas here. Thank you for that. If you see somebody being ignored or they've tried to talk, they've tried to talk, they've tried to talk, or they've said they're peace, nobody responded. But then somebody else later says the exact same thing. You can give credit where credit is due. It's pretty easy to say. Say I'm the leader, just, Hey Catherine, before we move on, I'd like to talk about what Alex just said. I think that's a really good idea, are really innovative idea or a really fresh approach, whatever is appropriate. And I think we need to spend a little time on that. That's all you have to do. Just amplify voice and then advocate. So there's, there's a discussion. You can find it in lots of places online. Are we allies, are we accomplices? Are we Advocates? I'm using the more, I think common or general term ally today. But one of the key pieces of allyship is this notion of advocacy. And so what can you do to to advocate for someone else? What you're doing is using your influence to promote someone else, to promote their, their work or their, their potential so that they have new opportunities. It is a very active piece. It's different from mentoring, just so you know, very different for mentoring. And mentoring is important, but advocacy is really putting people in position to take advantage of opportunities. You might. So what are some ways go ahead and put in chat that you can think of to advocate for colleagues, even if you're not liters of people, how might you be able to do that? Because all of us can advocate for others. Anybody. I know you all have slack. So that's one way that you can advocate for others because you can amplify voices, right? So you could say, I'll pick my friends, a friend of mine, Nicky. I really like I'm typing in Slack. You like my typing skills. I really like what Nikki said. I think that's worth exploring. Or I really I really learned a lot from Nicky's comments up above everybody take a look at that. You know, just, just on Slack, you have the opportunity to advocate, to promote, to, to give people support. And also that the opportunity for growth, for elevation for recognition. David says, share news of opportunities, job posts, etc. Give recommendations, nominate for awards. Absolutely. These are terrific. Thank you, David. Help network make introductions to new people. Yeah, I challenge all of you to add to your LinkedIn Learning Network today. Ben says, I mentioned thoughts of workers that are not in the loop meeting arena. Yeah, Absolutely. Who are your in-house experts? Who are the people who can add value to a discussion or a conversation, a project who can give good perspective on something Lynn offers, select or suggests that person for leadership on projects based on previous successes? Yes. Lynn, I will also add, select or suggest a person for a stretch assignment of contribution to a project, whatever based on interests. Because if I haven't yet had the opportunity to do it, then I have no previous success in that area to build on. But if somebody will advocate for me, I can have that opportunity. So thank you for setting me up. It's like you've teed me write up for that. I love it. So can you bring somebody into a project you're working on? Even if they're not going to work on the project, can you bounce ideas off of them and then give them credit for that kind of brainstorming or problem-solving. Oh my goodness, I see we're at 03:00. So one thing I will say is in order to be able to advocate for people really well, you need to know them. So one of the things that you can do with your colleagues, based on any of the differences or the categories that you are thinking of. Get to know people asked him to lunch, ask them to coffee, a virtual coffee, go for a walk, get to know people who they are, what they value, what they're interested in as you get to know them well, then you'll be able to share out their interests, their values, their experiences, their wishes for stretch assignments, and so on. Thank you, Jessie. I appreciate that. I am of course, mortified that we have gone over David, I hate that about I hate it when I do that. So advocacy involves needing to know who people are. At the very least, what we can do. Go back to empathy. Connect with people as human beings so that they are not alone. And then you listen to them. You listened to their experiences. The more you know them, the better you can stand up and the better you can advocate. And I just gave you here the IU diversity pledge. It covers lots of the topics that we've talked about today. And you can explore more, but you can actually go if you, if you just type in a university pledge, you'll be able to find it. You can sign it and then you can get some more, some more content around it. It's a practice. Y'all, we're human, we're not perfect. We're all growing, we're all learning. We're going to make mistakes. And we need to be okay with that. Because if I'm afraid of making a mistake, then I'm never gonna try. And if I don't try, I miss a wonderful opportunity to support someone else. And if I need an ally and that person is afraid to try, then I I miss it too. Okay. That's great. Thank you for that. I appreciate that language. Yeah. And I I have a couple of degrees in language, so I love thinking about nuanced language. So thank you for that. Yeah. So we're talking about what advocating with rather than four. Is that what you're yeah. Thanks. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah, that's a very important thing for us to keep in mind. So take that away. We're going to, David is going to give me this chat and I will add some things into the workshop, but I will also learn from you all and from your feedback. And I'm very grateful to it because I am also on this, on this journey, right? This is my process as well. I want to be a better ally, accomplice, advocate every single day. And so I'm very grateful to you all and I am going to stop talking because I've gone over 4 min, David. Anyway. Thanks so much all I appreciate your your chats and breakouts and comments, and I hope that you all can find one thing, one thing that you can commit to. So David, when I give you the materials, I'm going to put that little charge in there so people can commit to one thing. Thanks.