Truly innovating and solving problems often require us to rethink and try new approaches. The DEI Leadership Institute takes a new approach to issues we’ve been working on for longer than anyone’s been alive: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In this episode, the Institute’s founder Maria Putnam joins Stephen Jaye to discuss how we can adapt a mindset that not only addresses this hot-button issue, but also opens us up to new experiences and has the potential to enrich all of our lives. Listen in and learn why DEI isn’t as straightforward as it seems and why everybody needs to pay attention to it now.
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DEI Leadership Institute: Taking Innovative Approaches To Diversity, Equity And Inclusion With Maria Putnam
We’re all aiming for something in this world. We’re aiming to do something to make some improvement. Some of it is personal such as fixing a bad habit. Some of it is larger-scale societal issues that we’ve been dealing with for a while. One important part of that whole process is being willing to change course and taking a different approach when it becomes necessary. Being open to that will often lead to a better result. My guest, Maria Putnam, the Cofounder and Principal of the DEI Leadership Institute, has an idea about how we can find a more effective course of action around some of our most pressing problems right now. Maria, thank you for coming to the show.
Thank you so much, Stephen, for having me.
“We are going in one direction where we feel comfortable. Let’s be uncomfortable. That’s okay. Nothing is gonna happen. It’s gonna be just fine. We’re gonna survive. Let’s just jump on it.”
I want to start off by getting everyone oriented properly. DEI is a term that’s commonly used in the business and the corporate world. What does it stand for and what is the ultimate aim of a lot of the DEI Initiatives going on in the world?
DEI stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Some of the companies are using DENI. The ultimate goal for this is awareness. As we do this work more, to begin and start with us, to be more aware, to become better people and better human beings.
When it comes to that, what is the ultimate goal for people who are involved in the DEI or hear about DEI training at their own companies? Is there a societal need around fairness and equality, or is it mostly all stemming from this idea of becoming better people and better communicators?
The ultimate goal is to create a better world where there is equity, everybody has a voice, there is an appreciation of everybody at the workplace. The DEI work cannot be effective if we as people don’t do our own DEI and if we don’t face our own bias. That’s where the work starts and by working in ourselves, we could become better people. You cannot apply something that you don’t believe yourself.
Before we get into the specifics of your story, what are some of these other benefits? Let’s say we improve ourselves as human beings and give everyone a fair voice. There are some other benefits. It’s not just about having certain makeups on your board or something like that. There are other intangible benefits. Tell us a little bit about some of these other intangible benefits and how we’re all improving through this.
For example, let’s focus on the workplace. What benefits do we have when we do the DEI work well? There is higher retention because people feel a sense of belonging. There is a lower turnover. One of the things that I hear in the business and some of the people in the companies that I work with is they spend a lot of money in the process of hiring. The turnover is high. Overall, you’re going to have more committed people. If we’re going to talk about the financial part, you’re going to save a lot of money. That’s what I’m talking about in the workplace.
Let’s back up to your story before starting the DEI Leadership Institute. You’ve lived in a lot of different places and had a lot of your initiatives before that. You’ve always been a starter. What other initiatives? What are your key highlights from before starting the DEI Leadership Institute?
Professionally, I had a Hispanic Advertising Agency for ten years in Denver, Colorado and then led to oversee the International Studies Program at the Denver public schools where I was very committed to the DEI programs. The DEI Leadership Institute is the compilation of everything that I have. I live in three countries. The United States is my third country. I am originally from Bogota, Columbia. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to study overseas. I lived in Switzerland, France and ended up in the United States. That helped me to always be aware of different cultures and appreciate every one of them.
Having experience from South America, Central Europe and the United States, what do you think we here in the United States can learn most from some of these other cultures that you originated from and experienced?
