What is our DEI strategy achieving? Lily Zheng, DEI Strategist, Author and Consultant, Communicators need to be able to answer this question and Lily Zheng, DEI Strategist, Author and Consultant, tells all to Kim Clark on everything we need to consider when guiding leaders through effective DEI work that produces measurable outcomes. Lily is on a mission to help differentiate DEI activities and initiatives from real actionable long-term processes that aim to create accountability for those looking for genuine change. This episode is jam packed with gems from both Lily and Kim as they also take a deep dive into Lily’s book, DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing it Right, which serves as a guide for refining the way to a new North Star in the world of DEI.

About The Guest:

LILY ZHENG (they/them) is a no-nonsense Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategist, consultant, and speaker who helps organizations and leaders achieve the DEI outcomes they aspire to. A dedicated practitioner and advocate named a Forbes D&I Trailblazer, 2021 DEI Influencer, and LinkedIn Top Voice on Racial Equity, Lily's work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, and NPR. They are the author of Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace (2017), The Ethical Sellout (2019), DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing it Right (2022) and most recently, Reconstructing DEI: A Practitioner's Workbook (release fall of 2023).  Lily holds an MA in Sociology and BA in Psychology from Stanford University. They live with their wife in the San Francisco Bay Area and can frequently be found putting together yet another all-black outfit and enjoying good Chinese food. 

Find Lily Here:

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LinkedIn

About Kim:

Kim Clark (she/her) focuses her work on the communicator and content creator's role in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She is the co-author of The Conscious Communicator: The fine art of not saying stupid sh*t, an Amazon #1 bestseller and the leading voice for DEI communications and social justice messaging for brands.

She speaks at conferences, writes custom workshops, writes inclusive communications guides, and consults with companies on all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion communications. Kim is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a cisgender woman, Native American (Muscogee Nation) and a mom of two kids with disabilities. These marginalized identities and the privileges that come with society seeing her as White motivate her daily for social change.

Communicate Like You Give A Damn Podcast

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Kim Clark: 00:00:00

Hello, and welcome back to communicate like a give

Kim Clark: 00:00:03

a damn. I'm your host, Kim Clark. It's a pleasure to be

Kim Clark: 00:00:06

here. It's an extra special guest that we have today. We

Kim Clark: 00:00:11

have Lily Jiang, and Lily, we're going to talk about this. We're

Kim Clark: 00:00:15

going to talk about their book. We're also going to talk about

Kim Clark: 00:00:18

the article that they contributed in our book, The

Kim Clark: 00:00:21

conscious communicator, the fine art, I'm not saying stupid shit.

Kim Clark: 00:00:25

For some reason, Lilly, I named things with swear words in it. I

Kim Clark: 00:00:29

really don't swear this much. But you know what, I'm

Kim Clark: 00:00:31

passionate about this subject on mocking I apologize for it.

Kim Clark: 00:00:36

Thank you for being with us. And I know you're super passionate

Kim Clark: 00:00:40

about this as well. And we'll talk. That's what we're gonna

Kim Clark: 00:00:43

get into. But please introduce yourself to folks. Yeah,

Lily Zheng: 00:00:46

well, it's a huge pleasure to be here. My name is

Lily Zheng: 00:00:49

Lily Zang, I use they them pronouns. I am a DI strategist,

Lily Zheng: 00:00:54

consultant, and the author of dei deconstructed your no

Lily Zheng: 00:00:58

nonsense guide to doing the work and doing it right. Just a fun

Lily Zheng: 00:01:01

fact. For you, Kim, I was actually gunning hard to have a

Lily Zheng: 00:01:05

swear word in my title. And it turned out my publishers talked

Lily Zheng: 00:01:09

me down from it. You know, sometimes sometimes I wonder,

Lily Zheng: 00:01:13

right? Like about the alternate reality where I did, in fact,

Lily Zheng: 00:01:16

for this one. But, ya know, I am thrilled to have this

Lily Zheng: 00:01:21

conversation with you today, lots to dive into, you know, not

Lily Zheng: 00:01:25

just about the content that I contributed to your book, but

Lily Zheng: 00:01:29

also about this broader conversation that we were just

Lily Zheng: 00:01:32

talking about, before this conversation on dei and

Lily Zheng: 00:01:37

communication, and you know, how leaders can navigate the current

Lily Zheng: 00:01:41

landscape and communicate effectively without being part

Lily Zheng: 00:01:44

of the problem. Yeah, and

Kim Clark: 00:01:46

I found you on LinkedIn, I've read several of

Kim Clark: 00:01:50

your Harvard Business Review articles. I've seen you do a

Kim Clark: 00:01:54

book club for your own book, and do other talks as well. And

Kim Clark: 00:01:59

oftentimes, you're kind of urging communicators and

Kim Clark: 00:02:04

communications to get their act together. And when the I

Kim Clark: 00:02:09

deliberately sought you out, I lost my place in here of where

Kim Clark: 00:02:13

we're at, oh, here it is. It's towards the end of the book,

Kim Clark: 00:02:18

what you contributed was something that you wrote on

Kim Clark: 00:02:20

LinkedIn, as opposed. And it's called diversity, equity and

Kim Clark: 00:02:24

inclusion are outcomes. That's a paradigm shift. For many people,

Kim Clark: 00:02:30

especially communicators who put out diversity reports that list

Kim Clark: 00:02:35

a whole bunch of activities like we're at camp. Yep. Right, like

Kim Clark: 00:02:38

red summer camp. So let's share with us what you're trying to

Kim Clark: 00:02:41

get across with diversity, equity inclusion outcomes. Yeah.

