Why promote diversity and inclusion?

Tanya Macpherson (TM) and Annamaria Testani (AT)

(TM)

Hello everybody, welcome to National Bank Investments podcast. My name is Tanya Macpherson. I’m the Regional Vice-President for central Canada, and I’m happy to be here. Today we have a special guest who is not new to our podcasts and always brings insightful information to the discussion: Senior Vice-President, Head of Sales, Annamaria Testani. Welcome Annamaria.

(AT)

Thank you, Tanya. So great to be back.

(TM)

We are so happy to have you here Annamaria for this very important topic and one that is important not only in our business, here at National Bank investments, but in the industry in general: diversity and inclusion.

What is diversity inclusion? Let’s start there. What is it? What do you see it as and why is it so valuable to be paying greater attention to this?

(AT)

You know, diversity is kind of funny, right? Because we interchangeably use those two words. One leads into the other, and they’re not mutually exclusive. There is a correlation between them. Diversity is basically having different types of prototypes within your organization that don’t necessarily, and you know you can go from a physical perspective, right? That don’t look like each other, act like each other, talk like each other, have the same cultural background, have the same religious background, can have differences in their physicality. Diversity is just having a multitude of prototypes which is actually reflective of the society in which you’re currently working.

Inclusivity is allowing everyone the ability to be heard, that every thought process has its place in merit around the table; you are including people in the decision-making process or the table discussions. Even though technically what they’re saying may go against what I call the group think. One leads into the other, the more of a diverse group you’re going to get, the more you have to work hard at making sure that you are inclusive to the thought processes around the table. If I were to put people from different backgrounds, different sexual orientations, and different religions all around that table, that does not generate inclusivity. Inclusivity is when you must make an effort to your mental state to be able to listen to them and not judge them for the persona in which they’re coming to the table.

(TM)

In your opinion, so, you know, I, for full transparency, work on your team, you hired me. I’ve worked alongside you quite a few times, and I’ve watched your career. You started looking at being inclusive and diverse on your teams quite some time ago. In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of implementing this type of program or process into the mix?

(AT)

I would probably say it’s the way we assess risk, so I’ll give an example. You know studies have shown, and I think a couple of Harvard Business reviews have shown that when we’re looking at women, we tend to evaluate them on performance, and when we evaluate men, we evaluate them on potential. Those are two different metrics, and they’re biased because at the end of the day, if a woman hasn’t been able to show you that she can do it, you will view her as risky. Whereas if you look at the male counterparts, if they tell you they can do it, but they’ve never shown you that skill set, there’s almost a societal leap of faith. So I think the hardest thing is how do we attribute risk? And we do this all the time, right? Every person we meet, we do it when we’re meeting friends, when we’re trying to date someone, we always have a plus and a negative column.

The hard part about diversity and inclusion is: could you inadvertently be creating a double standard of judgment on things that you’re just not accustomed to? And that inadvertently considers a lot of things about diversity. I’ve heard someone say to me: oh, you know, I use my hands to talk a lot and you know it bothers my manager and I think it’s kind of funny because culturally, you tie someone hands down, they won’t be able to know how to talk. So why is talking with their hands something that must be on the table to evaluate the persons potential performance or ability to lead? Are we so sensitive as a society that these are the things that detract us from truly understanding someone and following in their leadership?

What is about that that would derail you? And when you dig through that, you start realizing it’s just in your head. It’s not a material fact. Now, well, you’ve said I’ve been going about this for a long time. The thing is, I don’t go out to hire women. I don’t go out to hire visible minorities, but what I do is I don’t see you as that. I ask you open-ended questions and I don’t sit and judge you because you answer it differently than men would. I look at the message you are delivering.

(TM)

On that note with hiring, what steps do you take to eliminate bias from your hiring process?

(AT)

So there are a couple of things. I think easy things you can usually do is you remove the names on the CVs. You can remove the year of your first university degree. It forces the readers to look at the content that’s written in the resume versus the name that’s following that resume or the age that’s following that thing. I often say to people you know you’re hiring behaviours. You’re hiring a set of knowledge. You don’t have to add all these other elements and I think COVID has been a great enabler. You know, if you think of people that have a disability or physical disability in the older days, you know you would have had to go to that office place and they would have seen you with that difference in physicality.

Today we do most of it through Teams or Zoom. Suddenly people are going well. You know what that you are in a wheelchair or not. Today we’ve now realized these are just the hiccups. These are mental hurdles that we put in our ourselves. We make it bigger than what it really is. Have that conversation. Could you do other things? For sure. One of the things I challenge a lot of firms is you keep hiring the same profile. And the profile doesn’t necessarily have to be physicality. Could also be intellectual. If you keep hiring the same type of profile repeatedly, who’s there to challenge the status quo? Everyone agrees with each other. You’re going to get that groupthink naturally. And if you hire someone that is different, how do you support that individual? Because that poor individual who’s different from everyone else is going to feel it.

