Speaker 1: Diversity, equity, inclusion. A topic that we've heard so much about in the last couple of years. An area that we see so much investment in. Every organisation trying to drive change, trying to create a workplace that's more inclusive, a society that's more inclusive. In the US alone, last year, $8 billion was spent on diversity training. And many more billions globally, to try to create that equity that everyone wants to see, feel in the workplace. However, one of the things that's come to light is that it's not driving the change that we want to see. We're not achieving the success that people want to feel in the workplace. Why is that? Well, I argue that very training is biased. It's built with stereotypes. It has assumptions. It's not always diverse or inclusive. And many times, it does the very opposite of inclusion. But in order to truly understand why diversity training is failing, and what we can do to really drive change, we must look at education as a whole. How do we learn? How do we truly embed change? I remember being in university. I did a degree in business management. And at the time, we did numerous case studies, read numerous books about successful leaders. What makes success? Who are the top leaders in our country? Who are the top leaders globally? And I remember looking at them, and reading these books, and thinking, none of them look like me. Not one of them. And how can I become something I can't see, was the big thing for me. When I graduated, I really struggled with seeing myself in that position. Fortunately, life gave me experiences. Experiences that made me believe that I could be anything I wanted. But that education failed me, because it didn't give me that image. When we think about history, history that we learnt in school, whether primary school, secondary school, what history did we learn? If we learnt about the British Empire, did you learn about the coloniser, or the colonised? Which version did you get? Was it bias-free? Did it really give you all the different perspectives? These are the challenges we see in so many forms of education. They give you a perspective. Not the whole perspective, not different views, not different takes. When we think of education, many times it's delivered in a certain way, to what is defined as a group. We deliver it in the same way, because the assumption is everyone learns the same way. Everyone absorbs information the same way. That's so far from the truth. We know people learn in different ways. We know people are neurodiverse. People have different ways of taking in information. I've got a young son, a seven-year-old, who's got ADHD. And I got called in to his school a couple of weeks back. And the teacher said to me that he's not doing well. He's not able to do tasks he's given. We give him maths questions, and he doesn't do them. He fails. His education standards are much lower than they should be. My son, who's seven, builds Legos for 14-plus-year-olds. He has this brain that's fascinating. He can do things I couldn't even imagine to do at his age. And I said to his teacher that if you want him to learn, you have to adapt your style, not him adapt himself to fit in. Why not give him those ten maths sums and break them down? Give him two at a time. Let him complete two, tell him he's done a great job, and give him the next two. Because that's how he learns. That's how he can be successful when learning. So we must readdress how we teach, how we get people to understand different things, if we're truly going to embed change. And then when we think of diversity training or diversity education, it's built with so many different elements that are not having the success that we want to see. Let me give you some examples. When we learn about diversity, what do we see? Usually, we have a poster up with a person. That's someone who's a person of colour. That's someone who's a member of the LGBTQ plus community. Really? Does one person or one image describe a whole community? It's not possible. I remember being told once, what is the view of Muslims on something, being someone of faith? And I was like, wow, you want me to give you a view of almost two billion people? Me? How can I do that? Everyone's an individual. Everyone has a unique identity. But if we're going to stereotype and say this is this group or this is that group, we're not going to achieve success. Furthermore, a lot of our training within the diversity space looks at some of the challenges faced by communities. And rightly so, there are challenges. When we think about racial equity, when we think about gender equity and so on, there's huge challenges. However, it's not all misery. There's so many successes in diverse communities and diverse groups and underrepresented groups. Why do we not hear about them? I remember speaking at an event a couple of months back, and someone came up to me at the end and said, it's amazing to see everything you've achieved, despite all odds. And I was like, wow, thank you? But what do you mean by all odds? And she said to me, it must have been really difficult for you growing up. It must have been so difficult not having access to opportunities. And I was like, I'm really sorry, but I had a really good upbringing, not the one that you think I had. And she apologized, and she didn't have any negative intent. Her intent was not negative. But the problem was, someone had taught her through some training somewhere that people who look like me, this is their experiences, or this is their journey. So it hadn't built in the unique identities within that training. The other big challenge when we think about diversity training is, what perspectives do we give? What do I mean by that? We give dominant culture perspectives. Many trainings around this space are either a British version or a US version, with the assumption that that same diversity elements that we focus on will work in every single country globally. Diversity is different. What areas of diversity are important, what diversity looks like, is different in each and every country. Forget countries, in each and every town, and not even towns, in each and every region within that town, each and every estate, each and every block within that town, it's different. But if we give one version, and expect everyone to understand that, how will that actually reach out and speak to the people? How will it train individuals to engage with each other? Many trainings in the diversity space are done through the corporate space. You're given one version, right? So