Lily Zheng: 00:02:46

So this is, this is a very strong opinion I have and

Lily Zheng: 00:02:50

it comes from, first of all, we need to understand the backdrop

Lily Zheng: 00:02:56

of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts happening

Lily Zheng: 00:02:59

right now, not just in America, but around the world, in the

Lily Zheng: 00:03:02

sense that they are very performative. What that means is

Lily Zheng: 00:03:07

we have a whole bunch of efforts that are predicated on action

Lily Zheng: 00:03:11

and activity, but not necessarily accountability,

Lily Zheng: 00:03:14

impact or outcomes. And so you see, organizations, leaders, and

Lily Zheng: 00:03:20

so on, putting forward these initiatives, they might start

Lily Zheng: 00:03:23

er, G's, employee resource groups, they might invite

Lily Zheng: 00:03:26

speakers in for talks, they might have courageous

Lily Zheng: 00:03:29

conversations. And that's all well and good. Sometimes I in

Lily Zheng: 00:03:33

fact, recommend companies do these exact things. But many

Lily Zheng: 00:03:37

leaders lose track of the fact that these are all

Lily Zheng: 00:03:41

interventions, these are all things that we do in the hopes

Lily Zheng: 00:03:46

of creating greater diversity, greater equity and greater

Lily Zheng: 00:03:49

inclusion. And like all good social scientists, whenever I

Lily Zheng: 00:03:53

see something like this, my first question is not do people

Lily Zheng: 00:03:57

care? The answer is always yes. But does it work? Because we

Lily Zheng: 00:04:01

can't just be you know, throwing things willy nilly at problems

Lily Zheng: 00:04:04

and expecting that just because we're good people, we've solved

Lily Zheng: 00:04:07

the problem. But it turns out when you dig into it, a lot of

Lily Zheng: 00:04:10

these initiatives simply don't work. They don't increase

Lily Zheng: 00:04:13

diversity. They don't make people feel a greater sense of

Lily Zheng: 00:04:16

inclusion or belonging. They don't address inequity,

Lily Zheng: 00:04:20

discrimination, injustice, all of these things. And so we have

Lily Zheng: 00:04:23

an environment where there's a lot of talk. In fact, there's

Lily Zheng: 00:04:26

sometimes a lot of action, but it's not effective action. And

Lily Zheng: 00:04:32

in the face of all this employees, staff members, junior

Lily Zheng: 00:04:35

employees, they're starting to wise up, they might not see the

Lily Zheng: 00:04:40

hard data, but they feel like you know what, we've had this

Lily Zheng: 00:04:42

conversation for the 10th time this year, and I'm still getting

Lily Zheng: 00:04:47

discriminated against. We've had trainings for the fifth time

Lily Zheng: 00:04:51

this year, and my managers still can't get anything right. Is

Lily Zheng: 00:04:55

this dei work? Doing anything isn't working and in The context

Lily Zheng: 00:05:00

of all this we have communicators, trumpeting and

Lily Zheng: 00:05:03

celebrating all of these dei things happening and saying,

Lily Zheng: 00:05:07

we've made so much progress, we're not going to quantify our

Lily Zheng: 00:05:10

progress. We've done these 10 things. And last year, we only

Lily Zheng: 00:05:13

did eight things. So that's an improvement of two more things

Lily Zheng: 00:05:17

that we did this year, none of which actually work. But they

Lily Zheng: 00:05:20

don't say that part. Right. And, and this, this is a, this is an

Lily Zheng: 00:05:24

existential threat to the effectiveness of dei work, if we

Lily Zheng: 00:05:28

just keep spinning our gears, and not achieving anything.

Lily Zheng: 00:05:32

We're steadily draining the trust of the communities we're

Lily Zheng: 00:05:35

working on behalf of, and contributing to this cynicism

Lily Zheng: 00:05:38

that de I work is just hot air. Right. And so this is why I

Lily Zheng: 00:05:43

contributed that post that section on dei as outcomes, we

Lily Zheng: 00:05:48

need to center all of our work on this very simple question.

Lily Zheng: 00:05:51

What is it achieving? What's changed? What has the initiative

Lily Zheng: 00:05:55

that we proposed? Done? What is different? And if the answer is

Lily Zheng: 00:06:00

we don't know, we can't tell or nothing, then it's on us to do

Lily Zheng: 00:06:03

better, and to do different and to hold ourselves accountable

Lily Zheng: 00:06:08

for designing initiatives that work, rather than simply

Lily Zheng: 00:06:12

throwing the kitchen sink at a wall, not even seeing what

Lily Zheng: 00:06:15

sticks and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Lily Zheng: 00:06:18

Right? Like that's not acceptable in this current

Lily Zheng: 00:06:20

climate, we need to be doing effective dei work. And

Kim Clark: 00:06:25

communications folks are contributing to this vague,

Kim Clark: 00:06:30

ambiguous, nonspecific kind of goals. And some of that is

Kim Clark: 00:06:36

because leaders aren't necessarily I have compassion

Kim Clark: 00:06:41

for leaders to a certain extent, because they didn't get to where

Kim Clark: 00:06:43

they are, because they're awesome at di, you know, and so,

Kim Clark: 00:06:49

and then everyone looks at them, especially during at this, you

Kim Clark: 00:06:52

know, they're getting the summer of 2020, saying do something, do

Kim Clark: 00:06:55

something and they're in over their heads are used to having

Kim Clark: 00:06:58

all the answers. So you don't have answers to this. But I

Kim Clark: 00:07:01

would you work with a lot of CEOs and a lot of C suites, a

Kim Clark: 00:07:04

lot of executives. And so what are some of the more problematic

Kim Clark: 00:07:08

areas that you've seen with your clients and how they communicate

Kim Clark: 00:07:12

DEI efforts, especially from an executive level?

Lily Zheng: 00:07:17

Well, the challenge is that most people aren't able

Lily Zheng: 00:07:20

to quantify their progress, that they don't have good information

Lily Zheng: 00:07:24

on what they achieved. And unfortunately, they also don't

Lily Zheng: 00:07:28

have the perspective to realize that they don't have that

Lily Zheng: 00:07:33

information. And so the biggest assumption I see leaders making

Lily Zheng: 00:07:38

is that everything they try is inherently successful, simply

Lily Zheng: 00:07:42

because they've tried it. And that that undergirds every sort

Lily Zheng: 00:07:47

of communications faux PA, right? It's not that leaders

Lily Zheng: 00:07:51

know purposefully that what they're doing doesn't work. And

Lily Zheng: 00:07:55

they're lying. That's not the case. It's that leaders have no

Lily Zheng: 00:07:59

idea that what they're doing works, and more importantly,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:03

don't care. They don't realize it, they say, Well, of course,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:06

starting an erg would help I have no way of knowing what's

Lily Zheng: 00:08:09

changed or what's different. But I'm sure it's doing something.

