June 12, 2024 • 35 mins
Let us know what you think of this podcast!
Ever wondered why some teams flourish under certain bosses while others flounder? Corporate relationship expert Tony Chatman joins us to peel back the layers on how value and respect are cornerstones in creating that coveted sense of belonging within teams. Tony shares his invaluable insights on relationship-based leadership, emphasizing its impact in the workplace and how it's not just about hitting diversity quotas. It’s about building genuine connections that go beyond the surface level. Prepare to be enlightened on the nuances of empathy and unconscious bias, and how these elements, when addressed with care and understanding, can either spell success or doom for a company's culture.
As we navigate the complexities of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and belonging in the corporate world, Tony and I swap stories that underline the triumphs and trials of carving out a space in the DEI arena. We dive into the concept that true belonging isn't a box-ticking exercise, but the organic result of an inclusive environment where everyone has room to thrive. From personal anecdotes of culture shocks to the challenges of being a minority in a professional realm, this episode isn't just about highlighting the 'leaks' in organizational culture—it's a clarion call for leaders and companies to patch these gaps and create a thriving, diverse workforce that stands the test of time. Join us for a candid, transformative conversation that might just change the way you view your workplace.
You can find Tony on tonychatman.com, or on LinkedIn & Instagram.
You can order your copy of Creating Belonging on Amazon.
Music:
Wave by Helkimer | https://soundcloud.com/helkimer
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justin (00:09):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Creating
Belonging podcast.
Today I have with me TonyChatman.
Tony, thank you for joining meand if you would just take a
moment to introduce yourself,hey, Justin.
Tony (00:22):
So thanks for having me.
I'm a corporate relationshipexpert and really what that
means is, when we look at theworkplace, a lot of people focus
on products and process, but Ifeel like most people don't come
into the workplace prepared forthe people dimension, right.
And so if we learn how toleverage the relationships,
(00:44):
literally the people side of theworkplace, that can either be
our competitive advantage or, ifwe don't, it could be our
Achilles tendon.
And you know a little backstoryfor me.
I got side, but I quicklylearned that I got a lot more
(01:07):
done because of how I treatedpeople than because of what I
knew.
Justin (01:12):
That's an amazing realization and glad that you're
in and doing that work.
As so with typically with myguests, I like to ask them to
disclose any identities thatthey'd like to share, just to
kind of ground us in theconversation and understand
perspectives we might bebringing to the table.
What identities would you mindsharing with our audience?
Tony (01:34):
Black cis heterosexual, us Gen X.
Yeah, I think that's prettygood.
Justin (01:45):
Great, thank you.
Thank you for sharing so kindof before we hit record.
We started talking about kindof belonging and perspectives on
belonging, and so before I gothere, I want to talk a little
bit about the work that you doand kind of how belonging plays
into that.
And so, in particular in yourwork you talk about
(02:07):
relationship-based leadership,and so I'd love to hear how
belonging plays intorelation-based leadership.
Tony (02:16):
Sure.
So, you know, I think we allhave to look at how we're going
to define belonging, right.
I think that that's part of thechallenge, and there are so
many ways.
I know you have an incredibleframework for it, which we may
or may not.
Talk a little bit about.
One of the things that I havenoticed, after surveying
thousands of people, when askingthem you know, what do you want
(02:36):
in the workplace, andespecially in the phrase, what
makes you feel included, right?
Although belonging that wordcame up, the trend that we saw
was that there were two wordsthat seem to take, you know,
compose everything, and that wasvalue and respect.
And so, really, from my vantagepoint, what I look at a lot is
(03:03):
how do we ensure that, whenpeople are in the workplace,
that they are valued, valued ashuman beings, valued for what
they bring to the table, andrespected?
And in many ways, although it'shard to get to a lot of the
nuances of what different peoplewill determine as actual
belonging, that seems to cover alot of it in a lot of the
(03:25):
situations, and so that's kindof the starting point and the
reason that I do it is, you know, realistically, when I got into
becoming a professional speaker, I had a lot of things I could
talk about.
Right, I had a strongbackground in leadership.
I had a strong background inchange management, strong
background in communication, butI kept thinking to myself.
(03:47):
Number one most people spend themajority of their waking hours
at work, so in many ways, thatbegins to define their
experience.
Number two most people havenever had multiple great bosses.
You know what I mean, if we'regoing to just be real when you
(04:10):
talk about not decent, not good,but great.
