Haggis Milkshakes and Leveraging our Authentic Selves (11-26-19)

Switching it up and coming at you on a Tuesday due to Thanksgiving. Last week was about creating a space where people can bring their authentic selves. This week is about leveraging different versions of others and haggis milkshakes.

Alice, my oldest daughter, likes watching cooking shows. The other day we were watching a cooking show on Netflix and the challenge was to create an awesome milkshake. Here’s the kicker. One of the main ingredients you had to use was haggis. In case you aren’t familiar Haggis is a savory pudding containing sheep’s pluck, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal’s stomach though now often in an artificial casing instead (Wikipedia). That blew my mind. I’ve never had haggis, but I couldn’t see how it would fit into a milkshake. How was anyone ever going to do this and make it taste good?

Some contestants on the show didn’t really know/understand haggis, so while they tried to make a milkshake they failed. It either tasted horrible, or the milkshake focused so much on covering the taste of the haggis that it wasn’t good. There was one person who succeeded. As you watched her prepare, she talked about understanding haggis and its flavor profile. From there, she added in ingredients that would accent and complement the flavor in a way that would make it delicious. As the judges tried her milkshake they were all pleasantly surprised.

So what does a haggis milkshake have to do with leveraging different versions of ourselves? Creating an environment where people can bring their authentic selves to work is crucial, but it is only the first step. The next step is finding ways to leverage the different sides of people. Similar to a milkshake, our sense of self is made of various ingredients. Some of these ingredients are sweeter and initially easier to digest than others. Similar to the challenge, the trick is finding a way to leverage various flavors to create something delicious. In the milkshake example, the first step was understanding the ingredients. Once she understood the ingredients and what they could offer, she then was able to take action and find ways to leverage those strengths. We can do the exact same thing with people.

How often have you seen (or been) a person who wasn’t as effective, because they weren’t leveraged the right way? Think about the different people you have worked with and worked for. How many of them took the time to understand you and your authentic selves? How many of them gave you a chance to be you and get your shine on vs. expecting you to conform? Now reflect on yourself. How often are you taking the time to truly understand your teammates and who they are? How are you helping them leverage these different sides of them?

The challenge: How are you understanding and leveraging someone’s authentic selves?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Pizza, Good Ingredients, Process, and Culture (11-6-19)

This is the final entry in the series about pizza. I believe the insights have been pretty deep dish, and I hope you’ve found the food for thought particularly tasty 😉 (#dadjokesfordays). Last week was about diversity, inclusion, and cheese on pizza. This week is about good ingredients, process, and building a positive culture.

Imagine there are three pizza places. Pizza place A has the best and freshest ingredients. Pizza place B has good ingredients. Pizza place C has okay ingredients. Which place serves the best pizza? The first temptation would be to say Pizza place A, because it has the best ingredients. However, it’s hard to know if they have the best pizza. What if their method for cooking pizzas result in pizzas that are undercooked or burnt? What if their delivery process ends up ruining pizzas (See Domino’s picture)? Even if they have the best ingredients, if they don’t have the right methods and processes in place the pizza may not be great.

What do pizza ingredients and processes have to do with culture? Having great ingredients is the FIRST step in being able to create great pizza. You have to also have the right cooking techniques, methods, and processes. It’s the combination of the best ingredients and the right processes that can create pizza magic. Often when we talk about building positive inclusive cultures we talk about how important it is to have the right people. I’ve heard people say, “You ONLY need to have the right people together.” Or “If people could only be good people that would solve inclusion problems.” I agree that having the right people who care about inclusion and building powerful cultures is an important step, BUT it’s NOT the only step. Great people on their own can only go so far, just like the best pizza ingredients can only go so far. On top of having the right people, you also have to have the discipline and the right processes. What do I mean by that? How often do we take time to be intentional about what we are building our culture to be? How often do we pause to reflect on the pulse of the team and how to improve? How do we think through roles and responsibilities and how that impacts the culture we are creating? How often do we look at the processes we interact with to determine which ones help accelerate a positive culture vs. get in the way of building a good culture?

