Hello and welcome to this first podcast in our second season of a conversation with. We're here today with the incredibly talented Michael Reid, who I've had the luxury of being able to work with for some time. He's a linguistic expert, an inclusion expert, and has worked across lots of different parts of the world.
We have a really good explore around all the different aspects of language and culture and how they really connect with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, how they can show it differently around the world, and some of the key challenges that he sees organisations facing, as well as quite a handy few tips towards the end of the podcast. One of the things that you'll notice in my conversation with Michael is how passionate both of us get when we're talking about this.
And Michael is so passionate about this particular way of looking at diversity, equity and inclusion. One of the things you might notice a little bit of slapping hands just because he's so passionate in the way that he talks about these things. So if there's any of those random noises you can hear coming through, that's just Michael's passion coming through in a slightly different way. So grab a cover, kick back and enjoy this episode. Okay, so welcome to the podcast.
We are talking to the absolutely wonderful Michael Reid today. Michael and I have been working together for, oh, probably about a year and a half now on collaboration projects. So we've really got to know each other's facilitation style and expertise. And I'm very excited to have him here. I'm going to let him introduce himself and tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does. Thank you so much, Zoe. I am very excited to be here as well. Like you said, my name is Michael Reid.
My pronouns are he and him. I am a linguistic and cultural equity consultant. I live in Athens, Greece. I've been doing this work for 25 years now and I started out in the social services sector. Actually, I was a translator and interpreter for the courts and hospital system in the United States in Washington state. And after about six years of doing that, I went into language education. For a while I was a language professor and soon ish. After that I went into administration.
I was director of international recruitment and coordinator for study abroad programmes. And as I was doing that, I was also sitting on the boards of several organisations working in the DEI space, even though it wasn't called DEI at the time, that's what it was, you know, fair housing, anti discrimination, that kind of thing.
And as I was sort of doing those two tracks, I started developing a series of workshops, seminars, trainings on cross cultural competency, communication and that kind of thing. And somewhere along the line, I realised that there was this enormous gap between the two fields.
You know, we had international education, international business, on the one hand, that had this really almost self satisfied conviction that they were already diverse, they were already inclusive, just by virtue of having the name international in their title. And the fact of the matter is, that isn't true. In fact, working in international education, at least in the United States, it's a little bit different here in Europe, but not totally.
But working in international education in the United States taught me how very little so many people in international education actually care about diversity, equity and inclusion issues. Like anywhere from paying lip service sort of in the middle of the spectrum, to kind of ambivalent, to openly antagonistic at times. But then I would look over at my other track, which was what would come to be known as the DEI track. And it was so insular, so inner directed.
So this idea that the US, you know, and at a stretch, Canada and the UK were the centre of the universe when it comes to DEi, thought that I realised that they weren't really doing inclusion because they were excluding the rest of the world. So at that point, I decided it was time for me to. And I know this sounds incredibly grandiose, please forgive me for it.
But to decolonize DEI, to make sure that when we are doing it, we're doing it in a way that really responds to the history, the culture, the society, the background, the language, crucially, of the people that we're talking to. Because if I go and I talk to a german audience or a french audience or whatever about Emmett Till, about Medgar Evers, about Marcus Garvey, that has no residence, it's not part of their history. It doesn't mean racism doesn't exist in those places.
But that is not the entry point, because that's not part of their either historical or lived experience. So for these things to land, they have to be talked about in a way that. That resonates with people using material from that society, from that history, from that culture. So that is as brief as I am probably able to do. Introduction brevity is not one of my skills, which I really appreciate, because I get to train with you.
And sometimes when we're co facilitating, I forget that I'm training because I'm just listening to you. I'm like, wow, this is so interesting. And then you'll be like, right. And over to Zoe Sugar. Okay, well, I appreciate it. It's the same with all of the people I get to co facilitate with just absolutely amazing talent and people we're actually going to get on other podcast episodes as well, so I can't wait to hear from them.