However, you define a greatboss, asking people have you
ever had two great bosses in arow?
They look at you like you knowyou're asking them to find
Bigfoot.
I mean, it's just, it's one ofthose funny things and I thought
(04:32):
this shouldn't be.
And a lot of the issues thatpeople have revolve around their
relationship with their boss,supervisor, manager, whatever
phrase you want to say.
And so those two things reallykind of cemented the direction I
wanted to go and I realizedthat looking at it through that
lens framed how to look at a lotof different things and helping
to more easily define a lot ofthe phrases that we use in
(04:53):
buzzwords in ways that are a lotmore simple.
Justin (04:56):
I want to ref a little bit on the.
So you mentioned value andrespect.
As you know what people want atwork and kind of playing into
that belonging and and I seethose related to so in in the
creating belonging work.
I talk about belonging beingcreated at the intersection of
authenticity and acceptance andI think value and respect sit
(05:17):
really nicely in that acceptancepiece.
And one of the things I wantedto ask you about you talk a bit
about kind of getting peoplepushed out of their comfort zone
and one of the things I wantedto ask you about you talk a bit
about kind of getting peoplepushed out of their comfort zone
and I think that oftentimesaccepting others can push us out
of our comfort zone.
Right, it may require us tochallenge or suspend our own
(05:38):
values, you know, not valuingothers, but I mean, like our own
personal values.
That may, you know, presentsome challenges there.
So I'm curious you know, how doyou work with folks to push
them out of their comfort zone,to create that acceptance or
value or respect of their people, to build those relationships?
Tony (06:01):
Sure, I mean a lot of it really comes down to empathy,
right?
We're all trying to have ahuman experience, whether in
society or in the workplace, andso really, that empathy helping
to see another person's vantagepoint, looking at the world
through their eyes, walking intheir shoes is really a great
starting point.
Now, what I happen to do in alot of my work is I combine that
(06:24):
with really giving people anunderstanding of unconscious
bias, and in a way that I thinkis different than many people
have experienced that phrase.
But understanding biases,although we often think of it in
terms of, you know, prejudiceand discrimination, it's a much
larger umbrella and it really isa focus on how we make
(06:47):
decisions, how we interpret ourrealities, and that a lot of it.
Number one is we're using ourmost ineffective part of our
brain to do it, but the otherpart of it is most of the
narratives, because I like touse the word narrative.
One of my close friends, she'sgot me thinking this way and she
(07:09):
would say well, you did this,and so the story I told myself
was this right, because we'refilling in blanks and to help
people understand a lot of theways that we fill in those
blanks, to tell our story is afunction of our previous
experiences.
(07:29):
It's how we were raised, whoraised us, where we were raised,
our education system, ourreligious experiences, our
personal experiences.
When you start looking at allthese different things, you
realize we have a verysubjective point of view and we
begin to expand that and takeother people's points of view
(07:50):
into consideration.
It allows us to rehumanize them, and so I really feel like it's
a lot of making, it'sremembering that everyone's a
human being and I think weforget that we we look at them
as well.
They think differently, they do, they have very different
values, and so then what we dois we demonize them.
(08:14):
But the way you demonize someoneis you first have to dehumanize
them so that you can demonizethem without having a lot of
cognitive distance right and nota lot of I'm a bad person
because I'm demonizing.
Well, no, they.
No, they deserve it.
Look at who they really are.
And so you start taking thataway and you rehumanize people.
Then it's harder to demonize anddiscriminate against them, and
(08:35):
so I think that is kind of thefoundation that I lay so that we
can start having theseconversations, so that we get to
value, and I really, Iintentionally use the word value
even more than acceptance, andI do it because of conversations
I've had over the last fewyears.
(08:57):
As the world's going throughthis social conversation and I
constantly hear people sayingyou know, we need to be more
tolerant, and I would just askthem so are you tolerating me
right now?
Is that kind of what we'redoing?
Because I need to know if youknow what I mean.
If the best we're going to dois that you tolerate me, that's
(09:19):
not an acceptable level and Iwant to make sure that we can
get beyond that.
I think acceptance is a goodlevel, but I like the idea of
valuing people for all thevarious reasons we can talk
about.
Justin (09:33):
I really like that and, yeah, I think tolerance it's an
interesting word because then ifyou ask someone if you've ever
felt tolerated and then ask them, did that feel good?
They're probably going to sayno, right.
So we definitely need more thantolerance.