Confession. On my best days, I’d like to think I’m a pretty good person with enough love in my heart to change and shape the culture around me with ONLY my heart and good intentions. However, even when I’m at my best I make mistakes. Even at my best I get caught up in the swirl, and forget to keep a pulse on the people I care about. Even at my best, I succumb to my unconscious bias from time to time. Even at my best, I’m still human and that means I’ll fall short. For me, combining the best of my heart and intentions, goes so much further if I also have the discipline and processes in place to make a difference. What about you?

The challenge: How can you combine the right ingredients (people) AND the right processes to build the best pizza (culture)?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Diversity, Inclusion, and Cheese on Pizza (10-30-19)

Last week we reflected on why we shouldn’t take the crust for granted. This week we will think about diversity, inclusion, and cheese on a pizza.

A few months ago I called a pizza place and ordered a pizza that was ½ meat lovers and ½ just cheese. What I got from the pizza place was a pizza that was 100% meat lovers, and no cheese on the pizza. That’s right, someone made a pizza without cheese on it. #unforgiveable Anyway, you wouldn’t think that the absence of cheese would be such a big deal, but it was. The absence of cheese messed up the flavor balance of the entire thing. The absence of cheese meant that there was not a binding agent to hold everything together in place, so as I tried to eat the pizza the toppings would slide around. As I took bites it was more like biting into individual toppings vs. having the combined flavor of a pizza in one bite. Not a good experience.

What does a cheeseless pizza have to do with diversity and inclusion? Pizza is a great analogy for diversity and inclusion. Each topic brings its own unique strengths and flavor profile, and together they create something more than the sum of the individual parts. At least that’s what happens when there is cheese. When there isn’t cheese, it’s just a bunch of individual parts moving around.

In this metaphor, I’d argue that cheese on a pizza is the trust that we build between each other. Much like cheese, trust starts as small individual shreds of mozzarella and it grows and spreads with the application of warmth and time. Much like cheese on a pizza, trust is the bond that holds everything together and in place. It’s the thing that connects all of the individual toppings (people), and helps them unleash their inner awesomeness. Think about a time when you were on a team that was built on trust. What did that feel like? More importantly, what did it enable you to be and to do? I always do my best work, when I’m rooted in a relationship of trust. Now, think of a time you were in a group where the trust wasn’t there. How did that feel? Did you feel like an individual component, disconnected from people and purpose? That’s the way I’ve felt in those situations. If cheese is the ultimate connector on pizza and trust is the connector that brings out the best in us, then it’s important we are putting in the work to build trust and help trust grow.

The challenge: What are you doing to build trust? How are you creating the warm environment to ensure trust grows and spreads?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Embracing Styles that aren’t Yours (9-25-19)

Last week was about power outfits and triggers. This week we will explore the need to embrace styles that aren’t our own.

I don’t wear earrings, but one of the things that first drew me to my wife was her collection of cool dangling earrings. I don’t like having marker or pen on my skin, but I think tattoos on other folks are awesome. I don’t regularly wear suit jackets (because I’d melt in the middle of a meeting), but there are men and women who look sharp and cool as heck with jackets of all different colors and designs matched with dress shirts or a graphic t-shirts. I never wear scarves, but I think it’s cool how they can be used as an accessory in so many situations and that there are so many different types of scarves. There are a million other fashion things I wouldn’t partake in, but I still have a lot of admiration and appreciation for the various styles people rock, especially because they can rock and do things that I can’t.

Personally, I enjoy my geek chic look. I get a kick out of color coordinating superhero socks with the shirt I’m wearing. I like hiding Easter eggs in my outfits to see if anyone notices them. For example, I’ll wear Tetris cufflinks when we are in big meetings about making things click and connect together. I wore a Captain America bowtie, cufflinks, and socks, to a meeting where I was a captain of something, just to see if people would pick up on it. I know this is totally ridiculous, but it gives me joy. While I’d never expect you to want to rock superhero socks, I’d hope you’d say, “Not my cup of tea, but I appreciate it for Andrew being Andrew.”

You might already see where this is going. We talk about people’s style quite a bit. We talk about how important it is for people to be able to flex their style for different situations. I feel we waste so much energy and effort focusing on the need to constantly flex styles. Often, I feel that we do this, because of the inflexibility of certain individuals to receive information and people in a way that is not their own. Using the clothing analogy, it would be like me saying, “I don’t wear scarves, so anyone who wears scarves is bad. They shouldn’t wear scarves. They should wear superhero socks.” Have you ever been in one of those situations where you worked with someone and if it wasn’t done in their exact way then it wasn’t done correctly? How did you feel? This always made me feel miserable.