Lily Zheng: 00:08:13

I'm sure bringing in a speaker helps in some way. I have no

Lily Zheng: 00:08:15

idea how but I'm sure it's working. And that naive

Lily Zheng: 00:08:19

optimism, I'm sure it's working. I'm sure it's done something

Lily Zheng: 00:08:22

actually gets leaders in a lot of trouble. Because it turns

Lily Zheng: 00:08:25

out, the large majority of these naive interventions, these

Lily Zheng: 00:08:30

poorly designed DEI efforts don't work. In fact, sometimes

Lily Zheng: 00:08:33

they backfire and even cause more harm than good. And so

Lily Zheng: 00:08:39

that's a huge misstep, right? Leaders don't understand that

Lily Zheng: 00:08:42

the bar is actually pretty high. It's not that you can do any dei

Lily Zheng: 00:08:45

thing. And at worst, it'll be ineffective, no, at worst that

Lily Zheng: 00:08:49

actually harms marginalized communities and harms women,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:53

people of color disabled folks clear and transpose folks,

Lily Zheng: 00:08:56

right, like, so. That's mistake number one. I think mistake

Lily Zheng: 00:09:00

number two is that leaders put a lot of their personal stock and

Lily Zheng: 00:09:05

pride in these sorts of initiatives. They say, Well, if

Lily Zheng: 00:09:08

I funded this initiative, then not not only does it have to

Lily Zheng: 00:09:12

work, by definition, because I'm a good person, and of course it

Lily Zheng: 00:09:16

works. But anyone who criticizes me, you must have it out for me.

Lily Zheng: 00:09:21

And so there's this inability to take feedback or criticism, even

Lily Zheng: 00:09:25

if it's like, you know, not malicious at all, even if it's,

Lily Zheng: 00:09:29

Hey, you know, this initiative that you started, we collected

Lily Zheng: 00:09:32

data on it. And it turns out, it's not actually moving the

Lily Zheng: 00:09:35

needle. A lot of leaders take that personal, instead of

Lily Zheng: 00:09:39

saying, Wow, I had no idea let's retool this initiative to make

Lily Zheng: 00:09:43

sure it works. They say, Are you challenging my commitment to

Lily Zheng: 00:09:47

Dei? Are you saying I'm a bad person? Are you saying I don't

Lily Zheng: 00:09:51

care. And so they double down on their ineffective initiative,

Lily Zheng: 00:09:55

they double down on their communication, and it turns into

Lily Zheng: 00:09:59

a sort of PR Our exercise of you know, you versus the leader who

Lily Zheng: 00:10:04

now has a personal stake in in this, this initiative that isn't

Lily Zheng: 00:10:08

working, being seen as positive. And to bring it all back to

Lily Zheng: 00:10:12

communicators, right? Because that's where we started this

Lily Zheng: 00:10:15

conversation. I think, oftentimes communicators are

Lily Zheng: 00:10:18

caught in the crossfire. They also don't have the data, which

Lily Zheng: 00:10:22

we can talk about that being a problem. But as a result

Lily Zheng: 00:10:26

communicators who are doing their jobs, which are, you know,

Lily Zheng: 00:10:29

there's a message that they need to get out and they do a great

Lily Zheng: 00:10:32

job communicating it can inadvertently become essentially

Lily Zheng: 00:10:36

Dei, money launderers, right, taking the complete lack of

Lily Zheng: 00:10:41

progress and laundering it into a nice, shiny set of

Lily Zheng: 00:10:45

communications, which on its own, it's a brilliant, you know,

Lily Zheng: 00:10:48

work of comms work, but in the broad scheme of things,

Lily Zheng: 00:10:53

contributes to the problem and allows leaders to avoid

Lily Zheng: 00:10:56

accountability. And in some ways, that even gaslights, the

Lily Zheng: 00:11:00

marginalized communities that are continually not seeing

Lily Zheng: 00:11:03

progress, because how might it feel like to be a junior

Lily Zheng: 00:11:09

employee, a woman, person of color, a disabled person, a

Lily Zheng: 00:11:12

queer trans person, continually getting discriminated against

Lily Zheng: 00:11:16

week after week, month after month, see nothing change, only

Lily Zheng: 00:11:20

to see your company put out this shiny report saying we've made a

Lily Zheng: 00:11:24

strong stance against discrimination it discrimination

Lily Zheng: 00:11:28

doesn't live here, diversity is woven into the fabric of our

Lily Zheng: 00:11:32

DNA, and we add blink company are proud to be champions of dei

Lily Zheng: 00:11:37

and will continue pushing our industry for like, oh my gosh,

Lily Zheng: 00:11:41

like that. That just makes me feel awful. I mean, it makes me

Lily Zheng: 00:11:45

feel like shit, right? Because I'm here having these awful

Lily Zheng: 00:11:48

experiences. And meanwhile, the only thing my company says about

Lily Zheng: 00:11:51

it, is this laundered PR sounding communications. Yeah,

Lily Zheng: 00:11:56

right. And, and communicators don't want to be part of that

Lily Zheng: 00:12:00

problem. But I don't think enough communicators realize

Lily Zheng: 00:12:03

that, that's on them to speak up and to say, look, I'm not going

Lily Zheng: 00:12:09

to write nice copy for you, unless you are absolutely

Lily Zheng: 00:12:13

certain that the things you're telling me to make good, you

Lily Zheng: 00:12:17

know, to make shiny, are actually real, and you have hard

Lily Zheng: 00:12:21

data to back it up. Comms people need to be accountability

Lily Zheng: 00:12:25

workers, right? Like they they need to be people who are able

Lily Zheng: 00:12:28

to hold the leaders who are giving them things to buff and

Lily Zheng: 00:12:33

make shiny. Yeah, there, they need to be able to hold those

Lily Zheng: 00:12:37

leaders accountable.

