Candour CEO on Playbook for Workplace Diversity

the rate for women overall. Still, though black women hold only four percent of SMP five hundred board seat the data show, and according to Bloomberg Data, women overall makeup just over thirty percent of board seats for companies in the SMP five hundred, So a long way to go to come to parody. Ruchika Toolshan is CEO of Candor. It's a consulting firm that works with organizations on diversity and inclusion. She's also the author of Inclusion on Purpose,

an intersectional approach to creating a culture of belonging at work. Richka, how are you? I'm welcome. Thanks so much Tim for having me. Yeah, it's really great to have you. I just want to start with the title of the book and explain to get you to explain intersectionality for for people who aren't familiar with the term. Yeah, thank you so much so. Intersectionality is a is a concept developed

by Professor can Really Crenshaw. Actually it's as old as ninety nine, where where Professor Creunchaw essentially found that the experience of black women and other women of color was actually compounded negatively, not only just because they were women, but because they were black women or women of color.

And I think that approach as we think about creating true inclusion, um, you know, workplace where people with various marginalized identities can belong, we cannot separate out how those identities when they intersect, how they compound and affect the experience of women of color in the workplace. It's so interesting. I didn't know that the term dated back to the nineteen eighties because it's not one that I actually became

familiar with until just a few years ago. And it is one that I hear though in discussions more and more when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Why did it take so long for intersectionality to become something that more and more people are talking about. Yeah, I think it's a bit tricky, and one of good reasons is because I think until quite recently, a lot of our corporate environment was not ready to tackle the issues of racism, UM,

you know, head on. And really spurred on by some of the huge movements for racial justice you've seen here in the United States and around the world, I think they're there really became a sort of awareness, and I'm so glad that Professor Crenshaw's work is getting this sort of, um, you know, the highlighting that it deserves because it's so necessary to take an intersectional approach. I want to talk a little bit about the work that you do at

Candor and how it's changed of late. Um, what are you hearing from clients right now in terms of what they how they want to approach diversity in their organizations. Yeah, great question, Tim, And it's actually kind of alluding to

what I talked to about earlier. So when I started tender in UM, you know, earlier in in twenty seventeen, what I found is a lot of organizations at that time my clients wanted to talk about diversity, but really only gender diversity, and what that meant is, how are you know, well educated, high socio economic UM white women

progressing in the workplace. And now I see this, this real, honest change to want to be more intersectional, to UM center race and anti racism in in true diversity and equity inclusions efforts, and that to me is really meaningful because it's hard, it's painful. Many of us have grown up UM and been taught not to talk about these issues in the workplace. But without addressing them, we can't

make meaningful change. You know. I like to ask this question to two people who do work that's similar to yours, about working to put yourself out of business? You know, the actual need you know, it's it's it's a testament to what our world is that you actually that that your job is needed. Right, there's so much work to do, so so within our lifetimes, Uh, will that work be done? You know? Can? I really hope so? And there's a

part of me that remains optimistic. At least we're having these conversations, I see more leaders wanting to make change. The reason I wrote Inclusion on purposes because I really wanted leaders to have a playbook something like say could turn to and say, you know, I want to make change, Where do I start? What could I do? And so I'd like to believe that we we have the tools we need to succeed. We just need to be really intentional about it and really take personal action and responsibility

for it. So where do people start? Well, good question, Yeah, I think it really starts with taking personal responsibility when you start developing the awareness of what's really going on UM. And that is one of the reasons why I have worked. You know, I I'm a former journalist, and a lot of the work that I've done in in trying to communicate these issues of bias, the anti race, of creating an anti racist culture, of creating an equitable and inclusive culture,

has been from starting from stories. We do have the data, and there's good data out there to show the dis veri these that exist. Some research finds. For example, you know you talked about the SMP west of the inclations UM, A lot of the C suite currently the games made for women have been actually white women and the women of color are less than four pertent of the C suite representation in corporate America today. So we know that

there's a lot of work to be done. Um where I find that that where we are able to read make changes when we listen to those stories, when we learned to emphasize with those stories, really try and seek them out. What does it look like, what does it feel like? What does it really look like to have an inclusive environment and practice? And that requires laying down our defenses, getting really really okay with getting uncomfortable, and then moving to make change. So that's really where I

would start. We know that diverse teams perform better and create better results. What do you say to people to motivate them to to really put down down those defenses, because I think that can be challenging even for some of the best leaders out there. You know, the data that doesn't yet talked about nearly enough is that yes, diverse teams, when harnessed properly, really do outperform more homogeneous teams. But the reality is this work is hard, It creates conflict.

If you really want an inclusive team, it can be uncomfortable, especially for a lot of people who have never worked with or meaningfully interactive with people who are different than them. But the reality is it also makes you as an individual. It makes you smarter, it makes you better prepared, it makes you more productive. I mean, there is a good amount of data out there, but at the end of it, at the very core of it, it's the right things

to do right. It is the right and and I spent a lot of the early part of the work convincing folks around the data and that it's good for you, it's good for business, it's all of that. At the end of day, it's the right thing to do. Inclusion on purpose and intersectional approach to creating a culture of belonging at work. Ruchika tool Shan also the CEO of Canada. Ruchika thank you so much for joining us on Bloomberg business Week Radio