There is something here missing and that is the family component. We have a lot of good things in the United States but we don’t appreciate that much the knowledge. An initiative that I started at the Denver Public School was connecting our seniors with younger generations. That goes back to the family integrity. I see families here who have five kids and the place for their parents is a nursing home. Of those five kids, only one goes to visit their parents. There is a disconnection there. As a society, that will be a good place to start. I don’t sometimes see how we utilize the knowledge and expertise of a lot of seniors.
I read a news article about the phenomenon of people cutting their parents out of their lives and how it’s become even more prevalent for many years. My focus tends to be on changes from the turn of the century until now. It seems different. One of the problems that are near and dear to me is loneliness in general. It’s a tough toll on a lot of people. There’s a percentage of people who say they don’t feel like they have someone to confide in when they have something going on. They don’t have someone to ask for help. Now I read about family members being estranged more and more. Do you have any sense as to how this has originated and whether or not this is a North America-only phenomenon or is it going on elsewhere in the globe?
There is a lot of things that we can do here in the United States. For example, if we look at the culture in Japan. When the parents get older and there are five siblings, they going to fight to see who can take care of their parents. I come from a generation where we live with our grandma for many years. My mom took care of my grandma. We come from a generation of taking care of our loved ones. There is something to learn there. This country will do very well by integrating more. That’s a big piece with DEI because a lot of companies have age discrimination. They are hiring all these new twenty years old and don’t value their people who have been in companies for twenty years. There is something there that we have to look closer to.
When it comes to some of this age discrimination, how do we go about looking at people in different generations? I had another episode of this show where we talked about the five different generations in the workforce and how each generation has a unique perspective. That’s an interesting one. What’s needed is this mutual understanding and the combination of all the perspectives. The same DEI that people tend to think about when they think about racial bias tends to be the most commonly thought about it. Is it the same mental mechanism to address our racial biases as it is to address biases against certain age groups?
Unfortunately, yes. That’s something that we see more and more. That’s why there is a big disintegration right now. Everything that happened in 2020 was the beginning of this wake-up call that I hope many of us are having, some more than others. That led to that mindset of age and all these things that are not doing us any good.
Let’s say someone is a Millennial. They’re estranged. They don’t talk to their parents anymore. It’s easy to find someone who only talks with people in the same general age range as them, their peers that they choose to sit with when they’re at work or people that they’re closest friends with. What happens when you only talk to your specific age group and you don’t talk to people who are older or even in younger generations as well?
You are missing out from my perspective. In my studies with DEI and what I have seen in my travel, I see that more and more. You travel and you want to take a class. I love to take classes about everything. I’m one of those people that as soon as I arrive in a new city or a country, I say, “Where do I sign myself?” Even if it’s a one-day class or activities, I love to learn. Let’s say Airbnb. You do research about something like places to dwell. They break it down for you by ages. For 20 to 30, there are these places. For 30 to 40, they give you other places. That’s very interesting. There is also the media. The media is not sometimes treating seniors kindly. The image that they are selling is not that positive. We have to do work at so many levels about integration because it’s affecting us. What you said is so important because what happened when you go around the same circle is that’s your feedback. That’s where you get your information. We need to work and be more mindful about how we can make those integrations.
It takes an actual effort. Most people find it easier to talk among like people. Whether it be people who think like them from an ideological standpoint or people who look like them or people who have the same background and upbringing. What does it take to get out of your own little bubble, as some people call it?
The ultimate goal is to create a better world where there is equity, where everybody has a voice, where there is appreciation of everybody.
When I talk to some of the companies, that’s something that came a lot. They said, “Who are your generational friends?” I’m not a racist. I love my friends. That’s the beautiful work when we start asking ourselves, “Let’s make a list of new friends. Who do you hang out with? Do you want to have coffee with someone different?” It’s these conscious decisions that we make. I get a lot of people who are willing and love the idea of DEI. They want integration. They like everything that is happening in the world with the new administration of this country. You then go down to, “Who are you hanging out with? Who are your friends? Are your circle of friends just the people like you?” With the media and the times with all these social media and Zoom meetings, we do have the opportunity to meet people from everywhere.
