How Leaders Can Develop An Inclusive Culture
“There's a variety of different folks from the team that were establishing an expertise and a voice. Being able to present, share and engage the team from the stage. Everybody had a voice.”
Today’s clip is with Scott Robinson, CEO of FreshForm. He shared how we and his team worked to develop an inclusive team culture.
transcription
One of the big things that we did in response to everything was that, you know, without having kind of a, you know, weekly stand-up or the ability to kick off the week or the ability to see each other after a weekend, or be able to kind of reconnect over lunch or even grab grab a, you know, lunch together as a team. Kind of, that was a consistent Friday thing.
We had to manufacture time together. So having a consistent weekly session, so we needed to create a shared experience and so collaboration kind of you know again it became kind of very focused into our client engagements and Ferb projects and things like that so but we weren't working on as us and together.
And so what we did was we actually put together. What we considered was more of an internal training program, but it was also a series in which we we learned we discussed And then we experimented. kind of that three-step process week over week.
So we did this for 15 weeks in the second half of 2021 and and kind of the real intent was having a shared experience and we actually called it like a re onboarding to the team, to our culture, to be able to have a conversation to be able to do this.
And so and and it wasn't just I'm a talker everybody on my team knows I just I can talk for hours, but what we tried to do was bring a variety of different teachers into the training. So there's a variety of different folks that for from the team that were establishing an expertise and a voice and being able to present and share and engage the team from the stage.
And so that gave everybody not everybody kind of the the time onstage. But everybody had a voice, everybody had an opportunity to be able to do this and there's different subjects in which we kind of looking from a professional development angle.
But to least help level people up and so 90 minutes a week, you know, 15 16 weeks that we did it and we had kind of a Capstone, you know project but it was, it was fun. You know. I like there's pros and cons again to everything it's you know, but but what it did was they did one thing is that we had a very consistent week over week time together, 90 minutes to have a conversation about One thing and it was really kind of unite unifying.
Our purpose and unifying core elements of what fresh is all about is experience design. So, yeah, and we have five million things I could share. But that's one thing I think that that really stands out as to how we responded.
And one it when you tell me about this earlier and as you say, now that thing that comes up for me in this is this idea of inclusion Right?
People talk about inclusion all the time and I love the idea of diversity is inviting people. To the dance. Inclusion is asking people to dance and what you did there was you ask your employees to really engage in this, let them get to speak on the topics, they care about.
Let them be a part of this every single week and so that I think when people get to start taking more ownership, Of the experience, that's when people are going to feel more engaged.