April 19, 2022
Sarah Rodrigues
What We Said – and Heard – at SXSW 2022
7 minutes
South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conference that focuses on emerging technology, creativity, and innovation. In March 2022, it was held for the first time in-person since 2019.听
天美网站传媒传媒 CEO, Dave MacLeod, was proud to share the stage with Judith Rudge, Global Senior Director of Talent Acquisition for Nike, to discuss how to 鈥淒isrupt Your Own Leadership Failures.鈥�
With the pandemic exacerbating challenges for leaders and employees, particularly women and people of color, Dave and Judith challenged leaders in the audience to confront the hard truths of their own failures, and understand how to use technology to facilitate more inclusive and innovative conversations.
Why ask for feedback?
Dave, citing his own executive privilege, remarked that leaders often object to actively seeking employee feedback because they believe that 鈥淚f someone has something to say to me, they should have the respect and dignity to come up and tell that to my face. If they鈥檙e not willing to do that, I鈥檓 not willing to hear from them.鈥� Judith called this 鈥渞idiculousness.鈥澛�
Leaders who expect (and only accept)聽 this kind of directness will find themselves out of the loop very quickly. While some employees may have the access, comfort level, and privilege of speaking directly to their top leaders in that fashion, there will be many who choose not to speak up even in the best of workplace cultures.听
For example, in a recent study 天美网站传媒传媒 conducted on Gen Z employees, 60-70% of respondents who don鈥檛 feel heard at work are hesitant to share their ideas or feedback due to their position in the company hierarchy, concerns around discrimination, or fear of reprisal. You can download the complete research report, Gen Z at Work, for a complete breakdown.听
Bias that impacts conversations, particularly for diverse employees, must be acknowledged. Judith mentioned a particular conversation discussing candidates for an executive role, where people with significant privilege criticized a candidate鈥檚 鈥渆xecutive presence.鈥� When asked to explain what they meant, they couldn鈥檛. This type of bias significantly disadvantages diverse candidates.
Need some suggestions on how to attract and retain talent? Download our guide, 鈥淭he Retention Revolution鈥� for more!
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Action creates disruption
鈥淟eaders weren鈥檛 built during the pandemic, you were already a leader, but how did you react? How did your company react? How did they raise the bar, or stop having conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion?鈥� - Judith Rudge
This topic hits home for us at 天美网站传媒传媒. While our platform allows organizations to gather data easily, inclusively, and at scale, what we can鈥檛 do is make organizations act on the information. Judith noted that this was a significant issue for her in a previous role:聽
鈥淲e surveyed every woman engineer in their first week, and asked, 鈥榃hat would make your onboarding easier as a woman in engineering?鈥� 11,000 women responded and gave us the most incredible feedback about what we could be doing differently鈥� and how uninviting our culture was. What do you think we did with that information? Do you think we did something with it? To be frank, we didn鈥檛. Don鈥檛 ask your employees, customers, and prospects for feedback, and then do nothing with it.鈥�
Dave pointed out that globally, talk is cheap. American companies pledged $50B to black communities in the wake of George Floyd鈥檚 murder, and (as of May 2021) . Is this because companies are in it for the long haul, or because the pledges were merely performative?聽
Judith conceded that ADEI work takes time: 鈥淭his work will not be done overnight, and we need to acknowledge that in order to move forward. Many companies were willing to do performative work immediately, but were not willing to make the commitment to long-term change.鈥澛�
Particularly when it comes to expanding and building on the diversity of our organizations, Judith pointed out that there鈥檚 more than one metric to consider: 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e looking at diversity, you can鈥檛 only look at hiring and recruiting. What are you doing with incumbents, your current diverse population. And how fast are you losing that diversity? Ask them about their retention.鈥� If an organization is losing diverse employees as fast as it can recruit them, that may indicate a systemic issue with the culture that doesn鈥檛 value or appreciate diversity.
The importance of listening
To disrupt leadership failure, the answer is to actually listen to people. It sounds simple, but it definitely requires concentrated effort to ensure the conversations are bias-free and include the right people.
鈥淎 conversation allows you to share your thoughts, then consider the thoughts of others, and potentially change your thinking. As humans, conversation is our biggest competitive advantage.鈥� - Dave MacLeod
Judith also pointed out that listening to, and truly being comfortable with, critical feedback is vital to disruptive change.
Then we listened
We asked leaders in the room, 鈥淲hat are some innovative things you have experienced or heard about leaders doing to disrupt failure since the 鈥榞reat resignation鈥� began?鈥� Of the five highest-rated thoughts, four mentioned flexibility being the most important.
When you ask people to tell you, with curiosity, what they鈥檙e thinking and feeling, you can learn things you didn鈥檛 expect. Many of these organizations became flexible because they heard what their employees were saying, and gave them what they needed.听
鈥淥n our team, we use feedback tools, including 天美网站传媒传媒, in a multitude of ways. One of the ways is to better understand what our leaders currently think we are doing well, and where we鈥檙e struggling.鈥� When Judith asked her hiring team what else they could be doing to hire diverse talent, the voices were many, the ideas were plentiful, and the rewards were significant.听
Interested in learning more about how listening and conversation fit into your strategy?
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