I'm Dara Astmann, and being an uplifter is really about going beyond yourself and lifting up others, no matter what you're going through and just being [00:00:15] there and creating a community.
Aransas: Welcome to the Uplifters Podcast. I'm Aransas Savas, and I get to talk to amazing, inspiring people. Inspiring courageous women all day.
How lucky am I? Today I get to talk to Daisy [00:00:30] Auger Dominguez. Daisy has worked at all sorts of amazing places like Disney and Google where she's been a passionate advocate for creating workplaces where everyone can thrive. She's the author of two books, [00:00:45] Inclusion Revolution, which offers practical steps for building more diverse and welcoming workplaces and Burnt Out to Lit Up, which helps people find balance and joy in their work lives.
I'm [00:01:00] just so thrilled to have Daisy here to share her personal journey. Daisy, thank you so much for being here today.
Daisy: Oh my goodness. Thank you for having me. I am thrilled. And thank you to Susie Jaramillo for introducing [00:01:15] us.
Aransas: If you haven't listened to Susie's episode, go listen to it., it was episode two of our podcast. So tell us your story. How did you become focused [00:01:30] on workplace culture and inclusion? Oh, my goodness.
Daisy: Well, you know, every story begins with the very beginning, which for me is I was born in New York City, but I was raised in the Dominican Republic, so I always joke that I did the opposite migratory pattern.
People just [00:01:45] never quite get me. I also was born to teenage parents. My father is Dominican, my mother Puerto Rican. They were 15 and 16 when I was born, and they were ill equipped to raise a child. And shortly after they broke up [00:02:00] when I was about two, my grandparents offered to raise me, my father's parents.
And so that is how I moved from New York City to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. And I was essentially my grandparents last child. kid. And just to give you a frame of [00:02:15] reference, how young my family was up until my generation, my grandmother was 35 when I was born and my grandfather, 39, that's exactly the same age I was when my daughter was born.
So I had a bit of an existential crisis when that happened, thinking by the [00:02:30] time that I came along, my grandmother had raised three kids, moved her family. From her homeland to New York and back to her homeland. And here she was with the responsibility of raising this other child. And I say that because it was never lost on [00:02:45] me that this was something that they didn't have to do as fully as they did, but they did it with such love.
And I am their kid, right? They're my grandmother and grandfather. And so I use that language to reference them, but they're mommy and papi to me, right? That is, that [00:03:00] is how I know them. And so I grew up with essentially two sets of parents. Really, my father was the most prominent figure in my life, and, you know, he was a young guy.
He likes to say that we raised each other. I like to say that I raised him. [00:03:15] But, you know, here's this young man, you know, finishing high school, going to college. And he always says that, you know, when he saw me, he fell in love and this was, you know, what changed his life. And, and he was a young man, like all young men dating, doing all those things, but he [00:03:30] was still a father, right?
A distant father because we didn't live in the same city, but he was so present. He, you know, every summer I spent with him, Every Christmas break, which in the DR is about two to three weeks, I spent with him. Every vacation he [00:03:45] had, he would come to us, right? That was why I grew up. And, and I think in part because of the dreams deferred for my dad, there was such an intent on making sure that I was going to achieve greatness, right?
And so the, the running joke in my [00:04:00] family was, my grandfather would say, They see that does not know how to cook, right? She's a mess in the kitchen. And my grandmother would just turn back and say, she doesn't have to, she's going to be a profession that was what I would hear growing up. I also grew up in a working class family, but I went to [00:04:15] school at an international school.
That's how I learned English. And, you know, I'll tell you about when I moved to the States, but growing up, I went to school with kids from, you know, just. the highest of industry leaders in the island, as well as expats. My best friends were Danish, [00:04:30] Chinese, Israeli, Colombian, Venezuelan. I mean, you, you name it.
It was a hodgepodge of it. So I grew up with this rich set of diversity, but I was part of the dominant group and I didn't see it that way. Right. I was part of, and by dominant, I mean, culturally dominant. Um, you know, I [00:04:45] walked outside of school and people look like me and people spoke my language, right.