Even now, one of the issues I have is you usually network with the people who live in the same city as you. With everything going online, there is this realization that there’s the opportunity. Nothing is stopping me from hopping on a networking event that I find on a meetup or an email thread that’s in another city. If I want to, I could hop on something going on in South Carolina or some completely different place. For some reason, I still stick to the Denver-related or Denver-focused events.
I find that very interesting. When I was coaching teachers a while back and we were talking about the integration of the international component in the curriculum, I remember a teacher looking at me and say, “How can I teach my kindergarten or my first graders about China?” I said, “You don’t have to do that.” In the third grade, I work a lot with teaching math with recipes from other countries. It’s a small component. You can integrate culture in many ways. It’s not only talking about another country. You can incorporate. The same thing happened at the professional level. I have people say, “I go to lunch with the same people even though we have new people. We have some Oriental new hires that we haven’t even go out for lunch.” Go out for lunch with different people in your company.
Regardless of what people say, in most cases, you generally observe people when it comes time to go out to lunch or sit in a workroom cafeteria, people do tend to stick to the same people as opposed to branching out a bit.
We have to do more conscious work about that. We are going in one direction where we feel comfortable. Let’s be uncomfortable. That’s okay. Nothing is going to happen. It’s going to be just fine. We’re going to survive. Let’s jump on it.
That reminds me of the reflection period I had at the end of 2020. I reflected upon 2020, which was a very crazy year. I thought to myself, “What if the message we’re all getting from this year is we need to stop avoiding uncomfortable conversations?” Everything that happened is the theme to it all.
I’ve been thinking big time about why people are bullied. I came to the conclusion that this is the fear of finding ourselves in an unknown place. It’s fear of rejection. I don’t know how we got so afraid to be rejected. That’s what I have witnessed and what I know.
One of the mindsets that keep people settling for less is fear of rejection or fear of ostracism in a more general sense. It reminds me of what a lot of us go through when we’re 15, 16 years old, and it’s the first time you need to go and ask someone out or the first time you decide to ask someone out. Anytime you do that, you’re facing a fear of rejection, but at some point later in life, it becomes easy to pretty much avoid every possible situation that might lead to rejection. I’ve listened to shows and heard stories about people who’ve done some pretty radical courses of action to go about confronting their fear of rejection.
I heard a story about this one guy that decided to do one thing every day for 31 days to seek out rejection, asking someone a question, ask some random person or someone they barely know a question that they’re likely to get a no answer to like, “Will you help me with this?” Just to get them comfortable with this idea of being rejected because no matter what we start, people who want to start a business are going to be rejected. A lot of the key success stories like the woman who did the Harry Potter books I heard was rejected by hundreds of literary agents and publishers. There’s always going to be rejection first. We always have to face it if we want to move from one point to another.
That’s very deep right there. We can go for hours and hours. That’s fascinating to me. I see beautiful people so scared and afraid to be the beautiful people that they are because somehow, somewhat in their subconscious mind, at one point in their life, they were rejected. Make a list of everything that you’re scared of. Choose the one that you are the most scared of and start working in that. You mentioned something about repetition. I think that repetition breaks any cycle in your subconscious mind because everything happens at the subconscious level. We don’t even know sometimes all of the stuff that we have in our subconscious mind. When that comes up, they have panic attacks. That will be good to make a list. I always talk about that to confront their fears. If we don’t do that, we are giving our power away. We cannot shine because of that.
We have to learn to have more compassion for ourselves, learn, keep moving, never give up, start again, and treat every day as an opportunity.
That’s a very important point about giving our power away because I feel like that’s what keeps a lot of people settling for less. One thing I do want to always iterate in this show is I’m not trying to throw shade on people who take certain courses of action that fits them better. I’m talking about finding the course of action and the life that matches who you are and where you shine the best. Even people who move up at companies had to do something along the lines of putting themselves out there, come to their boss or the division leader with an idea. Put yourself out there and face that possible rejection. That’s how a lot of people get to where they want to go. Giving away that power keeps people in a case like there’s an outcome where you end up stagnant and not getting to shine.
