This week, Trisha interviews Jennifer Izekor, Above Difference's CEO and founder. They discuss the importance of cultural intelligence (CQ) in leadership and inclusive practices. Jennifer shares insights from her personal and professional journey, including her cross-cultural upbringing and work fostering inclusive leadership. They explore the challenges and rewards of implementing cultural intelligence in various sectors, emphasizing the need for vision, empathy, and strategic thinking in driving organizational change. Jennifer also talks about an upcoming learning event aimed at enhancing cultural intelligence and inclusive leadership skills.

Connect with Jennifer via LinkedIn or Above Difference's website and register for their learning event here

I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

[00:01:00] Trisha: As those of you who have listened to some of our earlier episodes will be aware, cultural intelligence, CQ, the capability to be effective in situations of diversity, is made up of four areas. Motivational, the drive. Cognitive, the knowledge. Metacognitive, the strategy. And behavioral, the action. And all four of these help us operate effectively when we're in situations of diversity.

[00:01:47] Trisha: She's the CEO and founder of Above Difference, an award winning UK consultancy who work with people in the public and community sectors to bring about change in people and organisations. And they do that by increasing the skills of cultural intelligence and inclusive leadership. Jennifer's background leading community and government organizations prepares her well for delivering these changed focused strategic interventions across England.

[00:02:20] Jennifer: Thank you, Trisha. It's an absolute pleasure to be here, it really is. I've been looking forward to this, eh,

[00:02:25] Trisha: Oh, thank you. It's been hard to get a time because you're so busy,

[00:02:31] Trisha: but that's a good thing. It's a good thing that, that your services are in so much demand. We're all very aware, even on this side of the world, of the challenges that have been impacting communities across the UK. And I look forward to hearing your insights about how your work speaks to these challenges.

[00:02:59] Jennifer: wow, that's such a great question, Trisha, and, I had a really interesting upbringing anyway, because I was born in the UK and I was in the UK till I was about seven years old, , and for a whole number of reasons I lived with a lot of, British families. So, I had a lot of that meant that was the culture I was, I grew up in until I was about seven.

[00:03:39] Jennifer: Loving, You know, the British culture. I'm a British citizen. I've come back, you know, I came back in my early 20s. I've lived and worked here ever since I had my daughter here, but my Nigerian heritage is also very, very powerful part of whom I am. And, you know, Nigeria is a very diverse community. So I'm from a place called Benin, Benin City, and that heritage in particular, that culture is still very much a huge part of my makeup.

[00:04:07] Trisha: That's wonderful. Yeah. Good on your parents for, you know, enabling that to happen.

[00:04:30] Jennifer: look after us.

[00:04:54] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:04:55] Trisha: And so maybe that this will influence the next question. Can you tell me about a time when you experienced the shift, you know, when you suddenly became aware of a different perspective?

[00:05:14] Jennifer: I think the one I often talk about is, is the generational shift and culture. You know, and I, I am blessed to have an amazing 28 year old daughter, um, who I, you know, who I had here and, and she's just the most phenomenal person in the world.

[00:05:48] Jennifer: And she's a millennial. And without putting that, you know, millennials all millennials into boxes, you know, I slowly began to understand that actually. There was a real cultural shift that needed to happen in my head, in terms of my because having grown up, you know, and I hope your listeners will be aware, for instance, of some of the terminologies that we all love with cultural intelligence.

[00:06:29] Jennifer: and and it would be my peril if I started asking her to jump, you know, there'd be all sorts of debates, which probably wouldn't end in my favor.

[00:06:41] Jennifer: not talking back to my parents, but just accepting what I was told. And so I realized that as I, as I parented aware of cultural intelligence that, um, I needed to see her as having a very different culture from mine.

[00:07:23] Jennifer: shift that we need to make

[00:07:25] Jennifer: generational diversity

[00:07:30] Jennifer: Absolutely. And, and that's a problem because, you know, time and time again, I hear older managers, you know, the baby boomers like me and, people like that go, Oh, you know, they're just, they're lazy. They're not committed. they don't show the same level of commitment.