Kim Clark: 00:12:39

I agree with everything you said. And thank

Kim Clark: 00:12:41

you for really, you know, just exposing the situation and, and

Kim Clark: 00:12:46

putting the accountability in there. One of the things that I

Kim Clark: 00:12:48

talk about is visibility drives accountability. And that's could

Kim Clark: 00:12:51

be a secret, you know, like a super strength of communicators

Kim Clark: 00:12:54

saying, I'm not going to put out this diversity report, because

Kim Clark: 00:12:58

it's these activities, and there's not these outcomes. And

Kim Clark: 00:13:02

the kind of language that we're using is not how we talk to

Kim Clark: 00:13:06

another human being. It's not even conversational, but it's

Kim Clark: 00:13:09

it's really, really missing depth, which is why my co author

Kim Clark: 00:13:15

and I, you know, talk about the framework of depth, like we have

Kim Clark: 00:13:19

to get below the surface. It's like I can understand if that

Kim Clark: 00:13:22

was like step one years ago, but post George Floyd, unacceptable,

Kim Clark: 00:13:29

not okay. And it also gives leaders this excuse to say CDI

Kim Clark: 00:13:33

doesn't work. Yeah. And that's very frustrating. You know,

Kim Clark: 00:13:39

because communicators. My thing with communicators is, hey, we

Kim Clark: 00:13:44

don't ask communicators, and many of them look like me.

Kim Clark: 00:13:48

Statistically, they look like me. So they don't have the lived

Kim Clark: 00:13:52

experience. They don't have professional experience. They

Kim Clark: 00:13:54

don't have the experience in general to really truly

Kim Clark: 00:13:57

understand what diversity equity inclusion work actually is. So

Kim Clark: 00:14:03

it's like a goodwill thing. That's how, you know some of us

Kim Clark: 00:14:06

were introduced to it as this goodwill thing like for pride.

Kim Clark: 00:14:09

We're recording this in May. It's, you know, how do you call

Kim Clark: 00:14:14

this heritage month? What term do you use? Personally,

Lily Zheng: 00:14:17

I call it Asian heritage month, but there are

Lily Zheng: 00:14:19

lots of acceptable titles. Right now the the US official title is

Lily Zheng: 00:14:25

Asian American. Oh, no. Okay, now I'm going to get myself in

Lily Zheng: 00:14:30

trouble Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander

Lily Zheng: 00:14:34

Heritage Month, I believe right now.

Kim Clark: 00:14:37

And with pride coming up, we have these opportunities

Kim Clark: 00:14:40

as communicators that are kind of these external factors to

Kim Clark: 00:14:44

recognize when there's these three C's that I use, celebrate

Kim Clark: 00:14:48

crisis and consistency. A lot of communicators just stick at the

Kim Clark: 00:14:53

at the celebrate, right? They just stick with the rainbow

Kim Clark: 00:14:55

washing and let's change our logo those kinds of things. But

Kim Clark: 00:15:00

If we don't go any, any, any deeper than that we're missing

Kim Clark: 00:15:03

the historical and social context of why we have these

Kim Clark: 00:15:05

heritage months in the first place. What do you think about

Kim Clark: 00:15:08

all that? What should people be doing differently?

Lily Zheng: 00:15:10

I absolutely agree. And I think it's because a lot

Lily Zheng: 00:15:13

of communicators that I interact with are really scared of

Lily Zheng: 00:15:17

negativity in any form. They're scared to talk about things that

Lily Zheng: 00:15:21

are bad or harm that's happened, whether it's in the past or the

Lily Zheng: 00:15:25

present. There's this very antiquated notion that the only

Lily Zheng: 00:15:29

acceptable way to talk about dei issues or racism or sexism is as

Lily Zheng: 00:15:35

a celebration that we've solved all the problems. And that would

Lily Zheng: 00:15:41

be all well and good if we had actually solved all the problems

Lily Zheng: 00:15:45

that day. If we solve racism, like hell, yeah. And you know,

Lily Zheng: 00:15:49

talk about how we solve that. The problem is, we haven't in

Lily Zheng: 00:15:53

fact, a lot of challenges are getting worse. And so again, I

Lily Zheng: 00:15:56

go back to this idea that communicators fear or discomfort

Lily Zheng: 00:16:01

with talking about the hard stuff results in laundering

Lily Zheng: 00:16:04

essentially, of real time harm into this, this very sanitized

Lily Zheng: 00:16:10

story of, you know, progress and triumph and celebration and

Lily Zheng: 00:16:15

stuff that looks great on social media, until your employees call

Lily Zheng: 00:16:18

you out on Twitter for the umpteenth time. And then there's

Lily Zheng: 00:16:21

another social media controversy and communicators are stuck

Lily Zheng: 00:16:23

scratching their heads like, what went wrong, we did all the

Lily Zheng: 00:16:27

right things we talked to only about the positive things.

Lily Zheng: 00:16:31

Here's the truth. People don't just want to hear about that.

Lily Zheng: 00:16:35

Now. In fact, more and more people are waking up to the fact

Lily Zheng: 00:16:37

that things are not all sunshine, and rainbows and dei

Lily Zheng: 00:16:40

land, like racism is not over sexism is not over. In fact,

Lily Zheng: 00:16:44

there are increasing attacks on people of color and women's

Lily Zheng: 00:16:48

reproductive rights. And LGBTQ plus folks, trans folks, Muslim

Lily Zheng: 00:16:52

folks, like it's a rough time. And people who are who are very

Lily Zheng: 00:16:58

aware of that reality are looking for organizations that

Lily Zheng: 00:17:02

get it and realize that we're living in troubled times right

Lily Zheng: 00:17:06

now. They're looking for communicators, who can, you

Lily Zheng: 00:17:09

know, nonetheless, represent a brand but still be real

Lily Zheng: 00:17:13

represent reality also. And that, I think, is a skill set

Lily Zheng: 00:17:17

that a lot of communicators just haven't built? They've they've

Lily Zheng: 00:17:20

been trained in this era where, you know, talking about good

Lily Zheng: 00:17:24

news is is your job and making things that are rough look good,

Lily Zheng: 00:17:29

is also your job. But now, now, there's a huge hunger for

Lily Zheng: 00:17:34

realness, and honesty, and embedding that especially when

Lily Zheng: 00:17:39

it comes to social issues, inequality, racism, sexism,

Lily Zheng: 00:17:43

transphobia, you name it, is I think the the frontier of

Lily Zheng: 00:17:47

effective dei Communications.