I had a meeting and I volunteered myself to speak up and to do a presentation without even preparing anything. I volunteered myself because they were looking for a speaker. The whole topic was about cooperation. The title of my short speech was cooperation goes long ways. The reason why I chose that is because the image that I came up with is a candle. The candle needs a lighter. There is cooperation happening there. That is the metaphor of light. We all have the light. We forget that we have the light. When you are talking, something that came to my mind is compassion. We need to be more compassionate with ourselves. We are so hard with ourselves when something doesn’t work out. That is no kindness. We have to learn to have more compassion for ourselves, to keep moving, to never give up and to start again. Every day is an opportunity. Society, the media, the circles are not empowering. It’s empowering our human selves.
Moving forward usually involves radical self-awareness as well as radical self-compassion. Radical awareness of who you are and what’s going on in your head, being aware, not being afraid of something, not running away from something. Also, being compassionate to yourself and accepting the way that you’ve may have done things, not ideally in the past, but being able to take a deep breath and say, “That’s okay. All I can do is get back up and move forward.” I want to get into a little bit about what you saw when you decided to start or cofound the DEI Leadership Institute and how people were going about it. How do you feel people should be going about handling some of these large-scale issues?
My big time quest in DEI was when I started working with the school system. That’s where things started to be clearer to me that something needs to be done on a bigger scale that has more effect. With my experience traveling and assessing a lot of schools around the United States, I see pretty much the inequalities. I feel like, “Do I need to do something?” It’s not only to witness because if we witness something that is not working and we don’t do anything, we became part of that. My thought is, “I need to do something about this. I got the certification from the staff or university about DEI, so this is the work that the world needs right now.”
What did you see in the approaches that people had been taking toward DEI and your decision to advocate a slightly different approach?
The approach that I have seen a lot is two things. One is I see companies hiring consultants and not getting results. For me, that’s expected because DEI is very deep work. If you have a company and all your staff, and you bring someone who is going to tell you how you can face your own bias, you are going to say, “Who is that person?” That person doesn’t know the culture of the company. That person hasn’t had time to develop relationships where you feel safe because this work starts as a group when you feel safe. That’s the thing that I don’t think is working. No matter how good the consultant is, you cannot fix a culture in two weeks, in six months. You have to invest. You have to develop those relationships. That’s one thing that I say, “This is not working.” If you want to check the box, fine. If you did that DEI in your company, fine. If you want to see a difference and make a change, you have to have another approach.
That’s one thing that I have seen. The other thing that I have seen is in big companies, they even developed departments, which might make much more sense. You have to be aware of the people who are leading those groups. Sometimes, the people leading those groups are completely behaving in the opposite that nobody even buys on it. If I have a boss that’s the most racist person and is telling me how not to be, are you kidding me? You shouldn’t be doing that. It’s not going to work, or if the people are afraid of them. Who are you putting to do this?
Do you want me to tell me how things are not working, how you don’t feel included and you’re afraid to be fired? You have to be mindful of how you do DEI in your own company, even when you have a whole department. That led to the approach of DEI Leadership Institute to work with the leaders. The DEI work starts by working with themselves, then they can bring that to their companies. It’s more effective because you already have invested. You went through the process of realizing so many things confronting your own bias, learning and getting information, the tools and the skills to be an effective DEI leader.
It makes me feel like a lot of things you talk about are things that need to be thought of from a little bit of a broader perspective. Maybe our perspective on some of these things is a little bit too narrow, that this is a broader change in the organization. One thing I read about organizational culture and there’s an important moment in what you were describing is the idea of people feeling comfortable speaking up. It’s the difference between an organization where people feel like they have the comfort. They feel like they can speak up. They feel like their voice matters to their leadership and organizations where people feel afraid to talk.