That was comforting to me. And then I lived in this mix of difference. Yeah. But then when I was a junior in high school, my dad, someone, my dad was a doorman at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. He just [00:05:00] retired last year. And someone told him she needs to come to take the SATs and the PSATs to go to college. And so he bought this house he could ill afford in New Milford, New Jersey, in Bergen County.
And I'll never forget the [00:05:15] phone call. This was in October of 1988. I was a junior in high school. I remember it was on a Friday night and the call, my grandparents are talking, my dad's talking, and they get, it's like, your father has to say something to you. He's like, you're moving. I'm like, wait, what? He's like, [00:05:30] I bought a house and you're going to come and do, finish your two years.
I had already started, this was October of my high school, my, my junior year. And I remember just being so, and I was never angry at my dad, but I remember being so angry at him. I was leaving my [00:05:45] boyfriend, my childhood friends. I had been in school with these kids in second grade, but my grandparents came with me to help with the transition and they stayed.
So they moved into this, we all moved into this little house. [00:06:00] I entered Neal Milford High School, my first American high school. And Aransas, this is, when I explain to people how I'm, I have this strange immigrant status, right? Because I am an American citizen, but I wasn't raised here. It's like, this is, I know [00:06:15] what it feels like to be an immigrant.
When you go into a place and, like, just, even though you can speak the language, it's just not the language you speak, right? I went to a lovely public school. It was fantastic. It was a couple of blocks from where we [00:06:30] lived. Very comfortable. My dad had planned all the things, except that, Like, he wasn't a teenager anymore, right?
You know, I walk in and I don't dress like everybody else. I was definitely considered the foreigner. I remember the English teacher once, I don't know what he was [00:06:45] mad at, but I'll never forget he just stopped the class and said, you know, it's embarrassing. Even the foreigner speaks better than all of you.
That is how he chastised that team and humiliated the heck out of me in that process. And that wasn't his intent. Right? That wasn't his intent, [00:07:00] but it is those kinds of experiences, that normalization of othering others, and that sense for me that I had been Dominican and Puerto Rican my entire life, but now I was Hispanic.
I [00:07:15] was in this box. And this box was clearly identified as someone with low socioeconomic status, low educational attainment, apparently low English capabilities, but all of these things that were [00:07:30] likely for some segments of this community, but not for the entire community, but that was the bias that was there.
And, and as a young person, I was absorbing that from my teachers. I was absorbing that from my classmates who. [00:07:45] thought it was an affront to them that I was getting accepted to the same schools that they were getting accepted, right? I was getting all of these messages and yet I also felt like I had to defend myself.
I have a 16 year old daughter that is kind and lovely. Our lived experiences are [00:08:00] so different, but I remember having very much of that personality then, but having to toughen up very quickly so that I could, you in respectful ways, reminding people, I was like, no, I deserve to sit here. It's the humiliating [00:08:15] aspect of having to claim your space all the time, space that you have earned, right?
I was sitting in, in these classes with the top students in the school. I deserve to be there, but because I was brown, because I was different because I, you know, I [00:08:30] had back then I had a little bit more of an accent, but right. All of the things that made me different. That's what made me less than. And so that kind of experience then followed.
I went to school at Bucknell university, beautiful campus. I sit on the board now. I am [00:08:45] deeply grateful for everything I learned there, but I was also deeply others there. Right. But that is also where, as my dad likes to say, he sent me to the whitest school in the United States and I become politicized.
He's like, how does that [00:09:00] happen? That's precisely why it happens Because I have been othered so much and that is I also joke that at Bucknell University is where I became a person of color Because I did not know these terms. I did not know these [00:09:15] concepts growing up You I was on campus for like less than a week or so, and one Cecil Boone, one of the football players came to me and said, Hey sis, come and hang out with us.
And I was like, um, I'm sorry. And at that point I didn't have any siblings, and I'm [00:09:30] like, why is he calling me sis, like sister? What's going on? He's like, the people of color are hanging out over there. And I was like, Who are these people that you speak of? Like, what, what, what is this? And I was sitting next to a young Black woman and she looked at me and she was also, she was Caribbean also, so that's how she and [00:09:45] I connected.
