In private, many leaders share the same underlying concerns: Is DEI at odds with merit? Are we lowering our standards to hit a quota? How do we handle the "woke" labels and internal pushback?

In this episode of the Inclusion at Work Podcast, we sit down with Lily Zheng, strategist and author of Fixing Fairness. We move past the buzzwords to answer the tough, "spicy" questions that conventional DEI training often misses.

What we discuss in this episode:

1. Winning Over the Sceptics: How to show detractors that inclusion can solve their problems too.
2. Universal Benefits: How fixing a problem for one specific group, like sending meeting agendas in advance for accessibility, actually improves the experience for every employee.
3. The Cost of Silence: Why the common practice of avoiding difficult topics creates a backlog of unresolved issues that eventually hurt the business.

Moving Past "Identity Politics": How to stop debating which group to prioritise and start solving the most broken parts of your business processes.

Links:

1. Lily Zheng
2. Fixing Fairness: 4 Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All