what a company believes in. These are our top five, top ten, top three areas of diversity. We believe in this. How can we learn if we don't have more information, if we don't have different perspectives within that diversity training? So what is the solution? Well I think it's a few things. The first is our source of information. We cannot train with one source. We must look at open source information. Why can diversity training not be about all the different views on a topic? We don't have to give one perspective. Our society right now is so divided. There is no middle left. You're either very far left or very far right, and we don't speak to each other. But how are we going to truly change and embed that change unless we look at the differences, we look at the differences we have? Diversity has never been about us all agreeing. If we all agreed on the same things, that wouldn't be diverse. Diversity is about bringing different perspectives, different lived experiences together, and respecting our differences and then working towards better goals. So we must diversify the very content we teach and the very content we put in for people to learn. We must localise it. Diversity training shouldn't be training that's designed centrally. We need to let teams and individuals speak about what it means. Storytelling, we learn through stories. So if we have diversity training that gets a group of colleagues together and they share their experiences, that's impactful. We learn through each other. Human interaction, the biggest learning we can have. The other big thing is we need to move away from just one form of learning or education when it comes to diversity. Traditional classroom-based learning has a part to play, it's good, but we must think about experiential learning. How do we create experiences that truly drive change? If I asked any of you to speak or to remember a time that you were taught something in a classroom, you could probably go back a few years, maybe even a few weeks, but if I asked you about an experience, you could probably go back to your early childhood. We remember experiences. Usually uncomfortable experiences stay with us for a lifetime, but we do remember experiences. Experiences are powerful. It's how we learn. So if we're going to teach people about diversity, let them have experiences. And we must diversify our experiences not just in our workplace or in our schools, but beyond that. If I asked any of you to write down your five closest friends, how different are they to you? You'll find they're very similar. So unless we diversify our experiences outside of our workplace, our studying environment, we're not going to learn. We're creatures of habit. I go to the same restaurants, I sit in the same chair in the restaurant, but that's not going to teach me anything. I must try different experiences, even if they're uncomfortable, because that's how we learn, and that's how we truly will drive change in the diversity space. Group learning, so powerful. As groups, how can we learn? How can we come together and share those different ideas? How do we create psychologically safe environments? As I mentioned, there's so much fear of saying the wrong thing, of offending someone, not knowing the right terminology to use when it comes to diversity. That can't help if we're not talking. How would we learn? How do we create psychological safety to come together and have those difficult conversations? Ask someone that, look, I don't know what the right phrase is, or I would like to know more about this, and we share. I have never been offended by someone asking me a question, but I have been offended by someone making an assumption about what my needs are. So ask me, ask what I would like. And then self-led learning. Learning is our own responsibility. We must learn, whether it's through traditional forms of learning or whether it's through experiential learning. We can own that journey of learning. It is not the responsibility of anyone to educate anyone. We can champion that learning. Many times over the last couple of years, I've heard people from underrepresented groups saying that people have come up to them and said, tell me about this, teach me about that. Not everyone wants to share their experiences, and it is not the burden of an underrepresented group to educate someone else. Yes, we should talk, and yes, we should have conversations, but that responsibility lies with us. We are the people who own our own journey of learning. And it is uncomfortable. I don't want to lie to any of you and say diversity or the topics around diversity are not uncomfortable. They are, but we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable, because we're not going to make progress unless we truly understand what that looks like. And finally, when we think about learning in the diversity space, it's not a two-hour module. It's not a half-day program. It's a lifelong journey. Within the workplace, statistically and evidence shows, half-day programs, the one-hour workshops do not change behaviour. People revert back. How many times have you seen learning or training being delivered and people are sitting on their phones? People have switched off. For learning to be impactful, it has to be continuous. We learn through continuously practising something, through continuously leading something and really owning it. That's how we learn. And learning is not for a select group of people when it comes to diversity. Diversity education is for everyone. It's not an us and them game. We don't place a particular group through the education and not another group. Biases exist everywhere. Microaggressions, discrimination, stereotypes. But we must all own that journey. We must all go on it. And it will be a long-term journey. Diversity, equity and inclusion is here to stay. It is not only a nice thing to do, but it's a business imperative. When you look at how businesses are successful, it is through diversity and inclusion. Future generations will not align themselves to an organisation that doesn't value diversity and inclusion. So getting this education piece right is critical for the success of any institution or any organisation. But it is something that we must readdress because if we continue down the same path and spend the billions without any impact, we're just box ticking. So true change is going beyond the boxes and really understanding that each and every individual is part of the change and we should all own that journey of going through the change. Thank you.