And she and I were like, okay, let's go. And that became my community. That was my home for four years in central Pennsylvania, in Louisburg, PA, at Bucknell University. I found a [00:10:00] loving community, a supportive community, a community that helped me find my place in the language and the historical context for what I was experiencing because I didn't know that.
So I studied international relations with a concentration on [00:10:15] Latin America because that was my heart. I also studied women's studies. I actually created the first, it is now called gender studies, but back then we called it the women's studies program. so much. That's my second major, with a concentration of Latin American women, because I wanted to [00:10:30] read and understand the things I didn't know about.
That felt like they were very much what was imposed on me, but I didn't understand it in the social, cultural context of the United States. I went to NYU to get my master's. I have a master's in public [00:10:45] policy. I was introduced to NYU by Dr. Walter Stafford. who was a black professor who was intent on diversifying the ranks of the public policy sector.
And so again, these introductions into matters of race, class, and [00:11:00] gender, right? When, when I like it, when young people start talking to me about intersectionality now, I'm like, I've been studying this for decades. I've been living this. I, I, yeah, I appreciate that you understand this and I love this, but just so you know, like, here's what I learned.
But the point is, is [00:11:15] that I was learning this and seeking this. And then I did a fellowship in public affairs, the core of fellows program, which was an amazing experiential learning program. And so, so if you don't get it by now, like I I'm deeply curious. I like learning. I like studying by [00:11:30] this point. My father's like, when are you going to start working?
But my family, yeah, like they're incredibly supportive, but they're just like, okay, like, where's this going? Because. This is not what they knew, right? You go to college and you get a job. And I just always was carving out these spaces thanks to them, [00:11:45] right? Thanks to the conditions that they created so that I could do it.
But it was also unknown to them. So it was, it was like, well, when are you going to work? And over a barbecue one day with one of his best friends who had worked at the hotel with him, And the reason why he worked at the hotel with him [00:12:00] was because he moved when he moved from Iran. He had a PhD in economics, but nobody would hire him.
So Ali Sistani worked with my dad, and he eventually got the job he deserved, which was as a credit risk analyst at Moody's Investor Service. And one day over [00:12:15] a barbecue, he tells my dad, he's like, Hey, we're hiring young people like Daisy with master's in public policy. Give me her resume. Let me see what happens.
And Iran says, I don't know. I had no idea what credit risk analysis was, like, I had no idea that the degree I had in public policy could be [00:12:30] applied to credit risk, but little did I know that public financing existed. And so he gave my resume and I was hired by the grace of Nicole Johnson, who was single handedly diversifying the public finance team by bringing in young, [00:12:45] talent like me, and we looked like those old United Colors of Benetton.
We were folks from all over the world, all of us with degrees. We all went to Columbia, NYU, Harvard, right? I worked at Moody's for 12 years. I was a credit risk [00:13:00] analyst for six years. I then managed our global foundation for three years. And then I went into HR to run the company's first diversity and inclusion function.
Being at the right place. working really hard and finding my [00:13:15] space, right? Recognizing the diversity and inclusion piece came about because I was an employee of color and I knew what it was like to feel lonely, to feel sidelined, to feel confused. by others, right? I was, me and the other two Latinas [00:13:30] were always confused for each other.
And we were like, we don't even look like each other. Like what's happening, right? I knew these little things that happened in the organization. And so I was the one that would go to the black MBA conferences, the Asian MBA conferences, the Latino MBA conferences. I was like, let's just bring in, [00:13:45] I naively.
My early approach to diversity was like, if we build it, they will come, right? They just have them here and things will be better. Of course, eventually I learned the complexities of that, but my early efforts in D& I was really about just serving as an [00:14:00] advocate for the company to bring in more diverse talent.
That called the attention of leaders. And when this opportunity came up. They're like, well, apparently she could be good for this. And little did they or I know that that was my calling.
Aransas: What [00:14:15] a story, Daisy. And so many lessons in there. So many important moments of decision. What is your perspective on this [00:14:30] work now?