One of my favourite things that you say, I mean, there's a lot of things, but one of my favourite things that you say is that you don't like to put a french solution on a brazilian problem. And that's really what I want to look at today is the idea of different aspects of DEI. Like you say, you know, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, wherever, tend to have that biggest idea of what we think about DEI is what the world should think about DEI.
And I mean, listen, this is a hangover from colonialism and things like that. We know that massively the same way as English. I'm doing air quotes for the listeners. English as a universal business language is also a hangover from that. And listen, we're very lucky, you know, I only speak English. You speak many languages. You've delivered for us in many languages as well, and you deliver lots of different workshops.
But I think I'm really interested to hear how language plays a part, how the way our different cultures in the different parts of the world that we're talking about really plays a part in those common challenges that organisations can have when it comes to really thinking about how to implement diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. So I'm really excited to have you here talking about that today. I am very excited to talk about it.
I mean, you know me well enough to know that I will jump on any excuse, or even if it just looks like a slight excuse to talk about these things, I am all over it. So, of course, what the listeners don't know is that we probably spent about 35 minutes talking about all of this before we could start recording. And here's the thing. If I were a different person, maybe after those 35 minutes, I would have sort of exhausted everything I have to talk about. But that. That's not even the appetiser.
That's like the aperitif for me. And let's go. Now. That was a piece of bruschetta. Oh, this is like a amuse bouche for us. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, darn, I'm gonna get hungry. Okay, so. So let's. Let's get stuck straight in then. I'd really love to just get your thoughts on a few things. So I'm really interested to hear about your, your ideas around language and how you think it affects diversity and inclusion in organisations.
And, you know, listen we work with organisations from around the world, but very heavily influenced by the US and the UK, just because that's where a lot of the bases are. But of course we work in different countries as well. But I'm really interested to hear how does language affect D&I in those organisations? You know, I take a step back and I think, okay, what is the purpose of language? What is language for? There's a large scientific aspect to linguistics, right?
When we're talking about phonology, phonetics, that kind of thing, how does, how do the muscles in your mouth move to create certain sounds and that kind of thing? But there's a large amount of soft sciences, humanities in it as well, right? And that's, I am, I like to think, fairly well versed in the scientific part. Like, I can tell you where a front vowel articulates or how a plosive articulates or whatever like that.
But historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, in other words, the more humanities part of it is really my focus. So I look at what is the purpose of language? And the purpose of language is to get what's in here. And for the listeners, I'm pointing at my head to get what's in here out to another person. The fundamental fact of the human experience is that we have no consistent, replicable access to the inner world of other people unless they choose to share it with us through language, right?
And when I'm saying language, generally we think of spoken language, but it could be signed language, it could be whatever, some form of communication, right? So that is the core purpose. I sort of take it back to that step. Then when we go another step, we say, okay, language is a reflection of what's going on mentally, so we can take clues. And this is why it bothers me when people say, oh, well, it's just a word. Oh, well, it's just this, it's just that it is.
But everything is just something, but it also has something behind it and it also serves a particular purpose. So we could say, oh, well, we call it a chairman. It could be, you know, woman, it could be somebody who's non binary, whatever, but we just call it a chairman. What's the problem? It's just a word. Here's the problem. It is a historical holdover from a time when those positions of authority were reserved for male identifying people.
And it reflects a certain way of thinking that you might still even have and not be conscious of it. And that's one of the really big things that we need to remember. And we talk about this a lot in linguistics, especially sociolinguistics, what we are conscious of in terms of our communication is only part of what's actually going on. There's a lot of unconscious stuff going on in communication, in our word choices, in our syntactic choices, all of those kind of things.
So language points to the thought. It isn't the thought, right. The word chairman is not per se bad. It's the thought and the history that it points to and reinforces. If it's continually used, that's where the problem is. So when people say, oh, why do you care so much about language? I say, because language is indicative of things.
