Today’s guest urges leaders to stop using 2019 behavior to address 2022 workplace challenges. She is an organizational psychologist, executive coach, speaker, and author of “Leading Inclusion: Drive Change Your Employees Can See and Feel.” It is a groundbreaking guidebook for corporate leaders who want to build inclusive organizations from the top down.
She has spent decades advising and coaching business leaders, including some in the Fortune 500, building healthy organizational cultures and measuring employee opinions. As a noted voice on human-centered leadership, she has written for Harvard Business Review and has been quoted in Forbes, Fast Company, BBC Worklife, and other national media.
Please join me in welcoming Gena Cox.
In this episode we discuss:
- her thoughts on leadership: “Leadership is about relationships and understanding how to help a group accomplish something.”
- how a passing conversation with a former employee made Gena realize she was not a very good leader by not being accessible.
- how anyone can see and value life experiences even if you have not personally experienced them.
- the impact her maternal grandmother had on her and how she encouraged Gena to learn about new things.
- the three careers she wanted growing up were psychology, journalist/reporter, meteorology, and the journey that led her to psychology.
- her experience working for a newspaper in Barbados covering business stories and politics.
- how growing up on a small island changed her perspective on the world.
- why she decided to move to the US for college and her experience of taking a class taught by Arthur Ashe.
- how she learned that she was Black only after coming to the US and a few experiences where she was called the n-word which was quite jarring. [CONTENT WARNING - racial language]
- how she built her own practice in an effort to have more time with her daughter and only returned to work after her daughter went to college.
- the big decision she made in 2020 after the murder of Breonna Taylor was to pivot and help organizations with DEI in organizations instead of only being focused on the human experience in the workplace.
- why she believes that companies should stop asking for data and instead listen to the stories within their organizations.
- how she nurtures the outer layers of her network.
- what she is looking forward to in the year ahead.
- why she says she “came out as Black” and the importance of those words for her.
Listen, subscribe and read show notes at www.OnTheSchmooze.com.
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