And I like this idea of valueand rehumanizing people Because
(09:54):
I definitely I talk about biastoo and from that perspective
that you know you have biasbecause you're human Right, end
of story.
And I think for too long we'vebuilt up bias to be a bad thing,
but it's it's not a bad thing.
It actually keeps us alive,like the structure of our brain
that's doing that thing.
(10:15):
It keeps us alive on a dailybasis.
But it also gets in the way ofmodern decisions and you know
exactly that of like it, ithelps us dehumanize people and
so we have to then work kind ofmore consciously to rehumanize
people.
So I really like the way thatyou've described that and and
(10:36):
your perspective on on how werehumanize people.
Tony (10:41):
Yeah, thank you.
Well, one of the things I'dlike to say about that is people
.
Yeah, thank you.
One of the things I'd like tosay about that is you're
absolutely right.
Bias is a human condition,right?
Although we can reprogram someof our biases, I agree with you.
Bias in and of itself is notbad.
It's the fact that we're notconscious that is making the
decisions right.
(11:02):
Like, quick example, I was inJuneau, alaska, doing some work
in February of 2017, I think itwas and so I wanted to go see
Mendenhall Glacier, right and soso I'm at the glacier, but it's
kind of this weird time.
It's like 40 degrees, so it'sit's not.
Things aren't as frozen as theyshould be, but you know,
there's ice.
(11:22):
It was an ice storm, and Idon't know if you've ever been
to mendenhall glacier, or do youknow?
Alaska um?
but, there's like a frozen lakethat you walk across to get to
the actual glacier so you cansee it from the state park.
But you can walk across thisfrozen lake during the winter
and like get to the glacier andlike walk inside it and so.
But I'm like it's 40 degrees,so I'm kind of walking and I'm
(11:46):
like am I gonna?
You know, I go like 40 yards.
I'm like, you know, I don'tknow if this thing's going to
like crack or whatever.
And then in that moment I turnedto my left and here come three
guys geared up right, they gotthe spike boots and the ski
poles and they do this every dayand they just walk right past
(12:08):
me like it's nothing and they'vesaid nothing to me.
But in that moment my consciousbias was oh, they know what
they're doing, I can follow themright.
That's still a bias, becauseI'm telling myself a story based
on incomplete information, butbecause I was conscious of it.
(12:32):
It's a very different thingthan if I'm unconsciously
treating someone based on anurge or a feeling I'm not even
recognizing.
Justin (12:40):
Yeah, yeah, when I think the trouble, to your point the
trouble is when we feel like ourdecisions are 100% made in our
conscious brain, that we havecontrol over that.
I think that's where we get introuble.
We have to understand that ourbrain is wired to be efficient.
It makes decisions for us on aregular basis, and once we
(13:02):
understand that, we can thenstart to think about okay, how
do I override it when it needsto be overridden?
Tony (13:09):
Yeah, exactly, and to your point.
Functional MRIs show us thatabout 90% of the decisions we
make on a daily basis originateout of our subconscious right,
95% of our buying decisions.
So when you start to understandthat, it makes you really
rethink everything.
Justin (13:25):
Yes, yes.
So when we were talking earlierwe were talking a bit about
kind of belonging and thepositionality of belonging with
the greater deib and or anyother letters we want to throw
into this body of work that thatwe do, and you know the role of
.
I want to, I want to tee up thetopic of the role of belonging
(13:50):
in diversity, equity, inclusion,um, accessibility.
I think I think I've capturedthe most of the the things we're
throwing in diversity, equity,inclusion, accessibility.
Tony (14:00):
I think I've captured the most of the things we're
throwing in Justice sometimes.
Justin (14:02):
Sorry, what was that?
Sometimes people put in justice, oh, yes, justice.
So yeah, I'm curious yourthoughts on the positionality of
belonging in that greater kindof sphere of work.
Tony (14:15):
All righty, here we go.
Here's our phone conversation,Because we did start.
I just kind of shared my bottomline thought with you, but I
think it's a much morecomplicated thought, right?
So I think that belonging is acritical component of culture.
An organization's culture and ifyou want to have a component of
culture, an organization'sculture, and if you want to have
(14:36):
a healthy workplace culture,belonging I mean the studies
show that when people feel likethey belong and they think
they're cared about and they'revalued, right, you start talking
about production increases,innovation increases, resilience
increases, retention increases,right?
The business case is nearlyoverwhelming.