Oftentimes, when people feel afraid to talk, one of the other things that occur in that organizational culture is that people are also afraid to take risks, even risks that could end up with rewarding products. Whereas the best organizations are the ones where the people feel comfortable. They can speak their voice. There’s not going to be this constant threat of being fired or not being given assignments or other types of negative consequences for saying something that might be a little bit different than what people want to hear. That mindset that’s embracing discomfort, is that part of the entire process of creating a better overall organization?
Very much so because what we have seen in a lot of those companies when people is afraid to speak up is an oppression system. Oppression has so many colors and that’s one of them when there is retaliation for speaking up to even propose an idea.
There are a lot of organizations where people don’t want to try anything new. They don’t want to propose anything new. It’s better to lay low and stick where you are because you can fly under the radar and not get on anyone’s path pretty much.
That goes back to histories of histories. I don’t know if you are familiar with the podcast called 1619. It’s a wonderful podcast. I love that podcast. We go back to the times of slavery. In one way or another, we’ve been changing through time the codes on how we call things. I see that in different ways right now in workplaces, how we keep doing a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense. People are still in that sense of oppression. I think that this is a good time. I’m very excited about what is happening right now in the world. All the events that took place in 2020 was a good indication that people are ready for a change. People are ready to create a new world, more fairness and much better opportunities for human beings.
People are tired. I love to see a new generation is standing up. I love to see Millennials questioning and speaking up. I love Millennials. They speak up. They don’t have what other generations have before. They are talking about the workplace. They are not afraid to change jobs. Their beliefs are not aligned with the culture of the company. They just move on. They don’t have the commitment anymore of saying, “I want to be here until I retire. I’m here for ten years.” They look after what resonates with them. They’re more honest with themselves.
It reminds me of the way I approach a lot of work, which is if it doesn’t align with something I want to do or if I don’t feel like I’m shining and able to do myself, why keep doing this? It took me a little while to realize this the first few years after going to graduate school. The phrase I hear that irks me the most is this idea that you’ve got to pay your dues and it takes a lot of different forms.
We come from that. There is so much to learn from new generations. I try to spend more time with a younger generation when I can. They have so much to offer. I love them. I mean, everybody. I love kiddos and my heart is with elders. My heart is always with service.
I want to clarify. I’m not trying to throw shade on generations at all. There are certain things I disagree with like the idea of the virtue of working long hours. I don’t want to let that lead to a bias against certain generations of people. As we take a deep breath, confront our own biases, confront the ideas that we’ve lived by and decide if they’re right or wrong, what are you hopeful of this future scenario after all this work is done of what our world is going to look like? What are our interactions going to look like?
If I have to paint a canvas right now, it would be with a lot of colors of integration. That’s how I see this. If we do this work well, we will have happier people and people who are taking fewer pills. People are taking pills for everything these days and that is not okay. That is the result of a broken system. How about that? Go back to empowering people, whether that’s no pills, more happiness and unification. People will create a much better world if we are there.
One of the things I often look at is the 2010s. I look at what happened with the number of people taking pills, committing violent acts, committing suicide. I said, “We need to look at this and realize something’s not working. Something needs to be changed. I might not have all the answers. You might not have all the answers but something needs to be different than what we’ve been doing.” 2008 was the last major cultural turning point before this pandemic hit in 2020. Something over those last twelve-year period wasn’t working. I have one final question about the entire concept of DEI. Is there any danger in people thinking about it in too narrow of a term for it to be just about racial background versus every form of bias, as we talked about the bias against different generations, the bias against different ways of thinking? Is it better to focus on one part of it and allow that natural process of being curious, open and less fearful of conversation to bring it to other areas of life?
Even though DEI is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, there are so many layers to it. This is such a deep subject. It’s a tough one. It’s very challenging. This is not easy work to do. This is a journey. This is conscious work at different levels.