Kim Clark: 00:17:51

Thank you. Thank you, Lily, and thank you for this

Kim Clark: 00:17:54

book. This book, I know has gone long and far, and people are

Kim Clark: 00:18:00

loving it and using it and putting it to practice. Talk

Kim Clark: 00:18:05

about why did you write the book? What problem are you

Kim Clark: 00:18:08

solving with the book? And then you have in here the four levels

Kim Clark: 00:18:12

of achieving di, what are those four levels?

Lily Zheng: 00:18:16

Yeah. So di deconstructed, I talk about as

Lily Zheng: 00:18:21

my tough love letter to the DEI industry, because the same

Lily Zheng: 00:18:27

problems I'm pointing out here and talking specifically about

Lily Zheng: 00:18:30

as they relate to communicators, actually relate to dei

Lily Zheng: 00:18:33

practitioners as well. We've had the same long problem in our

Lily Zheng: 00:18:39

industry, where we have practitioners who will go into

Lily Zheng: 00:18:42

corporations and you know, will tell their story of being a

Lily Zheng: 00:18:46

marginalized person and not being treated well in the

Lily Zheng: 00:18:49

workplace. And sort of say, now, you know, this is why empathy is

Lily Zheng: 00:18:54

so important, we all need to see each other, you know, let's all

Lily Zheng: 00:18:58

agree that like racism is bad. And then you know, people will

Lily Zheng: 00:19:01

applaud, they'll collect their paycheck, they'll leave. And the

Lily Zheng: 00:19:04

challenge with these sorts of initiatives, again, isn't that

Lily Zheng: 00:19:07

they're coming from a bad place, or that they're cynical, but

Lily Zheng: 00:19:09

that they just don't work on their own. We have a lot of

Lily Zheng: 00:19:12

research showing that these sorts of one off initiatives,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:15

not only don't work, but sometimes can actually cause

Lily Zheng: 00:19:18

more harm than good. But we as dei practitioners, and also, you

Lily Zheng: 00:19:23

know, the leaders who sometimes work with us and bring us in,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:26

don't have a good understanding of what outcomes it is we're

Lily Zheng: 00:19:29

trying to create. I try to work with all my clients to identify,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:34

you know, this is our point A, this is where we're at, this is

Lily Zheng: 00:19:37

what we're doing well, this is what we're not. This is our

Lily Zheng: 00:19:40

point B. This is who we want to be this is what we want to

Lily Zheng: 00:19:43

achieve. This is how we know we've gotten there, and then to

Lily Zheng: 00:19:46

dedicate all of our effort from getting to point A to B. Right,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:51

that's that's effective dei work making your organization better,

Lily Zheng: 00:19:55

more diverse, more equitable, more inclusive, measurably, so

Lily Zheng: 00:19:58

trying to measurably Improve the experiences of not only

Lily Zheng: 00:20:02

marginalized groups, but everyone. Now, this book is

Lily Zheng: 00:20:06

essentially the How To Guide on one, how the industry sort of

Lily Zheng: 00:20:11

lost its way and some of the challenges that we're facing,

Lily Zheng: 00:20:14

and then to how we can really find our way how we can we can

Lily Zheng: 00:20:19

find a new north star to guide our effective DEI efforts. It's

Lily Zheng: 00:20:23

sort of the crystallization of everything I've learned from the

Lily Zheng: 00:20:27

last seven or eight years doing dei work, and trying to hold not

Lily Zheng: 00:20:31

only my clients, but also other practitioners accountable to

Lily Zheng: 00:20:35

achieving real impact achieving real outcomes. And not just

Lily Zheng: 00:20:40

coming in collecting a check. And not knowing whether we've

Lily Zheng: 00:20:44

actually succeeded, it's actually a very parallel problem

Lily Zheng: 00:20:46

to the one that communicators face. Right? Because I think

Lily Zheng: 00:20:49

every communicator, wants to know that because of their

Lily Zheng: 00:20:53

efforts, they have helped their client or their company talk

Lily Zheng: 00:20:58

about something or an issue or a success, more positive, right?

Lily Zheng: 00:21:03

Like they want to feel like they're doing good and effective

Lily Zheng: 00:21:07

communicators who are able to be honest and center outcomes, do

Lily Zheng: 00:21:11

you in fact, do a lot of good. It just takes a different skill

Lily Zheng: 00:21:14

set than simply applying your communications degree without

Lily Zheng: 00:21:20

any criticality and just laundering whatever comes in

Lily Zheng: 00:21:23

front of you, right, dei is very similar. We can't just go in and

Lily Zheng: 00:21:27

use a one size fits all approach and throw unconscious bias

Lily Zheng: 00:21:30

training at everyone, or tell the same sob story to everyone.

Lily Zheng: 00:21:34

And just assume, because we know in our heart of hearts, that

Lily Zheng: 00:21:37

somehow we're making some difference that we can't

Lily Zheng: 00:21:39

measure, right, we need to be much more accountable than that.

Lily Zheng: 00:21:41

And the book is the roadmap for how personally I think more

Lily Zheng: 00:21:46

practitioners can be acting and working to achieve that.

Kim Clark: 00:21:53

Amazing, and there's, there's the four levels that you

Kim Clark: 00:21:56

speak to here, right?

Lily Zheng: 00:21:58

Oops, I forgot your question entirely. In just four

Lily Zheng: 00:22:01

levels, if

Kim Clark: 00:22:02

you don't mind tying in, like what the communicators?

Kim Clark: 00:22:04

What's their role in these four letter levels?