Now, let's break it down to something more specific when we're talking about actual different languages, because what I've just talked about is sort of the concept of language, the theory of language. It can occur even among speakers of the same language. L one speakers, in other words, native speakers of the same language. When we're talking about different languages, we have a layer of complexity added, because let's just give this as an example.
And this was brought up to me by another colleague who speaks German. I don't speak German very well. I can get by, but it's not great. We were talking about DEI stuff and talking about the complexities of using the term race in English with german speaking audiences, because a lot of german people will have learned in school what that word translates to.
They'll maybe translate it in their heads in German, and one of the main words will be the word that Hitler used in mein kampf to talk about the purity of the race and all of these kinds. So it has this automatic, very legitimate negative connotation for people that that wall is going to go up immediately, right now, if I don't know German, if I don't understand the culture, if I don't understand the history, I don't know where those potential stumbling blocks are and how to talk around them.
Another example for me is just even talking about race at all is going to look very different from language to language. A major eye opening experience for me was when I was living in Japan, I was going to school, and I had grown up in California, which, as people may or may not know, has a very large spanish speaking population. So a lot of people in California have at least passive competence in Spanish, even if it's not their main language.
So I had a lot of friends when I was living in Japan, going to school. I just sort of happened to fall in with a group of friends from South America, Chile, Paraguay, that. And you know, we would hang out. Cause we sort of shared some stuff. And I remember we were talking one time and my friend from Paraguay said. Cause I mentioned something about being black. And my friend from Paraguay said, you know. And this was like what?
To me because I was a teenager at the time, it's like, you know, in Paraguay you wouldn't be black. Like what do you mean? Of course I'm. Of course I'm, I'm. I'm black. Like I remember the first time I went to a small town in the United States and somebody shouted the n word out of me at me and chased me out of a public bathroom. Like I'm black, just in case you don't know. And he's like here's the thing.
We would call you Moreno because that is, that's the, that's the colour we go by sort of what the shade of the person is not genetic stuff or anything like that. I was like oh, whoa. And then, you know, I got more into it and I talked to my friend from Chile about it and he's like yeah, that's kind of how we do it too. And like I said, my mind was just blown by that. And I realised that even how we classify race, what we say is black, what we say is white.
Whatever is extremely dependent on, on where we are. And if we're talking to people and if we insist on using only one language then we're going to say things that don't really line up with how they've carved up the world, right? So if I'm speaking in Portuguese and I'm speaking with somebody in Brazil and I, you know, I use the word black to describe myself, they might look at me and be like why are you saying that?
You know, why are you saying your, your, you're Preto, your negro when you're clearly parto? So that is another area in which language is really important. Because if you're a global organisation and you say this is our standard DEI training and everybody will get the same training and they will all get it in the same language and they'll be happy about it, guess what?
The only people who are really going to fully, fully, fully get what you've done is people who are either enculturated or acculturated in the same framework as the person who created the training. Because they'll get the references, they'll get the language, they'll get. If I'm talking to somebody in the US and they say I'm black, even though clearly I am also partly scottish. They know what I mean when I'm saying black. They know that that is my social identity, that's my political identity.
If I'm giving a training here in Greece and I say I'm black, people are like, are you? You look like maybe you're, I don't know, brazilian, because I've gotten that here, like, you brazilian? Are you puerto rican? Are you egyptian? I get egyptian a lot, that kind of thing. So. Or maybe. Maybe southern Greek, like down in Crete, something like that. Right? So that's the thing. If you make this one language, one worldview, one lens, standardised model, it's not going to work for everybody.
And honestly, and I understand fully, by the way, I am at least self aware enough to realise that I'm beginning to get into a rant. So I promise I'll stop in the next 30 seconds. But it seems very strange to me because it is self evidently obvious from the foundational principles of equity that you cannot do the same thing for everybody and even have a problem prayer of getting even broadly similar outcomes.
The whole idea of equity is that we give people what they need to have the opportunity to get broadly equal outcomes. And yet in DEI, somehow we think we're exempt from that and we can just deliver one kind of training to everybody and it's going to fit everybody across the board and do the job. Hell no. I mean, come on. Like, just even a moment's reflection should tell us that.
But I think part of what it is is that english speaking anglophone privilege is so baked into the way we do things that it becomes one of the unconscious biases that we talk about. It becomes exactly what we talk about. It becomes the water that we swim in and we don't even notice it until somebody outside us points it out. So, rant part one ended. Look, I didn't ask you to come on this podcast to give me short answers.
I knew that that was a good video and that's fine, because I think everything that you just said there is so valid. And I think it's really useful for people to listen to this because it's certainly a trap that I have fallen into before. You know, I'm from the UK, right? I speak English, I learnt German and French at school. Couldn't remember a bit of it. Now, I did get an a in German, but I can't remember sausage because I haven't practised it.
But my point being that I haven't needed that, right. I've had the privilege of being able to work all across the world. I've travelled to different parts of Europe. I've even delivered inclusive language sessions in Germany, you know, speaking English to the german team. So there's just some really interesting aspects of the privilege that has come with the fact that I speak English and the fact that, you know, I've learned Spanish separately as an adult and okay ish with that.
But that was also just to travel around South America so that I was able to communicate with people. But you just brought up so many really interesting things there. And I know we're talking about language, but ultimately, a lot of your experiences as a black man and the language that you've had to adapt to get other people in different parts of the world to understand that has just really connected skin tone discrimination in my head.
Because ultimately, ultimately, that's naturally a lot of what racism is, you know, depending on how dark or light you are from colonial times and still very much neo colonialism right now, you've got that you're more or less accepted in different communities, depending on how dark or light your skin is. So I think that we've kind of touched on a thousand different things there.
I'm really interested to hear from you just some examples of where you've seen language really connect people and really be used quite effectively in training. So whether it's in your own DEI training or you've seen somebody else that's really talented and was able to basically utilise some of the things you were just saying then to help people from around the world to go, ah, okay, hold on.
Talking about race in Germany is extremely different because of the historical context to what it is in the UK. Whilst there's still a lot of taboo around talking about race and racial inequities in the UK, and also, of course, in the US and in some of those similar countries where we all speak English, it is very different because there's a really different connection.
We see it in some of the workshops we do with people from Japan and Korea and places like that as well, where the connection doesn't land because it's just not seen in the same way. But have you seen it language utilised in a more effective way in DEI trainings? I have, and in a few ways. And I'll start with sort of the shallower ones, let's say.
And I'm going to kind of borrow heavily here from the educator Zaretta Hammond's idea of, like, the culture tree, right, where at the top we've got the leaves and the fruit, the more accessible surface stuff low emotional impact, and then going down onto the branches and the trunk where it starts, and the roots where it starts to get really deep. Like this is speaking to who I am kind of thing.
At the shallower level, I've seen it be impactful, not entirely great reasons on the shallow level, because, for example, I've seen it my, you know, done it myself, and I've seen it where you're talking to an audience for whom English isn't their native language, and you're able to throw in a few words, a few concepts or whatever of the, you know, from their language or from their background.
And I want to make it, you know, I want to make a real careful point here to not conflate language and cultural background, because somebody from Angola, somebody from Brazil, are both completely and from Portugal, are all three of them completely native portuguese speakers, but have wildly different cultural contexts and backgrounds. So I'm not saying that one is coextensive with the other. I've seen people's faces light up when I'm working with an audience in India.
And I'm saying I reference the prejudice that some people from South India face, or the fact that in a lot of offices in India, Hindi tends to be the main language. But people from South India, they might speak Tamil or Malayalam or Kannada or something like that. I've seen people go, thank you. Thank you for speaking to that. Thank you for. And of course, we all know we talk about it all the time, right? And we experience it, too.