[00:07:59] Trisha: They're valuing different things. And many times when it is something they value, they will work, you know, significant hours. So, yeah.

[00:08:30] Trisha: Yes, yes, absolutely. As with all differences. I can see why you're thinking of the community as you think of that, because your career prior to founding Above Difference spanned a number of different community and government organizations, but always . The organizations that were facing the community, providing services to youth, to children, and then your work with the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

[00:09:00] Jennifer: Oh, I love people. I just, I, I love, I love people and, and, you know, I, I feel incredibly blessed that in all the roles that I've had, whether I sort of intentionally gravitated towards that and, you know, in, in, in the later part of my career, yeah, much more intentionally. The question I've always asked myself is how do I add value to people?

[00:09:37] Jennifer: And I, I had the opportunity then to work with a wonderful organization called center point. Doing some amazing work with homeless young people, you know, Princess Diana was its patron

[00:10:10] Jennifer: A huge, huge joy for me.

[00:10:35] Jennifer: And, um, and when I was a chief executive of something called the Connections Partnership. We were one of the first to have a youth board, and, and that was about making, and, and one of the decisions I took at the time was to give the youth board as much authority over recruitment decisions as the adult board, which was controversial at the

[00:10:53] Jennifer: And

[00:10:55] Jennifer: Led to some really interesting thing. But, but those are the things that bring me joy. And, and now work that I do now I always talk about the light bulb moment, and, and when you bring knowledge to people and you bring information to people you open people's eyes to, you know, a model like cultural intelligence.

[00:11:14] Jennifer: But just suddenly go get it now. And that's, you know, I live for those. That's, that's what brings me incredible joy.

[00:11:43] Trisha: So what was the light bulb that went off that said, I've got to do this for myself?

[00:12:13] Jennifer: And for me, there was a moment of choice then in terms of what this had happened. It felt incredibly unfair. It was difficult for a long time. One of the things I never forgot was the amazing people I had met along the way

[00:12:38] Jennifer: You know, and I understood that even for those who, you know, had been on the other side of what had happened to me, there was a fear and a confusion and a, and a kind of defensiveness and a, and a sense of, if I don't get it, the best way to do is attack it in many ways.

[00:13:12] Jennifer: Where is that space above difference? Where is that space where we value, we respect, we celebrate, we recognize our differences. But we find a place where we come together and we think about how we make the world a better place and how we celebrate each other and how we love each other and looking at my own experience and the pain it could have caused in my life. And knowing so many other people who have been broken, totally broken, by such experiences.

[00:13:50] Jennifer: They're absolutely no winner, they're only ever losers, they're only ever broken people, you know, whatever happens

[00:14:18] Jennifer: And I remember sitting

[00:14:43] Jennifer: and, and, and those misunderstandings can sometimes make mean that we're looking at things from different perspectives and we're making these judgments and making these assumptions.

[00:15:17] Jennifer: And that, that was a challenge I gave myself and that was sort of in setting off above difference, that's what I wanted to do. And initially, cultural intelligence was my first sort of port of call, you know, in many ways, but at the same time, you know, I'd always been very fascinated by the concept of leadership, what it meant, how, you know, and cultural intelligence for me.

[00:15:53] Jennifer: The commitment, the will to lead in a particular way, what cultural intelligence then gives an inclusive leader is a powerful tool to use.

[00:16:09] Jennifer: You know, as change leadership became part of that and drawing on models like Kotter and then I'm a John Maxwell coach and you know, I love John Maxwell love his work on value based leadership. And so all of those things came together and that's and you know and that's very much what informs

[00:16:27] Trisha: Yeah, that's wonderful. It's, it's a slightly different perspective to, and perhaps there is no traditional DEI, and I know in the UK it's more EDI, but in many ways what is often done is more people focusing on an identity or focusing on a specific, You know, sort of, um, disadvantaged group in the hope that, you know, by working with them, uh, their roles or their positions can be enhanced, but instead you're moving above that and recognizing, you know, that we are all different, and indifferent in many different ways.