Lily Zheng: 00:22:07

Yeah, so the four levels of the EI pertain to the

Lily Zheng: 00:22:11

impact of the initiatives that you do. On the very, most basic

Lily Zheng: 00:22:17

level, these are initiatives that anyone can start, they

Lily Zheng: 00:22:21

require very little trust built up to do them. And so there are

Lily Zheng: 00:22:25

great starting points for Dei, there are things like putting

Lily Zheng: 00:22:29

out a dei statement, making a new dei mission starting a dei

Lily Zheng: 00:22:34

Council. The thing about this very basic level of initiatives

Lily Zheng: 00:22:39

is partially because they're so easy to start, they require very

Lily Zheng: 00:22:43

little sort of resources banged up, they don't necessarily

Lily Zheng: 00:22:47

achieve much on their own, they lay the groundwork in the

Lily Zheng: 00:22:49

infrastructure for more impactful things down the line.

Lily Zheng: 00:22:53

Right. If you don't have a dei statement or a dei mission,

Lily Zheng: 00:22:56

it'll be harder to legitimize what happens in the future. So

Lily Zheng: 00:22:59

of course, that mission, or that statement, is very powerful. But

Lily Zheng: 00:23:04

if you stop there, what have you achieved by making a dei

Lily Zheng: 00:23:06

statement? Zilch, nothing, nothing at all, right? That's

Lily Zheng: 00:23:11

like putting a couple of bricks down and calling it a house,

Lily Zheng: 00:23:13

that's not a house, you're you're laying part of a

Lily Zheng: 00:23:16

foundation. If you leave out the bricks, you're not going to have

Lily Zheng: 00:23:19

a good house. But don't mistake it for a house. The further up

Lily Zheng: 00:23:23

you go in the level. So we're doing things like investing in

Lily Zheng: 00:23:27

dei professionals resourcing dei work creating a DI strategy,

Lily Zheng: 00:23:33

collecting data understanding what's what your workforce is

Lily Zheng: 00:23:37

experiencing, looking into your policies and practices. And then

Lily Zheng: 00:23:41

further up from that, drawing on demographic data, split by by

Lily Zheng: 00:23:47

level and tenure, and all of that to make effective decisions

Lily Zheng: 00:23:51

in your organization. holding yourself accountable to external

Lily Zheng: 00:23:56

community members, boards of directors, labor unions, using

Lily Zheng: 00:24:01

dei related information to make decisions. These are all far

Lily Zheng: 00:24:06

harder initiatives that build on the foundation you've created,

Lily Zheng: 00:24:10

but take a lot more gas in the tank, they take more resources

Lily Zheng: 00:24:14

they take, having built up a foundation of trust to do right.

Lily Zheng: 00:24:19

So the further up you go into levels I that's you know, that's

Lily Zheng: 00:24:23

a quick cliff notes version of them. We can talk about that for

Lily Zheng: 00:24:25

a while. But the further up you go, the harder the initiatives

Lily Zheng: 00:24:29

get, but the more payoff, they they they get you. Now for

Lily Zheng: 00:24:33

communicators. Why is this good to know? Because I see way too

Lily Zheng: 00:24:37

many communicators pointing out the level one or level zero

Lily Zheng: 00:24:40

activities and saying hazhar We've done it, our organization

Lily Zheng: 00:24:45

is a huge success. You know, we started an erg group, we started

Lily Zheng: 00:24:50

an employee resource group, we created a dei statement our

Lily Zheng: 00:24:53

leader posted on Twitter. And again, that's the same as

Lily Zheng: 00:24:57

pointing at a stack of bricks and going look at this beauty

Lily Zheng: 00:25:00

The full three storey Victorian house, isn't that beautiful and

Lily Zheng: 00:25:04

incredible, right. And at some point, at some point, someone

Lily Zheng: 00:25:07

will point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes, some

Lily Zheng: 00:25:10

people will point out that you're kind of talking out of

Lily Zheng: 00:25:12

your ass. Because you haven't achieved anything, you're

Lily Zheng: 00:25:15

pointing at these very initial foundational efforts and

Lily Zheng: 00:25:20

mistaking that for real success, right? So what communicators

Lily Zheng: 00:25:24

need to do is to get curious, like, you're, you're not just

Lily Zheng: 00:25:28

passive communicators, you should really be more like

Lily Zheng: 00:25:30

investigative journalists. Yeah, you should, you should look at a

Lily Zheng: 00:25:34

situation and say, I'm not going to just take the sentence you

Lily Zheng: 00:25:38

gave me and make it look good. Like, tell me more what's going

Lily Zheng: 00:25:41

on, like, help me tell the story that is both accurate and

Lily Zheng: 00:25:45

compelling. Right. And I don't have the information, I need to

Lily Zheng: 00:25:49

tell that story. So give me information. I want information

Lily Zheng: 00:25:53

on how this initiative started, who would impact what problem

Lily Zheng: 00:25:56

it's solving for, what it's achieved, and how you know, it's

Lily Zheng: 00:25:59

achieving that, once I have all that information, I can work my

Lily Zheng: 00:26:03

magic as a storyteller, to help you get this really compelling

Lily Zheng: 00:26:08

narrative of what's happened and why. But I'm not going to tell a

Lily Zheng: 00:26:11

story with incomplete data. Or worse, I'm not going to

Lily Zheng: 00:26:14

fabricate data to tell my story. And if you the client don't have

Lily Zheng: 00:26:19

that data, or you're unwilling to provide that data, then it's

Lily Zheng: 00:26:24

only natural that I as a principled communicator, am not

Lily Zheng: 00:26:28

going to do your dirty work for you. And I'm going to sit here

Lily Zheng: 00:26:30

and wait on you until you can give me what I need to do a good

Lily Zheng: 00:26:33

job. Right? We need more principled stances like that

Lily Zheng: 00:26:37

from communicators. Mm

Kim Clark: 00:26:39

hmm. Oh, my gosh, thank you. Thank you for that.

Kim Clark: 00:26:42

And I couldn't agree more. You know, it's something I've been

Kim Clark: 00:26:46

doing a lot of coaching on with my communication clients is,

Kim Clark: 00:26:50

well, my leader is very hesitant. They're telling me

Kim Clark: 00:26:53

they don't want to do too much too soon. And I'm like, so did

Kim Clark: 00:26:57

you take that as a decision as like, you know, you put your

Kim Clark: 00:26:59

tail between your legs and you walk out of the room? She's

Kim Clark: 00:27:01

like, Well, yeah, you know, and I've heard this in a very

Kim Clark: 00:27:04

variety of instances across clients. And I said, Well, why

Kim Clark: 00:27:09

is that the end of the conversation when it should be

Kim Clark: 00:27:11

the beginning? Right, so what is too much? What is too soon?

Kim Clark: 00:27:17

Let's play this out. Like let's let's engage in that

Kim Clark: 00:27:19

conversation, like you're mentioning the investigative

Kim Clark: 00:27:22

reporter like that, the sources and the questions, and, and the

Kim Clark: 00:27:27

quality of the questions and being able to get to a place

Kim Clark: 00:27:31

where you we can learn more, and to be able to your point be

Kim Clark: 00:27:35

principles and saying, I can't go out there and say that look

Kim Clark: 00:27:39

at all the rivers that we cleaned up and all of the, you

Kim Clark: 00:27:43

know, in all the communities that we wrote checks to and all

Kim Clark: 00:27:46

this without any kind of shift or change, you know, that we do

Kim Clark: 00:27:50

have to push back. And we have to have that kind of

Kim Clark: 00:27:52

conversation. Right? Thank you for saying that. And I And

Kim Clark: 00:27:56

another thing that that is something I want folks to take

Kim Clark: 00:28:00

away is that Lily is coming from as a DI strategist, I'm coming

Kim Clark: 00:28:05

from a DI communications strategist, you know, we're both

Kim Clark: 00:28:08

about implementation, we're both about outcomes. In our

Kim Clark: 00:28:12

organizations, we need to have this kind of partnership and

Kim Clark: 00:28:14

collaboration between the office of the DEI as well as

Kim Clark: 00:28:18

communications, there has to be this collaboration in this in

Kim Clark: 00:28:22

this partnership, this, this transparency, and have these

Kim Clark: 00:28:28

hard conversations and then come up with a plan together to go

Kim Clark: 00:28:31

and work with the rest of the stakeholders to bring them along

Kim Clark: 00:28:34

in the work so that we have, we're achieving our dei goals.

Kim Clark: 00:28:39

And the communications part of it is is part of that momentum.

Kim Clark: 00:28:43

Right?

Lily Zheng: 00:28:44

Something I I was thinking about as you were

Lily Zheng: 00:28:46

sharing that is that I also do some di comms myself, mostly

Lily Zheng: 00:28:53

from the viewpoint of someone who does a lot of di survey

Lily Zheng: 00:28:58

assessment, I end up assessing companies and writing reports on

Lily Zheng: 00:29:02

what I find, and sending that to usually the senior leadership

Lily Zheng: 00:29:07

team, the executive team, whatever. And I always, always,

Lily Zheng: 00:29:10

always get pushback on the language I use on my reports,

Lily Zheng: 00:29:14

because in my reports, I'll find very, very solid things like, I

Lily Zheng: 00:29:19

don't know men in this workplace have 90%, belonging, and women

Lily Zheng: 00:29:23

will only have 30%, belonging. And so there's a 60% belonging

Lily Zheng: 00:29:27

gap that's largely driven by an old boys club, for example,

Lily Zheng: 00:29:31

which I've assessed qualitative data to identify. And leaders

Lily Zheng: 00:29:35

will say, Keynote call it that, like, can you not use that kind

Lily Zheng: 00:29:40

of language? Because I always push my clients, I send these

Lily Zheng: 00:29:43

reports to the entire company. Like it's not just to the eyes

Lily Zheng: 00:29:47

of the senior team. I'm like, No, this is what I'm finding.

Lily Zheng: 00:29:50

This is my investigation. This is what I found. And this is

Lily Zheng: 00:29:54

what to call it. And leaders will always say I feel like

Lily Zheng: 00:29:59

that's just a little forceful that's that's a little

Lily Zheng: 00:30:02

controversial language. What else would you call it? Can you

Lily Zheng: 00:30:04

please use nicer language or something different? And I push

Lily Zheng: 00:30:08

back I say, then what is it? Like? Help me find better

Lily Zheng: 00:30:14

wording to describe a systemic pattern where men are excluding

Lily Zheng: 00:30:19

women because they are supporting other men. And they

Lily Zheng: 00:30:24

have a fraternal community of boys. That is predicated on

Lily Zheng: 00:30:31

pushing women out helped me find another word for that. That

Lily Zheng: 00:30:34

isn't old boys club, right? Like, frat, you want me to call

Lily Zheng: 00:30:39

it a frat party? Like, would you rather use that language? And

Lily Zheng: 00:30:42

they're like, Well, no, but like, and it turns out their

Lily Zheng: 00:30:45

quibble is with the facts, not with the communication, right?

Lily Zheng: 00:30:48

Like they're, they're so scared at the facts getting out there,

Lily Zheng: 00:30:54

that they're asking me as the communicator to try to muddle or

Lily Zheng: 00:30:57

change the facts, it was never a comms issue. Right? It's not

Lily Zheng: 00:31:00

about whether I call it a frat house, or an old boys club, or

Lily Zheng: 00:31:06

exclusionary behavior from them. They don't even care about me

Lily Zheng: 00:31:11

playing with the words they want me to not say. Like, they just

Lily Zheng: 00:31:15

don't want me to talk about the facts. Right? Yeah. And this is

Lily Zheng: 00:31:20

where I think principles communicators need to really be

Lily Zheng: 00:31:23

thinking about ethics, because you're not just wordsmith, like

Lily Zheng: 00:31:27

you are folks who are trying to understand the truth and portray

Lily Zheng: 00:31:30

it, and in a compelling, powerful way. And if you're

Lily Zheng: 00:31:34

being asked to portray it powerfully, but to hide the

Lily Zheng: 00:31:38

truth, then it's on you to say I'm not going to do that, again,

Lily Zheng: 00:31:42

I go back to this investigative journalist metaphor, right? If

Lily Zheng: 00:31:47

you're not willing to do that, then you will be used to launder

Lily Zheng: 00:31:50

hard truths into nice sounding things. And then I hate to say

Lily Zheng: 00:31:54

it, you will be complicit in workplaces continuing to cause

Lily Zheng: 00:31:58

more harm. I know, communicators don't want that. Right. It just

Lily Zheng: 00:32:02

requires that you stand up and push back against these sorts of

Lily Zheng: 00:32:05

requests. It's, it's hard, right? And it's certainly not

Lily Zheng: 00:32:09

what a lot of people were taught to do as communicators.