We know how good it feels to be heard and seen and acknowledged like that. Because even though I might know how many scheduled languages there are in the indian constitution, or I might have this broad idea about indian linguistic politics or something like that. Cool. But people also know where I'm coming from. They know I was born in the US, they know I live in Europe, they know that my native language is English. In other words, they know I am. In that sense, I am of the privileged class,
and I don't need to know about them. Right? Because that. That's always the dichotomy, right? The minority must know how the major or. No, because it's not a minority. Majority things when it comes to English, actually, because English is only spoken by 18% of the world, and we're talking from functional to native speakers. So English is a minority language globally. So let me rephrase it. The less powerful must always know how.
The more powerful and often accommodate to how, the more powerful work, the more powerful can choose or not to learn about and adapt to and accommodate to the less powerful. So there is this sort of baked in assumption a lot of times in people that, well, you were born in the US, you grew up speaking among other languages, but you grew up speaking English. You don't have to know. Thank you for, you know. And it's almost a sense of gratitude in a way, and it make. But it makes me feel.
I'm like, but no, don't be grateful. I'm doing what I should. You've learned whole ass language. I don't speak Tamil, I don't speak my layallum, my Hindi is shit. Like, you're the one who learned that you did the work. I'm placing most of the communicative burden the system has placed and I am allowing it to reproduce through me, has placed the communicative burden almost entirely on you to learn to speak how I speak and receive information in that way.
The very, very least I can do is know what the hell I'm talking about when I'm speaking in your context. Right? So I love that people feel so heard and seen and I really appreciate it. I even had one participant in a session one time almost come to tears because they're like, finally somebody is saying something that means something to me.
But I also know it is sort of a holdover of sort of being resigned to your place in a way and not expecting somebody from the more privileged class, quote unquote, to have to know anything about where you're coming from. Oh, wow. I mean, again, so much to unpack there. I think a lot of people probably don't know the fact that that English is only spoken by about 18% of the world. And like you say, that's not native speakers, that's everybody that speaks English.
So that's not a big number, really, when you think about the world. And I love the way you also talked about minority and majority, because often we talk about people, especially in the UK and Europe and the US, places like that, where we're talking about the minority, and I'm using air quotes, who are actually tending to be the global majority.
We're talking about people in China and India and Africa and places like that that tend to be so hugely impacted by the language that we use and the social programmes and the social value in the work that we do as well. And I also really loved that you picked up that sense of responsibility because it's definitely something that is buried deep within me. I'm constantly thinking about how can I, as a person in the DEI space who is not trans make space and learn about the trans experience.
As somebody who is white, how can I make sure I'm not taking space up here without really putting in the work to understand what it is to be black or indian or whatever. Whatever, whatever.
So actually, that sense of responsibility is something that I think every DEI practitioner just naturally has built into them and it's something I know we work really hard on in our DEI training sessions with organisations to get them to start to understand that sense of responsibility, responsibility without it feeling overwhelming, because that's a bit of a balance. Right, right.
So I'm really interested to hear a little bit more about some of the challenges you think that organisations might face. So I'm just interested to hear, especially when we're thinking about language barriers, cultural nuances and stuff like that, when people are putting in DEI initiatives in organisations, you know, they're doing all these wonderful things, but it's just not landing because global. What are some of the challenges that you think that they're facing?
And can you give us any ideas on how they might be able to get over those challenges? If a person from a particular cultural background is getting a training from a completely different one that doesn't even speak to their cultural background, they're going to shut down. And then what happens? The people who received the training didn't really get much out of it. At worst, they've become antagonistic to the whole idea.
The people who developed and promoted the training and oftentimes the people in the c suite think, well, we didn't get any results out of this, so, you know, it's shit, let's toss it. And then just. It makes them just kind of sour on the. Sour. The word, yes. Sour is the word I want. Sorry, I could only think of the word in Greek for a second.