[00:17:17] Jennifer: I mean, don't get me wrong, you know, you know, this and I've been challenged on this quite a lot by people from all parts of the, you know, the debate, does this mean you're not focusing, you're not recognizing the very significant disadvantages that some groups face above others, and absolutely

[00:17:35] Jennifer: you know, as a black woman I can hardly ignore them. And as one who's personally experienced what that can look like in its ugliest way. no, but I do have a saying, and it's something I passionately believe is that inclusion has to be about everyone or it becomes about no one. And, and that's not saying that we have to treat everybody the same because we don't, but if you look at an organizational context, right?

[00:18:15] Jennifer: You know, and actually whatever policies you may have at the top of the organization and no matter how much you love the EDI agenda and how many people you're going to recruit, you're then going to send them back into teams.

[00:18:28] Jennifer: believe in this. this.

[00:18:47] Jennifer: And if you're not leading all your people well, then you're simply not leading well. So the debate I want to have with organizations is let's talk about how we equip your leaders to lead all their people well. And if they're going to lead all their people well, then they have to be able to flex across cultures, so they'll need cultural intelligence.

[00:19:27] Jennifer: Now that's the kind of organization we all want to work and, and run.

[00:19:32] Jennifer: And, and so my, my focus in Above Difference is equipping leaders to be those leaders who can lead all their people well with the skills and tools they need. It's equipping organizations to challenge themselves on what does it mean to equip all our leaders, all our managers to lead all our people well, and equipping organizations and leaders to understand the power that lies behind the culture.

[00:20:06] Trisha: And, and often when we think about individuals, we can think about how to help the individual to shift. And then when you're thinking we need to shift this whole culture towards having a focus that is inclusive, and that can be so, so much more challenging. So when you've been working with organizations, what do you think needs to happen before an organization

[00:20:30] Jennifer: Well, the first thing is that, you know, and I say this to leaders is leaders need to understand how much responsibility they have for the culture and I'm constantly amazed at the fact that that very basic principle isn't known by a lot of people. Okay. You know what I would say when I was leading and managing, I didn't know it either.

[00:21:27] Jennifer: I love it. What Edgar Schein says, you know, he says, you know, the only thing of real importance that leaders do is create a managed culture. And if you don't do it, it will happen around you irrespective. And I think I'm paraphrasing now, whether you know it or not, but that's it. So. And then, you know, John Maxwell says, I use a clip that he does on culture, you know, and he says, the culture of an organization can never be better than the behavior of its leaders, period.

[00:22:26] Jennifer: valued

[00:22:28] Jennifer: And this for me is really important when it comes to, organizations that are community facing. You cannot ask people who do not feel valued,

[00:22:37] Trisha: absolutely.

[00:22:39] Jennifer: right, you know?

[00:22:44] Trisha: caring, showing, showing love, you know, and

[00:22:48] Trisha: if they're not valued, they can't

[00:22:50] Jennifer: Yeah. So if they're, if they're not feeling value, so I think, you know, just to finish your question, culture is the first thing.

[00:23:12] Jennifer: But then you've got to get people recognizing this is a big challenge. That actually you've got to change what is to what you want it to be,

[00:23:20] Jennifer: you know, and if, and I always say this is the turning the tank a

[00:23:23] Jennifer: you know, and, and as you know, from a lot of that school of thought that when you want to change an organization, it is a tanker turning

[00:23:30] Jennifer: and actually got to do that well, or people will just fly off.

[00:23:52] Jennifer: If you think you're leading and no one's following you, you're simply taking a walk.

[00:24:24] Trisha: skills in sport. And he was talking about practice, practice, practice, that you hit the ball over and over again. And I think you do get to a point when you have, you know, practiced your inclusive leadership that it does become intuitive and innate. But so often, you know, if you're dealing with somebody who's different to you, you need to be thinking about that person.

[00:25:05] Trisha: being able to do that.

[00:25:08] Jennifer: but understanding why, you

[00:25:23] Jennifer: why,

[00:25:26] Jennifer: Because I think the challenge because we're human and especially in a world now where we all feel under incredible

[00:25:41] Jennifer: worn down. You know that that.

[00:25:59] Jennifer: There is a,

[00:26:22] Jennifer: results.