Daisy: That it's more necessary than ever. And that it requires us to be at our best to do our best. I think for many of us, you know, I'll speak for myself. It was always about, about pushing for change and [00:14:45] driving change and doing all the things and, you know, and sometimes, you know, seeing when. burnout was facing me, right?
When exhaustion was coming my way, when illness was coming my way, and just kind of like, I know I'm going to get a cold, but you know what, if I don't do it, who [00:15:00] else is going to do it? Right. Or, you know, like if I don't go to that event, then no one's going to say that thing or whatnot. Right. And it's these pressures that we impose on ourselves to do that.
And my biggest lesson has been. That is kind and that is, but you don't have to be a victim yourself, [00:15:15] right? Of your own doing. And in many ways I did that to myself in, you know, with the voices in my head of like, this is for the greater good, but really what great good am I doing if I am burnt out and exhausted?
And so my [00:15:30] perspective on driving change now, which is, incredibly necessary, right? Of uplifting truth, which is incredibly necessary now. Of seeking our shared humanity. Of seeing ourselves through each other, which is incredibly necessary. All [00:15:45] of that is necessary, and so is taking care of me so that I can show up for myself.
before I can show up for you well. I think that's my new version of leadership now, is I need to be right within, right? Thank you, Lauryn [00:16:00] Hill. That is the name of one of my chapters in my new book. I have to be right within before I can do the things that I believe that I am in this world to do, which is to create conditions for others to thrive.
I need to be kind to myself. [00:16:15]
Aransas: Tell us more about that journey for you of getting right. Yeah.
Daisy: It's a journey. I mean, I think that's, that is the best way to put it. It's a lot of mistakes. You know, writing to me is healing. And when I was writing Burnt Out [00:16:30] to Lit Up, I was on a sabbatical. I called it my radical sabbatical.
I intentionally designed it to come back to myself because I had felt I had lost myself so often. And in writing my book, I was able to not just write the stories of those moments, but [00:16:45] also forgive myself. And that, I think, is the hardest thing for us. It's forgiving myself for the times that I let people down.
For the times that I did not listen when I should have listened because I was too [00:17:00] angry, angry at myself, angry at everybody else, right? When the times that, that I just made the wrong decision and just powered through knowing that it was the wrong decision. And the many, many moral injuries that we take [00:17:15] on in workplaces where we do the things that go so counter to our values and who we are, but we do them to.
just survive another day, right? To many of us to put food on the table [00:17:30] and you know, a roof over our heads or like my mentor reminded me yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Daisy is not always to put food on your table and the roof over your head, but for people of your caliber is really to be able to afford that vacation you want to take and to be able to afford the [00:17:45] lifestyle.
And I was like, you know what? Okay. I also have to admit that, right? For some it is that and for others is the fear of losing the lifestyle that you have created, the conditions that you have built, right? Like, you know, being able to pay for my [00:18:00] daughter's school, right? That's a necessity, but is it really?
Right? So it is coming to terms with the weight and impact of those constant moral injuries that you both are impacted by, but that you also and that I know I have [00:18:15] cost on others. So for me, it's a series of being the head of diversity and inclusion and having to be a spokesperson for practices and policies that you know are are not truly inclusive, are not truly in [00:18:30] the best interest of people.
You know, I write about this in the book. It was, you know, the many, many times that, and this happens to so many women and so many people of color, we're the cleanup crew, right? The one executive decided, you know, [00:18:45] to put out all his beliefs out there and say all the awful things. And now we have to quell the spirits of hundreds of employees who are traumatized and hurt as they should be.
But I gotta calm that [00:19:00] nervous system while I'm calming the social media nervous system because then there's the PR side of it while I'm also calming it. who I should not be taking care of, but the senior leadership folks who are also losing their minds, right? It is the, those multiple [00:19:15] stakeholders and trying to be somewhat right for everybody, but never quite right enough for anybody.
And that constant weight and push and I am naturally [00:19:30] impatient. It is not my best trait. It is the one thing that everyone's like, this is what I have to work on. I am impatient. I am 51 years old and I am still as impatient as I was when I was 20. I may just have a little bit more experience now. I push and I push to get to what I want because I need it, that it [00:19:45] needs to happen now.