(15:01):
I mean, it's just mind-blowingwhen you really think of all the
things that are there.
That being said, I struggle tohave it in the conversation of
diversity, equity and inclusion,and I do that for a few reasons
.
Now, on the positive side, orif I were going to argue for it,
(15:26):
there are organizations thatcome to the realization that
they need to focus on, you know,dei or whatever, because some
type of climate or culturesurvey has told them that
certain demographics view theorganization differently and
they view that they fit indifferently.
(15:47):
They view that they you knowthat they are valued, that they
belong very differently.
That being said, here's why Istruggle.
If you looked at Maslow'shierarchy of needs, right, and
you can argue whether Maslow'shierarchy of needs is, you know,
the perfect model or not,whatever, but there's this idea
(16:08):
that kind of at the bottom level.
There's these psychologicalneeds, or physiological needs.
I should say that are thingslike, you know, food, water, sex
excretion, breathing.
Right Above that there's safetyand a lot of this is.
Although we often talk a lotabout psychological safety, this
(16:30):
is physical safety, in manyways right, but there's also
economic safety.
You know, the safety ofemployment, the safety of having
resources, the safety of yourfamily.
There's all these things Abovethat, normally on the pyramid is
(16:52):
where way and it's arguable,obviously, is that before you
can focus on this third tier, ifyou don't have two and one done
, if you don't feel safe, if youcan't eat, you're not thinking
about belonging.
So my challenge with puttingbelonging in the DEI space is,
(17:16):
when you look at equity andinclusion, those are hitting the
physiological and the safetyneeds You're talking about.
Can I get a job?
Can I afford to feed my family?
Am I?
I'm coming to work, but youknow, know, I was the second
African-American to evergraduate from my university with
(17:38):
the degree I had.
I know lots of people who werethe first Black person, the
first Chinese person, the firstMexican person I'm being very
specific with these identitiesto ever work in their job and
their lives were threatened.
Their tires were slashed, someof them.
Their houses were vandalized,right?
(18:01):
I mean, you're talking aboutreal safety issues and I think
that people who have yet to getequity and inclusion don't have
the luxury to think aboutbelonging.
Justin (18:16):
Yeah.
Tony (18:17):
So that's my challenge with this conversation about
belonging.
I think it applies to everyoneand I think that in many ways it
can be an indicator of, youknow, strong needs in the
diversity, equity and inclusionspace.
But what I see is I see a focuson belonging at the expense of
(18:42):
equity and inclusion, and Ithink that is going down a very
dangerous road.
Justin (18:46):
Yeah, okay, let's have some fun with this.
One thing I want to share,something that I don't think
I've shared it on the podcast orpublicly and I think it's
interesting to this conversation.
So I wrote my book creatingbelonging over two years ago,
and a year ago was reallygetting settled into my business
(19:08):
and kind of, you know, workingthrough how I'm going to market
all of that, and was workingwith my coach, how I'm going to
market all of that and wasworking with my coach and you
know, working through, likeJustin, you need you need the
one thing like what's your onething that you're really going
to focus in on, and or kind ofthat kind of the marketplace
focus.
And I had three things and Iwas like, well, here, here and
here.
And she's like, no, justin, weneed one.
(19:30):
And she kept pushing me intoDEIB.
She's like you do DEIB work?
And I said no, absolutely not.
That is not where my businesssits, that's not what I do and I
don't want to muddy the watersbecause I think there are people
that do pure DEI workdifferently and better than I do
(19:51):
.
Yes, I wrote a book titledCreating Belonging, but I think
it sits a little bit differentand it can sit in that greater
DEIB space.
But I'm like there's otherpieces to this puzzle that
aren't I'm interested in them,I'm passionate about them, but I
don't think that I'm the one togo fix them necessarily right
(20:12):
as far as where my interest,where my talent lies, and so I
wanted to throw that out thereas an interesting positionality
of you know, I've tussled withthis a bit in my own work of
where does Justin and hisbusiness sit in the world, and
so kind of to that point of youknow, where does it sit?
(20:33):
I kind of.
Here's the way I think about it.
I want to tee this up and I'mcurious your reaction.
I think that inclusion,specifically inclusion, are acts
like we do things that areinclusive of people, right, we
do things to include people.
When we do inclusion through adiversity lens, we're ensuring
(20:54):
that we're creating a, you know,getting a diverse population of
people that are included inthat.