[00:26:47] Jennifer: I think then provides a sort of motivation to leaders as

[00:27:04] Jennifer: I was talking to a board. I'll give you a quick example who had a, you know, a particular group within the entire organization who constituted probably about 40 percent of their organization. Who, you know, the staff survey told them they weren't happy. They didn't feel valued. They didn't feel respected.

[00:27:38] Jennifer: So you are trying to achieve 100 percent of your outputs with 60 percent of your, resources effective. Because exactly 40 percent of your, 40 percent of your human resources is not working for you. Now, I'm sorry, that's not an EDI issue. That's a whole leadership performance issue.

[00:28:01] Jennifer: Well, I'm not

[00:28:10] Jennifer: up. So I think we've got to get people not just seeing this as, I mean, it is a nice to do. but unfortunately as humans, we're not always nice to each other as a, you know, recent headline show.

[00:28:31] Jennifer: it just makes sense for us to find ways of engaging better with each other.

[00:28:49] Trisha: 5th birthday, or have you

[00:28:54] Jennifer: year.

[00:29:01] Jennifer: now, which

[00:29:04] Trisha: You

[00:29:10] Trisha: Can you tell us a bit about

[00:29:12] Jennifer: Oh, I'm so excited about this. So, um, I, I'm, I'm one who keeps evolving things and I've recently renamed our program, transforming cultures, changing behaviors and engaging diverse communities with cultural intelligence. It's a mouthful and that means nobody can make an acronym out of it. But, but, um, and so two things excite me about it.

[00:29:44] Jennifer: uh, who's in London, uh, to launch the updated, uh, you just got a copy

[00:29:49] Jennifer: his book. I'm still buying a copy of,

[00:30:00] Jennifer: Um, he is just amazing, you know, in bringing together the CQ fellows and. the work he's done in cultural intelligence. So, um, having him beside me at this event is just like a dream come true. And the opportunity to have, you know, people in the public sector in, in, in the UK here directly from the horses,

[00:30:25] Jennifer: I think was not was something that I just couldn't pass up. So I'm really excited about it. It's nerve wracking because it's the first big public event we've done and I still think people are now just going, I get loads of people going, Yeah, but can't we just watch it online. No come! Because it's just so exciting to be together.. Come, come join

[00:31:07] Jennifer: So if you haven't booked your place on it, please, please, please do book now. I can't wait to see you. I'm really excited about it.

[00:31:13] Trisha: And we'll put a note in the show notes that people can link to,

[00:31:20] Trisha: they go to above

[00:31:22] Jennifer: Yes. Go to www. abovedifference. com and there's information about the event on there. I'm really sorry we haven't quite figured out and we're holding it in this lovely sort of center based in the community in East London. So you get a real flavor of East

[00:31:35] Jennifer: um, which is as diverse as it gets. Um, but, um, we haven't figured out how to sort of have it online at the same time.

[00:32:04] Jennifer: I just think we have to spread the message that there is a different way, you know, build on, but we've, the world is changing so fast and we all need each other so desperately, so we've got to find different ways of being with each other.

[00:32:31] Trisha: fruitful thing to do.

[00:32:49] Jennifer: about and the challenges people have

[00:33:05] Trisha: Oh,

[00:33:06] Jennifer: And it was a powerful

[00:33:16] Jennifer: settings. But the perspectives were so, the diversity of the perspectives were very similar. You know, those perspectives that said, you know, so, so the scenario we're talking about is you're in a team or you're on a ward or you're in a team meeting and something happens, you know, somebody says something misogynist, racist, it's homophobic is one of the X or the

[00:33:36] Jennifer: things. Now what do you do?

[00:33:56] Jennifer: end

[00:33:57] Jennifer: better, the receiving

[00:34:09] Jennifer: And you know, that powerful statement that, you know, the culture of any team is shaped by the worst behavior. The leader we tolerate by Grunet and Walker.