I agree with the need to flex styles to a certain extent, but shouldn’t we be more focused on accepting and embracing people different from ourselves? Shouldn’t we be more focused on understanding what the individual styles of people can give us? I can remember one situation in particular where I was working with someone, and we had very different styles on how we approached things. What I appreciated is that even though it was so obvious we were very different, this person appreciated, trusted me, and empowered me to leverage my style to do things. They understood that while my way of doing things was different, it could still deliver great outcomes. His willingness to accept my style led to me better realizing and embracing the benefits of the way he approached things. Together, we were quite the team, and over time I even incorporated some elements of his style into how I operate.

The challenge: How can we embrace styles beyond our own?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Matching vs. Clothing that Goes Together (9-11-19)

Last week was about how the choices you make communicate things to the world. This week is about color palettes and coordinating outfits.

I’ve always been confused by the concept of “matching” clothes vs. choosing clothing that “goes together”. To me, matching is about finding things that are exactly the same. For example, you match socks. Each sock is identical to its partner. With this line of thinking, if you matched an outfit, you’d choose an entire outfit that was all the same color/pattern/fabric. For example, the entire outfit would be grey cotton. At its core, matching is easy, because you look for identical things. With that said, the matching results can look nice, but they’ll never have the pop of combining different colors together.

Choosing clothing that “goes together” is a different beast. It’s about figuring out which colors coordinate and combine to create something better. I am horrible at this. The amount of time I’ve spent asking my wife if certain ties go with shirts and/or looking up color wheels on the internet to understand how colors complement each other is ridiculous. Color coordinating outfits take more time and effort, especially as you work to incorporate more colors. With that said, when you do find the right colors that go together the outfit pops and the result is something so much better than an outfit of just one color.

So where is this going? Matching vs. choosing clothes that go together is a lot like assembling a team and building a culture. It’s easier to match. It’s easier to find people who are just like you. It’s easier to recruit them, talk to them, connect to them, and bring them into the fold. While it’s easier you end up with a team just like yourself, which in many ways will limit your ability to achieve new things.

It takes more time build a team with individuals that “go together”. It takes more time and effort to figure out how we make the yellows, blues, reds, and greens of the world work together in the “outfit” to bring everything to life. What do we do with this lime green over here? How can we use this pink to accent certain things? How do we leverage polka dots in our ensemble? While it takes more time and effort, to recruit different people and/or cultivate the differences within individuals the end result is worth it.

The challenge: As you build and develop teams/groups are you matching or are you building teams of people who “go together”?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 1 Spider-verse and Biases (5-8-19)

This week I’d like to kick off a series of lessons I’ve learned from being a dad. We’ll start with a lesson from my daughter watching Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse, a beautifully animated and great movie.

In case you aren’t familiar with the movie, the film follow Miles Morales on his hero journey to become Spider-man. I was watching this movie with my girls and my oldest daughter Alice (7) was initially confused. She saw Miles Morales, a young man who is African American and Puerto Rican, and she said, “How can he be Spider-man? He doesn’t look anything like Peter Parker.” She asked this, because she’s used to seeing Spider-man portrayed as Peter Parker, a white male. That’s how he’s been represented in most media she has seen.

I paused for a second and asked, “Why couldn’t Miles be Spider-man? What does it take to be Spider-man?” From there Alice thought about it and said something along the lines of, “Well, I guess if he has spider like powers and can swing from webs and beat up the bad guys he could be Spider-man.” Fast forward in the movie and not only does she watch Miles become Spider-man, but she sees Gwen Stacy as Spider-Woman. This blew Alice’s mind. She went into a movie thinking Spider-man had to be a white male in his 20s to 30s and left realizing that anyone has the potential to be a Spider-Woman or Spider-man, which means that SHE could be a superhero too!

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything. This moment in parenting taught me a few things.