Kim Clark: 00:32:13

Really, that was exactly what communicators

Kim Clark: 00:32:16

needed to hear. Tough Love. Right? And I want to respect

Kim Clark: 00:32:23

your schedule and your time. So I'm gonna wrap up with this one

Kim Clark: 00:32:26

last question. What does communicating like you give a

Kim Clark: 00:32:30

damn. What does that look like? What does that sound like? What

Kim Clark: 00:32:35

do you want to see different? What do you want to see happen?

Kim Clark: 00:32:38

I

Lily Zheng: 00:32:38

want to see communicators recognize that

Lily Zheng: 00:32:40

everything they communicate, by by definition will have an

Lily Zheng: 00:32:46

agenda. It has an impact, right? There's no values, neutral

Lily Zheng: 00:32:49

communication, everything you do, and the way you say it will

Lily Zheng: 00:32:53

always affect the outcome. You can communicate to shed light on

Lily Zheng: 00:32:57

injustice, you can communicate to cover up injustice, you can

Lily Zheng: 00:33:01

communicate to change systems, you can communicate to uphold

Lily Zheng: 00:33:05

systems, right? Everything you do as a communicator, embeds

Lily Zheng: 00:33:09

your intent, or if not your intent, someone else's intent.

Lily Zheng: 00:33:13

So don't be scared to have an opinion. Right? Don't be scared

Lily Zheng: 00:33:19

to try to uncover the truth and find out what's actually

Lily Zheng: 00:33:23

happening. Because unless you absolutely make sure that your

Lily Zheng: 00:33:28

communications reflects the truth, the actual truth, your

Lily Zheng: 00:33:33

communications will always be used as a tool to advance

Lily Zheng: 00:33:37

someone else's agenda, if not your own. And you want to be

Lily Zheng: 00:33:40

sure that the agenda you are advancing is one that you are

Lily Zheng: 00:33:44

comfortable with. And that feels ethical to you. To me, that

Lily Zheng: 00:33:48

means making sure you are always accountable to the truth. First

Lily Zheng: 00:33:51

and foremost, not just what your boss tells you to do.

Kim Clark: 00:33:55

Yes, yes. Okay, rewind, hit the little 15.

Kim Clark: 00:33:58

Second thing, listen to all that again, listen to that, until it

Kim Clark: 00:34:03

really sinks in, take a deep breath. And just know that

Kim Clark: 00:34:07

you're not alone in this work. There's a lot of communicators

Kim Clark: 00:34:10

going through this work. There's a lot of di practitioners that

Kim Clark: 00:34:13

need you to do this work, Lily, your book is incredible. And I

Kim Clark: 00:34:18

encourage all communicators to pick it up because you need to

Kim Clark: 00:34:21

know what the work actually is what actually is dei so you can

Kim Clark: 00:34:26

write about it more accurately. So you get it. So you know what

Kim Clark: 00:34:31

you're talking about, and you can understand you right, then

Kim Clark: 00:34:33

you read our book, and learn more about like, Oh, that's

Kim Clark: 00:34:36

pretty performative. That's what Kim and Lily were talking about

Kim Clark: 00:34:40

that podcast. Lily, it was such a pleasure to hang out with you

Kim Clark: 00:34:44

and have this conversation and I hope it's first of many to come

Kim Clark: 00:34:47

any last parting thoughts and how can people stay in contact

Kim Clark: 00:34:51

with you?

Lily Zheng: 00:34:52

Yeah, I'll just say The pleasure was all mine. I

Lily Zheng: 00:34:55

think this is a really critical conversation. I want to add to

Lily Zheng: 00:34:59

that. It's not just that communicators can learn more

Lily Zheng: 00:35:02

about dei so that they can write about it. It's that writing

Lily Zheng: 00:35:05

effectively about this work is Dei, like you are dei

Lily Zheng: 00:35:11

practitioners, you are dei communicators if you're able to

Lily Zheng: 00:35:15

understand this content, and to write about the truth, what's

Lily Zheng: 00:35:19

happening or what isn't happening, right. So, so I

Lily Zheng: 00:35:22

encourage you not to see yourself as as fundamentally

Lily Zheng: 00:35:25

separate from dei work like this is dei work, you are doing it

Lily Zheng: 00:35:29

every single time you hold yourself and your employers

Lily Zheng: 00:35:32

accountable. And it's, it's, it's hard, but it's not as hard

Lily Zheng: 00:35:35

as you might think. Right? It just requires a different way of

Lily Zheng: 00:35:39

going about this work and holding yourself accountable. So

Lily Zheng: 00:35:43

myself in my work, I think the two places you can learn most

Lily Zheng: 00:35:48

about me are LinkedIn, you can find me at Lilly Zang, on

Lily Zheng: 00:35:51

LinkedIn, or my website, www dot Lilly zang.co. You can learn

Lily Zheng: 00:35:57

more about me and my work and my books. Yeah, and and I just want

Lily Zheng: 00:36:03

to thank you, Kim, for inviting me to have this conversation

Lily Zheng: 00:36:06

with you. And I want to thank all the listeners who have tuned

Lily Zheng: 00:36:09

in up until this point. I truly believe that all of us who are

Lily Zheng: 00:36:15

having this conversation and listening can become more

Lily Zheng: 00:36:18

effective communicators and can make sure that we hold ourselves

Lily Zheng: 00:36:22

and our clients accountable to the future we deserve right

Lily Zheng: 00:36:26

instead of upholding and a problematic past or present,

Lily Zheng: 00:36:32

right like we can do so much better.

Kim Clark: 00:36:34

That serve someone else. Thank you. Thank you so

Kim Clark: 00:36:38

much, Lily. It was a pleasure. It was an honor.

Lily Zheng: 00:36:42

Thank you for having me.