[00:34:25] Jennifer: We don't really do confrontations in the UK we kind of prefer to to just move it away from us. So there's that feeding it, which is a cultural issue. You know, there are all the different cultural dimensions in it in terms of how

[00:34:37] Jennifer: deal with that. But this is such a powerful, powerful issue when it comes to some of the issues around behavior, bullying, you know, misogynies, you know, cultures that we've heard across all of the public sector. And so getting to lead people through that debate and seeing people begin to work out ways using the tools that they've got to find better ways of doing it, I think for me is just one of the most amazing moments. I really feel incredibly privileged to get to do this.

[00:35:17] Trisha: yet we can all see the risks in doing it like that

[00:35:40] Trisha: And being able to practice just a response that we're comfortable. You know, expressing, um, you know, that this isn't something we accept.

[00:35:51] Trisha: something that

[00:35:53] Trisha: with. So Yeah.

[00:36:47] Jennifer: Come on now. They didn't mean it that way. And actually, we do have to talk about the impact of those things. and I actually add on the redress because I'm saying to people, yeah, if you want to go and talk about it in private, yeah, but it has to come back into that same arena in which it happened. So either, And address it.

[00:37:45] Trisha: We had a high level leader here in Australia a few years ago, a leader of the defense force who, um, spoke to issues around, sexual harassment. And one of his phrases that I think has stuck really well is the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

[00:38:08] Jennifer: is, is, is that if you

[00:38:23] Jennifer: And, you know, a lot of people don't do this, not because they agree with what's been said or whatever, but sometimes the people who make those kind of jokes can be quite powerful characters in a culture. and some leaders are sitting there going, well, I don't want them to turn their attention on me just because I'm the leader manager doesn't make me that tough, you know, and so I, I think that's why I love to come at this, not from a kind of judgment or condemnation perspective, but actually saying, how do I equip you and equip your leaders with the tools to do that?

[00:38:57] Trisha: fantastic. So if somebody wants to get in touch with you and access these training, is it LinkedIn

[00:39:05] Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm, we're on LinkedIn as Above Difference and, and, and as myself as well. I have to say, I am not the world's greatest social media person. In fact, I have a real sort of issue with social, not issue as in condemning it, but I just don't always find it comfortable to be on it. But yes, LinkedIn, we have a website www. abovedifference. com, um, and I would love to hear from anyone out there who, um, you know, would, would love to talk to us about the work we do. I'm, I'm incredibly proud of what we do and how we do it and the impact that I'm seeing it having in the organizations we work with. We're not fans of doing one off training courses. I never do that with any organization. I just don't feel that adds value. Uh, for me, it's always about, you know, walking a journey with that organization that's tailored to their needs. And so, yeah, so absolutely.

[00:39:55] Trisha: What advice would you give someone who's going to follow in your footsteps and work to make change happen?

[00:40:27] Jennifer: And I think, you know, having a vision for the potential of that, Um, if you want to be a change maker, that's because that's what keeps you going in the dark. That's where you're going when it doesn't make sense. That's, you know, so have a vision, um, be gentle on yourself. I think, you know, know that there's no perfect way of doing it you're going to get it wrong sometimes and fall flat on your face and. And, um, you know, and I've learned to, that sometimes you have to, it's okay to have a pity party occasionally, but as I always say to myself, you know, sometimes we, we throw ourselves a pity party, we bring out the banners, we have the drinks and then we go, right, okay, party over now, clear it up and

[00:41:07] Jennifer: let's get back to business.

[00:41:10] Jennifer: And, um, And keep going because I think if you are called and you know, um, you know, haven't mentioned here, but my faith is incredibly important to me and it's such a, you know, an integral part of everything I do.

[00:41:28] Jennifer: Believe that if you step out in faith, then the universe, whatever you call it, will begin to equip you with the things that you need to make that change happen.

[00:41:48] Jennifer: A world where we find love above difference.

[00:42:08] Jennifer: and recently I was speaking to one of my people I was working with the maternity services, and they were saying the birth rates going down because a lot of millennials are just choosing not to have children, not to bring children into the world right now because it just feels Such a difficult place.

[00:42:32] Jennifer: And I think if I, if I close my eyes, whenever I do, having done that and take my last breath, knowing that in some way I changed something,

[00:42:41] Jennifer: I've lived my life.

[00:42:43] Trisha: That's lovely. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Really appreciate having you with us. And this has been a