It sounds like the biggest issue may not be narrow thinking. It may be more like putting it into the realm of instant gratification. How we have so much of that in our culture, especially with social media thinking, “I need to check a box. I need to do these five things or these two things and be done with it.” As opposed to saying, “We’re on a journey. We’re going to open ourselves up and we’re all going to become better people from it.”
That’s the best position. I have people who come to me who said, “I have never studied. I would like to get certified. I can do this. This sounds so interesting.” You already started doing it. Why not start talking about it? People don’t even talk about it. It’s like when you go to the doctor because you realize you have something, 50% of the work is already done. When we start talking, we are already doing our work.
It’s being aware like, “I’m going to take a deep breath. I’m going to ask myself why did I talk to this person and not that person? Why did I think about this in that way?”
What I see sometimes is a lot of DEI consultants love data. Data is a great tool. Data can help to guide you to the results that you want. We are not robots. Thanks, God. We are capable of wonderful things. That is one piece of the whole circle. We do the work as you mentioned before, but asking ourselves this question, “Why I’m sitting at this table? I know everybody at this table and I don’t know anybody at that table.” Take the lead. Go and sit with people that you don’t even know. That’s all it takes. Who’s going to win. You’re going to win. We win. Every single time that we do something that we have never done, you empower yourself. You are better people by doing that.
For all my readers that are feeling stuck, that’s one thing. A lot of people may be like, “I’m doing something right now. I don’t love it but I don’t know what it is that I want. I don’t know where I’m going.” Maybe by taking these little steps such as introducing yourself to a person that’s not like you, you open yourself up to new ideas. That may be over time, the process by what you’ve come up with that new idea like, “This is what I was meant to do. This is what I was meant to provide to the world. This is how I achieve that alignment.”
You mentioned something interesting. In a lot of conferences, I see a lot of people who have questions, but they don’t ask the question. In my classes, people have questions but they are afraid to ask the question. It’s that simple. It’s interesting, I studied a long time ago about how when we are 5 to 8 years old, we became so aware of what people think of us and we lose that freedom. That’s a big part of risking and taking that initiative to say, “I’m going to ask the question,” and you know what is going to happen. Whatever happened, happened but stand up and ask the question. What I realized is a lot of people have the same question but nobody asked the question. When I lead meetings, I have people after the meeting said, “What about this? What about that?” I say, “Why didn’t you ask that question?” They feel more comfortable one-on-one than asking the question in front of twenty people. I love this work because DEI is a world that empowers us and makes us feel better, be better people and let our light shine more.
For those readers who are interested in finding out how to empower themselves, how do we go about finding you and your institution?
We win every single time that we do something that we have never done before.
You can find me on LinkedIn. Also, you can find me through the DEI Leadership Institute. We are having a conference at the end of 2021. This is interesting because we’re going to have a panel of people who have invested in their companies and doing this conscious work. This is not over. You cannot just take the certification and it’s done. This work is a journey.
It reminds me of every other mindset issue we have. Whether it be avoiding over people-pleasing, avoiding the need to be busy all the time, all these other mindset traps that we fall into that prevent us from moving in life. They’re all things we often have to relearn and relearn again. Maria, I’d like to thank you very much for joining me on this show. I wish you the best of luck going forward with creating better people, better human beings, better connections with people and a better world. I’d also like to thank everyone out there for reading. Hopefully, you’ll join us for more episodes and discussions with inspiring people who have taken action upon the things that they care about.
Important Links:
- DEI Leadership Institute
- LinkedIn – Maria Putnam
- 1619 – on Apple Podcasts
About Maria Putnam
Maria is originally from Columbia and lived in Europe (Switzerland and France) before moving to the United States. She’s been involved with Denver Public Schools and the Global Chamber for years. Her latest initiative is creating the DEI Leadership Institute, which represents a new approach to issues of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.