It makes them sour on the efforts in general, because even though we work in a field that is very much about both the quantifiable and the qualifiable, we are working with people who are going to be looking at the bottom line and they will see, oh, this effort, we invested a lot in it and it didn't pay off, so we're not going to do it again. And to me it doesn't make any sense at all. Again, it's the equity thing. You've got to give people what they need to be able to understand something.
What I see happening is a lot of people in non us places and especially in Europe, I'm going to speak from that perspective because that's where. Where I live, that's where home is. When we bring it in from the outside and we don't adapt it at all, we give them a lot of fuel to say, this isn't ours. You're just imposing it on us. Wow. You want to be so decolonial or decolonized, and yet you're imposing these ideas on us in your language that didn't come from us, that don't know our history.
That's your problem. That's not our problem. Now, they're right up until the point they say that's your problem. That's not our problem because. Because that's what we do. We fuel the people who, for their own agenda, want to pretend that racism doesn't exist in Europe, which you and I both know is far from the truth.
But if we don't approach it in the way that it exists here, then we give all sorts of fuel to the people who want to discredit it with a broad brush, again, for their own ideological reasons. And the people you're talking about, there are people that are in huge positions of power, huge positions of influence, and obviously we're not just talking about racism, we're talking about every different aspect of this. But, yeah, massively rife.
But I think this is really interesting because there's some real nuances that I've definitely learned in my years of working in the learning and development field across Europe, across the world, lots of different things like that. And that's really helped me when I came into the DEI field and really started focusing on this from a learning point of view and then working with people like yourselves, people in various different collaboration projects.
It's really, really helped me to understand that you can't, like you say, you can't put a french solution on a brazilian problem. It's just, it's never going to land, it's never going to work and you're going to turn people off. And that is exactly the challenge that we've got now as DEI practitioners. You know, we can't just rest on the fact that we educate ourselves consistently about these things and we can't just rest on the fact that we're having these really important conversations.
We also need to think, well, how can I adapt the way that I do things to suit the needs of my learners, regardless of their cultural background and language and all of those sorts of things? And I think something that a lot of DEI practitioners do really well, sadly, a lot of DEI practitioners don't necessarily put that to the forefront of their mind. And then it's that kind of one size fits all, which, like you've said, we're trying to create equity here.
You can't create equity by delivering the same thing to every single person. It's just not going to land. You have to connect with that in a way that resonates with you in your language, like you're talking about in your culture, in your experience, from your personal point of view. Otherwise, the people we're working with are never going to get that sense of responsibility and that sense of ownership that they can do something to change the things that we're talking about here.
I like the way you used the word ownership. That was. That was really. I think that's really key to it. Oh, cool. Yeah. It's a word I'm sometimes a bit reluctant to use because sometimes it can scare people away. So you kind of have to build up to that sense of responsibility. I think one of the big projects you and I are actually collaborating on at the moment, you know, we talk a lot more about practise. Right.
Than act, because people need to feel more comfortable to practise having these types of conversations, practise doing these things so it doesn't feel like the whole world is on their shoulders, because it isn't. And actually, the more each of us practise talking about these things and understanding different people's experiences and different people's perspectives and. And all of those sorts of things, the less taboo it's going to be to talk about these things and
just to get them out in the open. Right. Because that's a big part of the challenge that we face, is everyone's a bit secretive about the way they feel about things and the experiences that they've had. And they don't realise until they've gone through something really horrific that the person they've sat next to for three years in the office also has been through something really horrific. And they've got that bond. And so there's just so many things when we can open up the dialogue and listen.