And with age, I've learned to tame that a bit, but I am still naturally, right, whenever there's an injustice, whenever there's something that's wrong, I just want to fix it.
Music: Mm hmm.
Daisy: One of the boundaries I have to establish is around my own [00:20:00] expectations of myself. Yes. That one,
Aransas: that's been a hard one. Yeah, same.
Same. And I've said on other episodes that I now try to talk really kindly to myself about this and say, the most important things are [00:20:15] getting done. You're doing enough. I have to like really slow it down. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.
Daisy: Cause otherwise
Aransas: my brain is just like, we have
Daisy: to get
Aransas: it all done now.
Daisy: Yes. It's like, and it's got to be fixed now because it's going to get crazier. And I was like, you know what? It may [00:20:30] get crazier. I was like, but it's not going to get any better if you're the one that's doing crazy loops around the town. So
Aransas: it's like, you're not making things better. Well, and that's true, right?
Like when we're under stress, we can only see the acute solution, right? We can see [00:20:45] the thing right in front of us. And. we miss all of the little shades and all of the other inputs that are out there to help us creatively fulfill a more strategic, more valuable, more sustainable solution. [00:21:00] Cause we're just like, I got to get this done.
Daisy: Totally. And I love that you give yourself that grace and, and that you have that language. I became a huge fan of mantras while I was writing my book. And I have to tell you, in full transparency, and I've said this to practitioners, it's [00:21:15] like, I was one of those people. I was like, that's woo woo stuff.
Like, that's not me. I'm a doer. I'm this immigrant woman. I just get the job done, right? This is what I do. Hey, that sounds like a
Aransas: song.
Daisy: Like, fundamentally. [00:21:30] believe right now so much. I mean, I have tons of them in front of me. I write at the end of each chapter and burnt out to lit up. I write scripts because I leaning on my HR leader experience.
All I ever did, especially during the summer of 2020 was [00:21:45] write scripts for leaders, right? But you know, it was like, you write scripts for leaders when you are doing, you know, conducting layoffs, you write scripts for leaders when they are conducting performance management conversations, you give them talking points so that to help curb their ways.
And I've done [00:22:00] so many of those. And I remember, I remember a colleague of mine who's a head of diversity one day in the summer of 2020 going like, do people not know how to talk? Like, why do I have to write scripts for them all the time? I turned around and I was like, we are helping them find their better self.
That's exactly, you took the words right out [00:22:15] of my mouth. That is what we're trying to do. And so when I was writing Burnt Out to Lit Up, I was like, you know, I'm writing these scripts, not so that you repeat them word by word, but so that they help you be intentional and thoughtful about what you're going to say.
And so these are the things that as a [00:22:30] manager, you could be saying, these are the things that as an employee, you can be saying to your manager to ask for the boundaries that you need, ask for the support, right? And I include also some mantras. I was like, this is the mantra, my mantra in the morning. I'm on tour in the afternoon, [00:22:45] on tour in the evening, on days where I really, really need to hold on to those.
Aransas: I love, love, love that you did that. We used to say in theater, learn your lines so you can forget them.
Daisy: That's right. Yes. That's exactly it. Once [00:23:00] you feel so confident and once it has becomes part of who you are, this is how you communicate to the world. Yeah. I think of it as like, it's just this really special toolkit that you have, and you get to take out the right tool for the right conversation.
Aransas: But if you don't know the tool [00:23:15] exists,
Daisy: Well, no, because you don't know what to pull from it and you're just like, and this is when people say all the things and you leave a conversation feeling worse than when you first started it. Right. Have you had those? Not with, sometimes not sometimes with ill intent, but most of the time [00:23:30] it's not ill intent.
It's just like, you just, people just don't know what they don't know. And then you're, and you're there and just like, I came to have my cup filled and now my cup is empty. I'm like, I'm just going to leave my head down and walk away. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I want to be someone that leaves a [00:23:45] conversation with me with their cup full.
That's what I want to do.
Aransas: The way you're positioning human resource functions, right, whether it's human capital or people teams or whatever you want to call them today, because I feel like there's like 80 names. I think. Many of us went [00:24:00] into corporate careers, assuming those were the nice people, the ones who are really on our side, who are out to help people.