And if we're doing it equitably, we're doing it in a way that
gives people what they need, notjust equal treatment.
When we get all of that stuffright, belonging is the outcome
(21:18):
yes, I could not agree.
Tony (21:20):
Listen, number one.
You and I probably share moresimilarities, as we're having
this conversation, than werealize.
I fought against being in thedei space for the first nine
years of my business, eventhough I was constantly being
asked to and pushed into andwhat we haven't.
So now it's my turn to ask youa question.
(21:41):
So if you wouldn't mind sharingand I think people who listen
to your podcast already knowthis, but we haven't had this
conversation would you besharing some of your identities?
Justin (21:50):
oh yeah, absolutely so.
Um, uh, white cisgender gay man, um, I I something that I talk
about a lot.
I grew up in rural Iowa, somost everyone around me looked
like me, but I now I live inChicago, uh, and you know so
very different space, and Ishare that because it's it very
(22:13):
much influences the lens that Ihave and the blinders that I'm
constantly beating back, and the, the, the program bias that's
inside me that I'm constantlybeating back, and the programmed
bias that's inside me that I'mconstantly trying to fight and
overcome.
So, yeah, that's a bit of mineand yeah, I share that a lot,
but we haven't had thatconversation, so yeah, Number
(22:37):
one.
Tony (22:37):
Thank you for sharing, because, I mean, these
vulnerabilities are not thingsthat are always easy and, in
some cases, aren't alwayswelcome, so I really appreciate
it.
You know.
So, you know, going to thisconversation we're having, there
are probably, at differentstages of your life, various
times that you did not feel likeyou belong, sometimes based on
(22:59):
some of your various identities,right, I mean, you can go
through it and sometimes it'sbased on an identity that people
don't think about, right?
You grew up in Iowa and movedto Chicago.
I grew up in Kalamazoo andmoved to Chicago.
That was a culture shock for meand for everyone else around me
, right.
So, but the thing that you saidis that if we do all of these
(23:23):
things right, belonging becomesthe outcome.
I think you can say that aboutalmost every component of DEI, b
, a, j, whatever letter.
Right, that the goal is not tomanufacture diversity.
(23:45):
The goal is to do things insuch a way that diversity is the
outcome.
The goal is not to manufactureequity or manufacture inclusion.
But if we do things correctly,then equity, inclusion,
diversity, acceptance I mean, Ijust think about this.
(24:12):
We had to say, hey, we need toadd inclusion to diversity,
because somebody was doingdiversity without inclusion,
right, we had to say, hey, weneed to add inclusion to
diversity, because somebody wasdoing diversity without
inclusion.
We had to add equity.
I've said for years really it'sD&I diversity and inclusion
because equity is an aspect ofinclusion.
How can you have equity if youdon't have inclusion?
(24:34):
How can you have accessibility?
If you don't have inclusion,how can you have belonging?
But I understand the need tokeep some ways to keep parsing
us out, but but it seems like wego after the labels instead of
understanding.
And this is where I think,because I say we're similar.
For me, I fought this and Ialways tell people I am not a
(24:57):
dei expert.
I tell, I tell my clients I'mnot a DEI practitioner, I'm not.
I do understand workplaceculture and if we do culture
right, then we deal.
We will get this as an outcome.
And yes, at times we need tofocus on this.
Just as you know, if you werein ICU because you just had a
(25:21):
stroke, there's parts of yourbody you must focus on in that
moment, but that does not meanthat you don't care about the
whole body, and so I thinkthat's kind of how we should be
thinking about this.
Justin (25:32):
Yeah Well, and I like that you focus on it from the
culture perspective, because Ithink any organization that
doesn't look at the big pictureis going to fail at it, whatever
it is that we're defining it as.
So you know organizations thatdon't have their culture right,
the inclusion pieces, but thatyou can go and hire diverse
(25:53):
talent.
You know talented that doesn'tlook like the talent that we
have today, look like the talentthat we have today.
But you now have people that,if we don't have our unconscious
bias under control, we don'tlet right.
Those people are not going tolast very long, and I've I've
been in those organizationswhere the focus is just on the
(26:14):
diversity numbers, but thediversity numbers never stay
where they want them to be,because the higher turnover is
in the marginalized populations,because those people still
don't feel like they, and for meit's it's that they feel like
they don't belong, they don'thave, we don't have, the right
inclusion, and so they're likepeace out, I don't belong here,
I gotta go somewhere else, andso that's where I, I I don't
(26:37):
mind, I don't know, I don't mindlumping it in there, because I
do think it's an importantcomponent, but I also really
respect the identification thatlike there's a lot of moving
pieces here and they all have tobe working right.