Representation matters. It’s not the only thing, but it is an important first step. In the case of this movie, not only was their representation of different people, but there was meaningful representation. I was so moved by Miles’s story. How can we ensure that at a MINIMUM we have the right people and a variety of people on our teams and in our organizations?
I realized that, just like Alice, we all have our biases that shape our worldview. “Spider-man must be a white male.” “A manager is X.” “A leader is Y.” “A good employee does A, B, and C.” What are we doing to keep these biases in check?
I love how Alice redefined what it would take to be Spider-man. She basically said, “If the person can do the things Spider-man can do, then they can be Spider-man.” She was basing this on behaviors. As we think about good leaders/bosses/employees how often are we focusing on their behaviors vs. their style. I’d argue that a leader’s job is to move people toward a vision in the right ways. If a person does those things, they are a leader, no matter what their official role or style is.

The challenge: How will confront and overcome your biases?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Everyone has Something Going On (4-24-19)

Last week was about the power of our own uniqueness. This week’s secret is that everyone has things going on in their lives that impact them.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are in a meeting with a colleague and they weren’t performing well that day. They were not as focused as they normally are and not on top of things. What was the reason why they weren’t performing that day? Maybe it’s because they weren’t prepared. Maybe it’s because they didn’t have the ability to understand what they should do. Maybe they are just bad at their job. Those would probably be a couple of the first things you’d think of. There’s another option though, maybe they had other things going on in life that were that were weighing on them and impacting them. No matter the case, don’t they deserve grace, empathy, and understanding?

You might be wondering where this is going. The secret in all of this is that we never know what is going on in a person’s life that might be impacting them. We’ve all probably been in a situation like the one above. We’ve all been the person who noticed that a teammate wasn’t performing on a given day. When we were in this situation, how often did we stop to check in to see how they were doing? How often did we stop to see if there were things outside of work impacting them vs. making an assumption about why things weren’t going well? I know that I always haven’t paused to think about how things going on outside of our walls might be weighing in on their lives.

We’ve also been the person who wasn’t performing, because we were being impacted by something. Maybe it was the death of a family member, sickness, sleepless nights from kids, battle with depression or addiction, or a million other ways that life can get to you. How important was it to you when people extended some empathy and understanding?

The challenge: The secret is that you never know what is going on in someone else’s life. When you see people, will you start by extending grace, empathy, and understanding?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Ionic Bonds and Vulnerability (2-27-19)

Last week was about thermodynamics and inclusion. At the core of inclusion is building relationships, so this week is about ionic bonds, vulnerability, and building relationships.

Essentially, an ionic bond is when a positively charged ion forms a bond with a negatively charged ion. In order to do this, one atom transfers electrons from itself to another atom (www.yourdictionary.com). Said in an entirely different way, in order for an ionic bond to work, one of the atoms has to transfer one of its electrons to the other element. Once this occurs, a bond is formed. The image to the right depicts Sodium and Chloride. They start as separate atoms, then Sodium gives an electron to Chloride and a bond is formed. Once this bond is formed, Sodium Chloride becomes table salt.

You’re probably wondering where this is going. The thing that interests me about ionic bonds is the fact that an atom has to be willing to give up part of itself (an electron) to make the bond happen. If the atom doesn’t give part of itself away, then the bond can never form. This reminds me of the way that vulnerability and relationships work. In order to form a connection with someone else, you have to be brave enough and willing enough to be vulnerable. You have to be willing to share a part of yourself with them. As you share parts of yourself with each other, you give yourselves an opportunity to have powerful bonds form.

Being willing to share part of yourself doesn’t mean you have to share your deepest and darkest secrets right away. What it does mean is that you have to share something about who you are. Maybe you share things about your family. Maybe you share things about your favorite hobbies and passions. Maybe you talk about some of your favorite memories. Whatever it is, you need to share, and as you share electrons, you open up the chance for a strong bond to form.

The challenge: Are you brave enough to be vulnerable? Are you sharing parts of yourself with others to form a bond?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Hot vs. Cold- Thermodynamics and Inclusion (2-20-19)

This week I’d like to start a series inspired by lessons we can learn from science. We are going to start with a loose adaptation of thermal dynamics, hot vs. cold, and inclusion. Buckle up. We’re about to get nerdy.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but according to thermodynamics, heat is energy transferred from one thing to another. As you transfer more energy to something it becomes hotter. As you stop transferring energy to something it becomes colder. The key takeaway is that cold is not a force. Cold is an absence of heat, which is really a lack of transferred energy.