And I think a lot of people feel as they get into those functions, this lack of integrity. Yeah, they [00:24:15] feel betrayed. Yeah. And it's disorienting. Yes. Yeah. And so what I hear in your story is. a decision to do it differently?
Daisy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Managing your integrity [00:24:30] is such an important aspect of maintaining your health and your well being.
And for me, it's been so important. You know, a lot of people talk about their brands and to me, your brand is your reputation, right? Like this is like, this is who you are. No, and you're going to get me, you may [00:24:45] get me at different energy levels, but you're always going to get me, you know, anytime that you talk to me.
And for me, managing my integrity as A leader in the HR space has always been about being very clear. This is the role that I [00:25:00] play, right? My job is to protect this company. There is no doubt that that is my job. My job is also to create the conditions for you to thrive. Because that protects the company.
Because that helps the company and by the way, when that helps the [00:25:15] company, then we all make more money and then we build generational wealth and like, right, like this is supposed to be, this is supposed to be the cycle of virtuousness, right? That it's not always that. But that is the moment. We will fail.
I will fail the company [00:25:30] at times, and I will fail the employees at times. And it is reconciling that, and it is just putting one foot in front of the other, and just saying, I'm going to try and do better. That's what has worked for me, of knowing and accepting I am imperfect. And by the way, I do a lot of [00:25:45] coaching and leadership, and I always tell, particularly managers and leaders, I'm not perfect.
Your team already knows you're not perfect. So like, stop peaking the funk. This isn't, like, we all know you're human. So stop, like, trying to do all [00:26:00] these things. Let's, you know, like, you're not going to lose their respect. If you are honest with them, you will lose their respect and trust. If you are inconsistent, you will lose their respect and trust.
If you do not have follow through with what you say, you want to say, [00:26:15] and if you show them one face and do something else. Right. And so for me, with my team is, listen, I am an imperfect human being. And whenever I messed up, I would, I was like, you're right. I missed that. I am sorry. I was like, And I'm responsible for figuring out how to [00:26:30] fix it, right?
Not you, right? It's on me, and we're going to figure this out. And we will do it together if that's the proper course, or I will do it by myself. But it is that effort of showing your team that you genuinely care, and being [00:26:45] transparent with folks to the point that transparency is helpful. And that is the most common demand that you have from, you know, workers everywhere. But sometimes you don't need to know how the sausage is made. [00:27:00] I'm saying, you don't need to know everything that's behind the scenes. You need to know what is important and what is true.
Now, having said all of that, I have worked for and worked with awful people doing this work. Like, I will be the first one to say that [00:27:15] happens, by the way, that happens in every profession. Yeah. Like, I don't understand why, for some reason, if it's an HR person, that's bad. If it's a chief marketing person, that's bad.
I think it's the
Aransas: disappointment, right? I think people expected the finance people to be about the finances. It's a title problem. [00:27:30] That's a good point. Yes, you're right. You're
Daisy: supposed to be human. Yeah. And within the context of that. I am supposed to do this. Obviously, I have a sweet spot for HR practitioners because this is the work that I've done.
And [00:27:45] I have, I remember having this conversation with my team in particular when we're advised and we would get just, I mean, Oh my God, skewered. And I would go back to them and they would be in tears sometime, many times in tears, upset, angry. Like, why don't they know this [00:28:00] Daisy? What I'm like, you know what?
They don't need to know. It just needs to happen for them. They don't need to know all the things that you did. to make sure that that person received the right healthcare benefit. They just want it to happen. You're just as good as the work that gets done, not the how [00:28:15] to make it. And that's a hard message to give to people whose work this is.
But it is to your point about what is expected of us. It's also of us as a team is what we expect of ourselves. And I would often tell my team, we didn't come to these jobs to receive [00:28:30] accolades every day. We came to these jobs to do the right things and in many ways to do them behind the scenes because that's the work that we do.
And so sometimes when it doesn't, you know, pan out that way, it is a hard, bitter pill to [00:28:45] swallow, but we have to remind ourselves, what's our purpose? Why are we in this role? And for me as a leader, that was my role to remind my team of that and to also care for their hearts. Not just their minds and their physical well being, but also their [00:29:00] hearts, because they
Aransas: can be broken, too.
Right. And remember that this is a whole person that you're engaging with. I think, too, though, we're at a really interesting time for companies and for people who work in companies. I monitor the Edelman Trust [00:29:15] Barometer. Oh, yes. Yes. I'm fascinated by it. Fascinated. And so for those who aren't looking at that all the time, it is a global barometer of trust across multiple domains.
And [00:29:30] consistently over the last five years, and it really sort of fell off a cliff a couple of years ago, you see trust degrading with anything large and institutional. So whether it's government or [00:29:45] companies. And. It's only that which is in our direct sight line, which feels like it can be trusted. And I think that's really contributing to so many people leaving corporate systems.
And there's a lot to be said for a corporate [00:30:00] system. There's a lot of benefits to being a part of a machine. Oh yeah. But I think there's a lot of distrust. And I say this as somebody who was with one company for 18 years and has been out on my own since then and now consults with companies all day [00:30:15] long.
And There is this real distrust of that machine and a feeling that I can't be my whole self. I can't be an integrity and be in a machine. I can't have autonomy and authority and agency in my life inside a [00:30:30] machine. If I understand what you're doing in your work, it's to say, no, you can. And so I'm excited personally, and for the sake of our audience, to hear how you're cultivating that sense of [00:30:45] integrity and authenticity.
within the organizations you lead.
Daisy: Yeah. Oh my gosh. First of all, I'm so glad that you're also doing this work and that you're calling that out because I do think we can have agency over our careers [00:31:00] and our lives. For sure, these systems are not level. The system that we've inherited was not designed to create happy workers.
It was create, it was designed to create productive workers, right? And it's just like, just churn out whatever it is you're churning out, whatever widget you're working on with knowledge [00:31:15] workers. And that became more complicated. Right. But, but inevitably it's just, you know, and if you're, you know, knowledge workers are mostly in the business of ideas and solutions.
And it's like, and it's also like, how quickly can you turn those, those out? Right. And, and I will suck. the life out of you, right? And so while you do that, [00:31:30] because that's our contract, right? Like for some reason, I like to remind people, I don't know what these, like, I never signed a contract that said that, but that seems to be the contractual expectation in organizations.
First, I believe that we're in a very unique moment in history for so many [00:31:45] reasons. It is what I call the messy middle when it comes to the world of work. And that comes from employees, Finding a voice that they did not believe they had right and you know, and unions have played a role in that, but it's not just union [00:32:00] work.
And I have a lot of respect for union workers, but it's not just unions, right? It's also individual workers and employees, right? Finding their voice and demanding, right? What they need and want. And sometimes what they need and want is not In [00:32:15] alignment with what a corporation can offer and where the HR teams come in to this place quite often is to be the communicators of that.
I would often have to be the one saying, I was like, if I do X, Y, I cannot [00:32:30] do B and C. So I need to understand. What's most important here. And in some cases, what's most important to you is not most important to somebody else. So I'm going to make decisions that are going to make inevitably everyone unhappy, right?
But somebody just a little happy, right? And that's the [00:32:45] line there. And that's what I'm finding is, is happening in, in the space that we're in. And then you've got. the middle managers, right? The frozen middle. I have such deep love for managers because they are stuck in between the [00:33:00] relentless demands from the top and the relentless demands from the bottom.
And most of them don't even know how to handle their own middle. Right. And so you've got all of these things happening and we still have not healed. I [00:33:15] am convinced that we still, as a group of humans, we still have not emotionally, physically, I know I haven't physically, right? And I know many others, but emotionally have not healed from COVID.
And not only [00:33:30] are we in a pandemic, you could consider it a weaker emotional states. We're in poly crisis mode. So it's crisis after crisis. I have, you know, I was coaching a manager the other day and she just said, Daisy, like, I haven't recovered from the last two crises and you're asking me to become a better leader for [00:33:45] this next crisis.
I don't have it in me. And I had to just, we just kind of paused and we're like, truth. This is, this is it. And then had to have a moment of, Okay, but we're not going to draw a hole in the ground and put your head in it. So [00:34:00] what does it look like to put one foot in front of the other imperfectly?
Imperfectly. What does it look like to just do what we can? Because we cannot eradicate what's happened in the past, and we cannot control what's coming to us in the future. But we can. [00:34:15] have this moment right now in front of us. How do we do that with integrity? How do we do that with care? How do we do that with deep intention?
And how do we do that giving ourselves grace? That whatever we do now is not going to be perfect. And O. P. S. [00:34:30] It never was going to be a,
Aransas: be perfect.
Daisy: Thank you. We were told, right? We were sold this bill of goods about what leadership was. I'm like, eh, it's always, I don't know about, I'm sure you did. When I became the first head of diversity for Moody's Investor Service, I had to create my first [00:34:45] strategy for our women's initiative.
And up until that point, I had never created big strategic plans, right? I was, I had been a credit analyst. I had been a foundation manager, right? I had done all these operational plans, but this was strategy. This was thinking two to three years ahead. And my [00:35:00] boss, who was the then head of HR, Lent me her executive coach.
I did not know those people existed. I am like, okay. And I remember her telling me she's expensive. So make sure you use the most of it. And you know, the good student in me and the little immigrant was just like, I'm going to [00:35:15] get all everything out of her. And she. was amazing. It was like being in school for three hours.
She, you know, we built a plan. I remember the whiteboard in my office had all these ideas and metrics and KPIs and all these things that make like, I'm a [00:35:30] geek. I love all that stuff. And as she was leaving, I had like this bolt of courage. And I just had to ask her, I was like, I'm sorry, but like, how much do you charge?
And she just looked at me and she's like, well, you know, it's, it's 5, 000 for the session. This was like 20 years ago. So this is why coaches make a lot more money now. And I'm like, [00:35:45] Oh, that's amazing. And like, and so like, who do you work with? She realized how naive I was. She's like, I work with your CEO and your entire C suite.
I do this for all of them. And that was my aha moment of, I have been knocking myself [00:36:00] crazy doing this stuff by myself, thinking of myself as less than, and these folks. Everyone's getting help. Yes. That's what broke through for me. I'm going to ask for help all the freaking time.
Aransas: I was
Daisy: [00:36:15] like,
Aransas: this is, this is it.
I love that. It's like, we would never try to learn a language or how to play piano without a teacher. Yes. Because that would mean we were going to like reinvent how to play a piano. No. There's like a [00:36:30] way. And then also beat
Daisy: ourselves up for it. Beat ourselves up for it for not knowing. That's frivolous. I mean, it was, it was such a huge aha moment and it was for so many reasons, but it was as a woman, as a woman of color, [00:36:45] feeling like I shouldn't ask for help because people will think less of me.
I was like, no, like my CEO is doing it. Yeah. This is how it gets done. So clearly for you to be objective, like he needs that help. And then the counter to that, which is I think [00:37:00] thematically to what the work that you do around us is, it's not just asking for help, but it's also giving help to others. Right.
Is doing that for
Aransas: others, like that's, that's the secret sauce. That's it. And then talk about a virtuous circle. [00:37:15] Oh my gosh, Daisy, I could talk to you for hours. I am so energized by you and so grateful for the work that you're doing. I can't wait. To read your book and to [00:37:30] talk about it with others because I do think so much of your work is fueled by community and connection.
And so I'm already going to say like, Uplifters, let's book club this and learn [00:37:45] together and reinforce these messages and challenge one another to be courageous. in our careers and to use these scripts and to choose what we want. Yes. And to empower ourselves because we don't actually need companies to empower us.[00:38:00]
Nope. It's all in us. Yeah. Daisy, thank you for being here. Uplifters, thank you for listening in. I can't wait to hear what you think about this book and chat with you about this incredible episode.
Daisy: Thank you. Thank you. Oh my God. This was so much joy. So much [00:38:15] fun.
Aransas: Thank you for listening to the Uplifters podcast.
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