There’s also a difference between hiring and there’s a difference between hiring to support. Hiring someone different doesn’t mean your job is done as a manager. You must enable.

(TM)

Are more diverse companies likely to outperform their peers?

(AT)

You know, for me to answer that question, we must ask ourselves what is it about successful companies that make them successful? You must sit back and go those are usually the firms that think outside the box. Those are firms that look at the lighthouse and go how far into the future can I see and what are the clients’ demands or change is coming into play? If that’s what makes IT company successful. You want to garner as many people as you can that have an ability to think outside the box. If you have a group of leaders that don’t resemble each other, that go through different experiences, that bring a different legacy to the table, doesn’t that give you an edge? Doesn’t that give you such a wider perspective?

The data points are coming back to you. This is not about hiring diversity. This is about being inclusive in your hiring firms that do that and actively listen. To have diverse feedback loops that come from having a diverse ecosystem. That could be disruptors in our market.

(TM)

So what’s the one thing we can do to have a positive impact on diversity inclusion within our teams or for our advisors out there listening for their teams?

(AT)

Do you know what your biases are? And I love when people say to me, I don’t have biases. We all have biases. We have ridiculous biases to like you know, I don’t like this kind of food and then we have more serious biases that we attribute a lot of factors to someone. Find out what are the biases that are the most dangerous to your thought process? What do I mean by that? I meet an incredible number of people every day. I am very susceptible to the first impression bias. Why did I meet so many people that my brain inadvertently likes the label and categorize people quickly? The thing is, if the data points that I’m observing and judging are wrong, I have a wrong first impression on the person. What have you done to educate your team?
Your group? To being more aware, to educate what is proper and what is not proper, what is respectful and what is not respectful? This is not going to change because we’re going to put a law in place. This is we’re talking about dismantling behaviours that have been tolerated and accepted for a long time. There are some jokes that are just not appropriate. You should not be saying that, there are some comments you should not. The problem is when you’re the recipient of these call of these comments, you know we’re inadvertently triggering the same group of individuals. So as a firm, I often say, what have you put in place on education? Finally, I would say targets. It’s no different than when we decide that we want to get in shape or we want to lose weight. We always put what I call a numerical target.

Firms need to start putting down in writing: what is your target that you want attained in 1, 2, 3, 5 years? Once you write down that target, it becomes your mission. Now your data points. Where are you today? Where do you want to go tomorrow? It’s not enough to say I want a more diverse environment. What is it exactly you need from diversity? That you have a blind spot today. As you can see, a lot of it is stemmed on education. A lot of it is stemmed on just getting the facts. Get the data. The rest will come. We’re in this journey. It’s going to be for a while.

(TM)

When you’re thinking about the processes you put in place, how often do you check in and say OK, what am I doing? Do I need to do more?

(AT)

On a quarterly basis, I have always wanted to have something new hitting the ecosystem. What is that something? Does it mean that we create a workshop? Does it mean that we go get an outside person that comes in and helps? Does it mean? Here’s one thing that just hit me hard in 2021, we’ve done a lot of workshops on our biases and active listening. We are also like everybody else hiring incredibly. A lot of people. Well, we must redo that. Because the new people won’t have that. You know that whole foundation of knowledge that we’ve done for everybody else. So does your system consider what your building, whose being educated, are they getting exposed to these things? What are the data points you want to keep bringing to the table? What do you want to communicate? Do we want to communicate on a quarterly basis or targets and where we’re at?

(TM)

If you’re to give one piece of advice around this topic to the leaders, managers, advisors, everyone in business out there who listens to this podcast, what would it be?

(AT)

You need to acknowledge that you’re biased already. And it’s OK. Don’t fight the fact that you are biased. Embrace learning how to manage it. The biggest hurdle I have with people is they often feel the need to justify to me that their intentions are good, and I often say: what you have to manage the gap and what does that mean? Managing the gap? The gap between what your intentions are and what people feel? I do say to people every day I fight the fact that I have biased thoughts in my head and they could be stupid. It could be like I don’t like red. I don’t like blue. I don’t like silly things.

The thing is, I acknowledge them and then I always sit back and go: is it important? Does this need to be retrained out of your thought process or can you reframe it differently so that it doesn’t come off as a negative or it doesn’t predispose you to not giving the person in front of you a fair chance because you’re not accustomed to someone that’s so different from you? Start with acknowledging that we all have biases we all do. It’s human nature that is the way your brain functions. What I’m really more intrigued about it is what are you all doing individually to ensure that you don’t let that bias ruin your leadership into making decisions that could have been better done had you been more self-aware? So take the time, learn about yourself, discover what it is about you, your cultural, your background, your experiences that lead you to think the way you do.

(TM)

Well, I want to thank you for your insight today Annamaria, it was great to have a chat with you on our podcast. Look forward to having you back and I’ll sign off on that. So Annamaria Testani, Senior Vice-President, National Sales, we thank you for her insightful comments today. I’m Tanya Macpherson, signing off.