Imagine baking a pizza. In order to bake it, you put it into a warm oven and it sits there in that heat for 15-20 minutes until it cooks. During this time, the oven is consistently applying energy, so the pizza gets warm. Now, let’s pretend you are baking another pizza. This time you throw the pizza in and after 1 minute you turn off the oven. You let the pizza sit there for a few minutes. Then, you turn the oven on again for 1 minute. Then, you let the pizza sit there. You keep doing this over and over again. The pizza is never going to get hot, because you are NOT consistently supplying energy, which means you can’t make it warm.

You’re probably thinking that this is a weird rabbit hole to go down, and you might be wondering what this has to do with inclusion. I believe that inclusion is a function of building relationships and culture with folks, and this makes me think of warmth. When we talk about people who show that they care for other people, we say they create a “warm” feeling. When we talk about people who don’t show they care for other people, we say they create a “cold” feeling. If we stay with our thermal dynamics theme, warm people are the ones who are consistently transferring energy to people while cold people are not consistently transferring energy to others. Warm people are an oven that stays at a steady temperature until the pizza is done cooking. Cold people are either an oven that never turns on or an oven that only turns for a few moments, so the pizza never is able to get warm.

Here’s the thing I think we often underestimate. Inclusion isn’t just about team off sites, corporate initiatives, or get to know you actives. Inclusion is about CONSISTENTLY creating warmth. Inclusion is about CONSISTENTLY pouring energy into caring for each other every single day. If you consistently put forth effort to show you care for other people then you’ll create that warm feeling, build relationships, build cultures, and eventually become more inclusive. If you don’t consistently put in the energy, then you are creating something that is relatively cold.

The challenge: Are you putting in the energy EVERY DAY to create warmth?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Food Combinations and Belonging (9-19-18)

Last week was about leadership style vs. leadership competencies. This week is about food combinations and belonging. What are some of your favorite food pairings/combinations? There are classic combinations like peanut butter and jelly or steak and potatoes. There are dipping combinations like chips and salsa or pitas and hummus. There are dessert combinations like oreos and cold milk or a scoop of ice cream with apple pie. There are more experimental combinations you could try like a fried egg on a hamburger, bbq brisket on a pizza (my brother makes this and it’s amazing!), or cheese puffs on vanilla ice cream (my mom eats this sometimes. Yes, uniqueness runs in my family…)

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything. What I’ve often found about food combinations is that the foods do not have to necessarily be similar for the combination to be delicious. Peanut butter and jelly are two entirely different substances with very different tastes and textures. Oreos are a solid and milk is a liquid. Ice cream is cold while apple pie is usually served warm. Having a delicious food combination is not just about similarities. Instead, it’s about finding flavors that BELONG together, flavors that fit together and work with each other to create something amazing. Much like tasty food combinations, I believe inclusion is about belonging. It’s about helping different people feel they belong as part of the team, so they can create something amazing.

With all this said, I feel that when we talk about building positive cultures and inclusion we focus on finding similarities instead of creating belonging. For example, we might look at two different people and say, “At their core, they are both similar in many ways. They are both people. Both of them are dads. Both of them are marketers. Both of them like sports. Both of them like some of the same foods. Both of them have similar concerns and self-doubts, because they are both human. Etc.” While these things are true and it’s important to find common ground, I feel we often overemphasize finding similarities as a way to solve any inclusion problems. In reality, finding similarities is a small part of inclusion. Just because you have similarities doesn’t mean you have belonging or inclusion. I’d take it a step further to say, if you can’t find a way to create a sense of belonging, then the similarities don’t matter.

What exactly is belonging? I think belonging is about understanding the big picture and how you MEANINGFULLY fit into that picture. If people can demonstrate those things to you on a consistent basis, I believe that you will feel like you belong somewhere. Think about yourself for a moment. Do you feel like you belong on your current team? Do you feel like you belong in your broader organization? Have you had teams where you felt like you belonged and teams where you felt like an outsider? What was the difference? I’ve been in all of those situations. I’ve been in places where I felt I belonged, where it was evident I was part of something and that people cared about me, valued me, and wanted me to be there. I’ve also been on groups, where I felt like an outsider, where I was just another person. I know I always do my most magical work when I belong somewhere.

Challenge: What are you doing to help create a sense of belonging on your team and beyond? What are you doing to help people see what they are part of? What are you doing to show people how they meaningfully fit into the broader picture?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry