Uh So my name is Delia and I'm a corporate coach. So, what I'm actually doing is following my passion. Um And it's helping companies with diversity and with values and how we can link it with corporate strategy. Um I really want to encourage you to use the chats.This will be quite a personal um personal topics. So please free again to share your personal experiences and challenge me as well. At the end, there will be some sort of Q and A. Um And I'm really here as well to learn from your opinions too. Ok. So before we start, I actually want to know if you think about diversity, what do you think it means? And please again, share it in the chat experience actually tells me that when I ask these kind of questions, people need to think about it and that we all will have different definitions, but all these definitions are actually correct if they're all good. And that's what's good about it that we all have our uniqueness. But now let me ask you a second question if you are the hiring manager and you need to find a new employee for your team and you can choose from true profiles. Who are you going to choose? The first profile is a start up type dynamic chit chatty full of ideas. The second profile is a little burger type, calm cultured and also not tooty chatty. So my question is who are you going to choose?

Chances are again that what you're doing now is just thinking who is going to fit my company, who is going to fit in my team or even more importantly, who is going to fit with me as a colleague. Well, this process of fitting someone is called alignment. And what I'm going to show you today is that actually alignment is killing diversity. So after such a bold statement, I'm going to sh of the day. So what I want to show you today is that diversity is broader than we think that we need to step up how we manage it. And that in the end, it all starts with me with you and with us. So let's go back to the concept of alignment. Alignment is a strategy to control the unknown. So what we're doing as a species is that we created this set of definitions of rules in which we have to act and to behave and in certain circumstances, alignment is the correct way to go. Let's think about the red light, for instance, as soon as the red light pops, we all stop. Can you imagine if people would not stop, things would turn chaos. But in some cases we don't want alignment. Let's take our group of friends, for instance. Um, in my case, I have a really diverse group of friends. But imagine if they would all be little mess if they all would be little meat clones.

So, who would call me up on a Friday evening and say, oh, let's do something crazy or more importantly, who is going to stop me from doing something stupid? Well, all our friends, they are leading their own lives, they all have their own experiences. And that's key because with his own experiences, they're actually enhancing my own life. And in companies, it should be just the same that we should need alignment and also this freedom of being who you are. But unfortunately, alignment is still the dominant strategy. Let's take again, the concept that I taught before is the hiring one. We can see it clearly in tech, we see that less than 20% are women. And if we look at the American numbers, we see that less than 3% are from African American or Hispanic backgrounds. But more importantly, if we look at retention rates, we see that these two groups are actually leaving the company and not only the company but even the whole tech industry. Why is that? Are these people not capable? Of course, they are research showed that one thing um responsible for that was culture, the culture intact. Revolves um to a young white male. And that brings me to a second point, a recent trend now that we're seeing is that companies are hiring for culture, you're not looking at your skills, you're looking, do you fit the company? But does that actually work? Well?

Again, what I'm seeing, I had a call with a CEO of um a Belgian tech company and she told me that they had actually had a problem. So she saw that in the company, there was not enough innovation and creativity, but also not people taking up responsibilities. So what we did is that we deep dive a bit deeper. And what we saw is that culture was immensely important. They really hired people for culture and they had a great gender balance. But the problem is what they did is that they linked their culture to a specific set of values and the specific set of values, they defined behaviors to it. And they were measuring these behaviors as the sole Kpis for their employees. But they didn't realize that by doing so they were creating clones, everyone was just behaving the same. And so we they had no entrepreneurship. They had difficulties pushing people forward. Everyone was just content where they were. And so companies at the moment, they really realize that you have to leverage this diversity to still be highly competitive in this market. You need this creativity, you need this innovation, you need this engaged employees So what we're doing now is setting up these diversity programs.

Well, I think we all know of them. I think we work in tech. So when I still worked in tech, I received a massive amount of information for being connected to um women leadership programs or women empowerment programs. And he always felt a bit off until one of my colleagues told me a personal story. He was asked to give a female leadership. Um He was asked to give a communication course. I'm really sorry, I should have turned off my slack. Um So he was asked to give a communications course in a female leadership workshop in a Swiss Investment Bank. And when he was preparing the workshop, um he actually saw that communication is really personal communication style is linked to yourself. And so what he did is that he started this workshop with, I don't care that you're a woman. I care that you're being your unique self. And afterwards, he got this tremendous feedback of, thank you. I felt as a person, I felt that you really cared of who I was. And that could make me think are these diversity programs? Not again, a form of alignment? Are we not saying again, these are the rules and you should follow these rules if you want to play our game, a men's game, a woman's game, an age game.

So what would happen if we tear down all these boxes of diversity if we break down this alignment that created that we've created around this diversity. And that brings me back to my first question, what is diversity? Diversity to me is an ode to randomness. It's something natural that happens. When you bring a group of people together in all their uniqueness. You might have already heard of the water cooler uh metaphor of Professor Kahneman. Well, what he actually said is that a water cooler at the office place is the only place where meaningful conversations happen. Everyone is just being themselves. They're not thinking about their roles. They're not thinking about where I'm coming from. No, they're just being themselves and they chitchat, they gossip, they tell their unique opinions of what's happening at the company. These things do not happen in a meeting and so that's diversity. It leverages all these uniqueness that we have. And of course, I'm not saying that your cultural background or your race or your gender is not important. Of course it is. But we're more than that. But you might think, ok, if we let just everyone be themselves, will these different opinions not tear us apart? I mean, nobody likes to hear different opinions. Well, what kind of skills would we need? Well, I think we need just one thing and it's one thing, it's called space.

We need a space of trust really the space of where we can be made and we need a common space, a space that unites us. So let me bring you to the first space. It's called the space of trust and appreciation. Let's imagine this. You are in a place where you are not afraid to speak up your mind and even more you will be appreciated by doing so well. This not being afraid, it's called psychological safety. And psychological safety is crucial for diversity without it, we can't have diverse environments.

Let me explain you why. Um A Professor Harvard, Professor Amy Edmondson, she did a study in a hospital and there were two teams yet on one hand, let's call them the Ferrari team with all these top notch doctors. And then you had, let's call it the opal team, the regular doctors still completely capable, of course. And what she actually saw when she, when she was looking at performance is that the regular team was doing better than a Ferrari team? Why, why with all these top notch brains here? Why were they being outperformed by the regulars? Well, in the regular team, people were not scared to be themselves, they could freely share ideas, but more importantly, they were not scared to admit their mistakes and thus everyone could learn from it. Let me give you a second example. We all know about Boeing and what happened with the technical issues last year. So again, a group of researchers went there and they asked the same question, how does this bright engineers did not see this coming? Well, surprise date. It, they knew it was going to happen. They actually predicted it, but no one spoke up again. You can ask yourself why. And what they found is that the culture at booing is a culture of we can do. It's not a culture of can we do? And you might think, of course, this is absolutely obvious.

But let me ask you a question if you're thinking, do you think that in a position where you are now that you can go up to upper management and tell them that something is going wrong and be appreciated by doing so? Or that you have this amazing idea that you just know that will bring value to the company and gave them be 100% sure that they will do something with that information. What I'm trying to prove here is that diversity is key and psychological safety is key as well. It is the key to diversity. It lets people to dare to be themselves in all their uniqueness. And it brings me to my second point, the space of me, who am I? What makes me unique? What drives me forward? What do I need to thrive? Well, underneath all these questions, there is one abstract uh concept and it's called values. Values are positive human drivers. They are something that you need to be fulfilled, to be happy, to be content in what you're doing. Let me give you a personal example. Um For me the value of creativity is extremely important. I use it in everything that I'm doing. But before I was working in an environment where they did not let me be creative, I had to follow the rules. I could not think outside of the box. And it made me so demotivated, going to work actually costed me energy. It didn't give me energy.

So what I did, I just changed jobs where I could be creative and where I could thrive and going to work started to give me enormous pleasure and and it gave me a lot of energy, but the world cannot function with only individuals. It's good that we know that we are we, that we are us, but we need something more a world with the only individuals would turn quickly into chaos. And that brings me to my third point and it's called a common space. What we need is a space that unites us a space where we can connect to and contribute as we think fits best. So companies instead of focusing on this alignment, creating these ways in which we should behave and act upon, they should be thinking of about these connecting points where their employees can really connect themselves to where they really feel it. It is something that I can get behind from for myself and where they can contribute as they think is best. Not because the company said so and what could these common points be? Why it could be the mission of the company. It can also be the mission of the team. It could also be a project, a good colleague. These are all small connectors where we can really contribute to. It might sound a bit abstract again. Um So let me give you a person an example.

Let's say let's talk about today. The reason why you are attending today might all be different. But I think that we have one goal here and that's to grow, that's to learn. And that is what is connecting us and people might grow and learn by, for instance, attending this talk. But they can also do so by reading by um just experiencing or um by talking to people and all these different ways are good. They're all contributing to growth. And so that brings me actually to my last point is that we need to bring these three spaces together. We need this common space where we can all feel safe to be ourselves. But that we also have a space where we can remain ourselves and that's fine. So what I really wanted to show you today is that diversity is not only about gender, about age, about culture is more than that, it's about who am I? What makes me unique and letting people to be their unique selves? Second, that we need to step up how we manage it. So that means alignment is not a way to leverage diversity coherence is and it creates the safe space where people can connect to and contribute how they think it's best. And in the end, it all starts with you. So let me end this presentation with again, a question. Did you already catch yourself thinking with this following question? If they just let me be me, I could do so much more. Thank you very much.

Um Looking forward to see your questions. I don't know if someone has questions or remarks. Thank you again for all these great appreciations. Love it. Do you think we should first fit and then make the change? What do you mean with that Sonia? I don't really get the question for me. What I think it's important is a couple of things. Um First of all, you need to know as well that you as a person, you change throughout time, but that some things remain fairly stable, so values they remain stable over time. So it's so important to know who you are and then search for an environment that really lets you be you. Um And how do you develop a culture with a theme? Who lacks identity theme? That's a good question. I don't believe that any team would not have an identity. Even the lack of an identity is saying that there is an identity. You see what I mean? I think what's what, what's really important is to see? What kind of values do we share as a team there must be some common demo demanding a denominator otherwise you would not be in that team.

And so I think it's really upon thinking what binds us together as a team and then work on that to really identify the team culture. Mhm. And that's a good one. How do we keep our uniqueness consistent in a certain place and not be affected by the opinions around us? You, I don't, people always think when you're being affected by opinions that's bad. But why sometimes an opinion can change something that you say? Ok, actually, that's true.

Maybe I have to revisit my ideas and beliefs. So research actually showed that values can change based on experiences. So why cannot not an experience be an personal opinion, an opinion that really touched you? I don't know if someone agrees with that. Um Then Julia Dexter has um what would you advise a founder, someone in a char making a difference? How can we best make this shift and create safety coherence? Well, I think the key here is that companies should learn to trust their employees. It's, I mean, if you hire someone, I suppose you trust that people to that person, to be capable of doing things if you want to create alignment is really to say, I don't trust you as an employee. I still think you should behave like this. And so I think that's the key again of the whole presentation is this trust that you create. It's like, I mean, when you are having your kids and they're doing something wrong, you can learn them like, OK, it's fine that you did this problem that you made a mistake and now we can fix it. How can we fix it instead of being really angry and just shouting? I think it should be the same thing in um in companies. Um Yes, Mariana, you're right. You have all these um on the internet. You have this problem.

I call that of meaningless shouting, that people are just shouting things. Um and not thinking, OK, if I'm going to shout this, what will be, what will the impact be? So that's why this common space is so important. The internet, that's the problem. We don't really have something that unites us when you are on, when you are on Twitter or on social media. So it's so important to find uh a group like this one that really lets lets you be meaningful, that we have these meaningful interactions. True. But then I completely agree. Um I, I see that I have some people in the moderation panel. I will just give you access, I suppose that you want to clarify some questions. Yes. OK. Um Like this, I'm just going to give you XS. Oh I think they already left. Are there some other questions? Other thoughts? If not, please really feel free to connect with me on linkedin. Um Just send me a message. I'm really happy. I maybe you can hear it. I'm extremely passionate about this uh about this topic. So I love to take a virtual coffee or when I'm in the neighborhood, we can even grab a real coffee one of these days. Um So again, thank you so much for all the input and we look through the questions that everyone asked. Um because I think there are some interesting insights as well for me. And again, thank you and have a nice day, everyone. Hi.