Obviously, I'm talking in English right now. We're talking to each other in English. It doesn't necessarily have to be in English, but we just have to open up that dialogue for us to be able to practise being a bit more humane to one another and just really starting to understand how can we influence, how can we take ownership, responsibility for the equity and that kind of environment that we would really
like everyone to be in. Absolutely. And that. And I. That's why I love so much the way that you used the word ownership there, because to me, part of what that points to, and it's everything, everything you just said. And it's, again, it's that idea that it becomes internal, it becomes yours, not something that was imposed on you, it becomes something that's yours, it relates to your history, it relates to your culture, it relates to your society, your lived experience.
So could you give us some sort of. Just a really simple tip or a suggestion that you think people who are in the positions of power in organisations, maybe they're in the positions of decision making around this type of work, something we could give them to help them to address language and culture related challenges at work. Even if it's just something really simple. Just understand that the way you look at the world is not the only legitimate way, and fully, fully get what it means.
Everything that follows on from that, that's an emergent property of that. Understand that your way of the world isn't the only legitimate way of looking at it, and then act on that. Create localised trainings, create more, you know, workshops or elearnings or whatever that are geared to particular populations. You can even do it hybrid. Maybe the.
The in person session or the, you know, the synchronous session is going to be in English, but the pre work can be translated into Dutch or, you know, whatever. One of the things that drives me absolutely up a wall about the discourse around DEI pushback is how expensive it is. And I'm not saying that there aren't some DEI offerings that are perhaps more expensive than they should be. That's entirely not just possible, probable.
But the fact of the matter is, ain't no company out there going into bankruptcy because they spent too much on DEI. Let's just be real honest about that. We've seen the budget allocation. Exactly. They're managing much other parts of their business incorrectly. Let's just get real, real straight on that one. Yeah, but these are simple things to do. But they do require commitment. They require the moral courage to make that investment, and they require the moral courage to.
And this is something that we all have problems with as human beings, including those of us who work in DEI. They require the moral courage to decenter yourself and say, the way I look at things, the way I talk about things, the way I understand things, the way I experience things, is not universal, and it doesn't need to be universal. And it's not even the standard by which other things are measured. It is one of many. Know how much you don't know.
Seek to correct that state of not knowing as much as possible and then be prepared to do what you need to do to really bring that into life. Yeah. Thank you. I think that's a really nice way to wrap up our conversation today. I think some of those tips, whilst some of them are more simple. Yeah, you're right. There's complexity that sits behind them, but that shouldn't scare us off actually bringing them to life. Absolutely not.
I think that internal, that first personal aspect, start to learn more about different types of people, different cultures, different languages, different backgrounds, people that are different to some of your aspects of your identity, is a really powerful tool to start to understand those different perspectives. And I think if that's not something we are proactively doing, that can be a really, really good place to start. I just want to thank you so much for this conversation.
Obviously, I loved it because we love working together. I'm talking for you, obviously, but I love working with you. Oh, same thing. I love working with you. So I've been thrilled to do this talking with one of my favourite people about one of my favourite subjects. Yeah, sign me up tomorrow, same time. Right. Hello. Right. We get paid to talk for a living. This is the best job in the World, seriously. I think that there's just some really useful things for people to take away there.
There's definitely going to be some light bulb moments for people that have never really thought about language in this context. They've never really understood the difference between language nuances and cultural nuances because they are different. But of course, they're closely connected in lots of ways as well. So I think there's going to be some really useful things for people to take away and I hope they've enjoyed listening to this as much as I've enjoyed having this conversation with you.
So thank you so much for taking the time, Michael, thank you. Thank you. It has absolutely been my pleasure. What an amazing person Michael is. And just some really fantastic insights into the way that you can really take your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives into that cultural awareness piece and really starting to think cross culturally, cross language and across the whole of the globe.
I particularly liked the things he was talking around, decolonising DEI, really decentering ourselves as well, a little bit about that responsibility space and just the passion that really came through from Michael there. I think you get a really good sense of what a wonderful facilitator and coach he is for the people that he worked. We really hope that you enjoyed this episode and were able to take something really useful away.
Come back and listen to episodes with us to find out more really useful things around the work that we do.