Tony (26:50):
Yeah, I appreciate you saying it that way.
You know, I look at the wholething as too often we're trying
to build a pipeline, but if youdon't fix the leak, the
product's never going to get tothe right place, and so it is.
You can't just build thepipeline.
Justin (27:05):
You have to fix the leaks of not belonging, fix the
leaks of not being inclusive,fix the leaks of not being
equitable, and that will solve alot of the problems chatted
through this um, because I thinkit's good to I just I think
it's good to to really digthrough some of the definitions
(27:25):
and how we're viewing things tobe able to move forward
productively.
I would it kind of lasttransition of conversation.
One thing I would love to hearis I always love to hear
people's personal stories ofbelonging or not belonging and
I'd love to hear is I alwayslove to hear people's personal
stories of belonging or notbelonging?
And I'd love to hear from you,kind of in your journey.
You've already mentioned onething coming from Kalamazoo to
(27:48):
Chicago.
You know there's, there's thatI'm just I'm curious if there's
some story that you wouldn'tmind sharing of either finding
belonging or not having itbelonging or not having it?
Tony (28:05):
Sure, and I think it's fascinating, I think they both
can happen at the same time,which sounds like a strange,
almost an oxymoron, but Imentioned earlier.
So I said I was a chemicalengineer, but technically my
degree was in paper science,which is a specialized form of
chemical engineering.
When I graduated from WesternMichigan I was the second
African-American to evergraduate from that university
with my degree.
It's highly specialized, highlyvalued, highly competitive and
(28:30):
we walked out with the highestsalaries as underwriters, right.
But that also meant I walkedinto an industry that's not used
to having meat, and often I wasgoing to paper mills in very
small areas where I maybe thereyou don't think black people,
(28:51):
when you think Moralton,arkansas.
When you think Mattawaska,maine, when you think
international falls, minnesota,right, I mean, there are places
that when I went you had thecombination of just the
unfamiliarity of dealing withsomeone like this, but also the
(29:13):
very conscious biases.
You know me sitting in myboss's office as he's talking to
a client, the client notknowing that he's on
speakerphone and I'm in the room.
And he's saying.
So, yeah, you know that monkeythat you sent up to the mill
last week got lost RightSpeaking of me.
So that was a very real, veryconstant experience for me.
(29:36):
Experience for me.
At the same time, while workingfor that very same organization,
I can think of one particularregional man, I can actually
think of a regional salesmanager, but a district manager
(29:57):
who I won't even mention hisname, I don't even know if he's
still alive, but he, just he sawme and I think that's the word
I would use.
He saw me.
He saw me, he saw myintelligence, he saw my social
skills.
He saw that, even though allthose things I just mentioned
are very real, by the time I wasin a client space for a half
(30:19):
hour, they loved me and he knewit.
And he always said listen, ifyou ever want to come into the
field in my district, I willalways have a spot for you.
And I tell people to this dayI'm a business owner.
I've been a business owner forover 20 years.
(30:40):
I can't imagine being anemployee.
I just you know it's no way.
If I had to, I would considerit for him.
He was that guy because hevalued me and had a vision in me
and so within his sphere I feltlike I belonged, even though in
(31:05):
the greater ecosystem I didn'tThank you for sharing that and I
think there's.
Justin (31:10):
You know, I talk a bit about the fluidity of belonging.
Right, it can go up and downand it depends on who we're with
at the time.
Can go up and down and itdepends on who we're with at the
time.
And you know, belonging, ourstate of belonging, doesn't stay
static with a greaterorganization.
It can vary from team to teamor, in your case, kind of being
(31:31):
client facing.
You know you could go into one,one organization in an area of
the country that is, you know,not as enlightened I don't know,
trying to think of a betterword that works, and then you
know, or go to another clientthat is, you know, very, you
know open, accepting, and andyou know.
(31:54):
So, yeah, I think that it can bevery fluid and it's interesting
in the podcast, theconversations that I'm having,
we talk a lot about thatfluidity and you know, even
being able to parts of ourselves, parts of our identities, being
able to be open and feelingbelonging with them, and some
(32:14):
that maybe we can still kind ofhide away but still feel
belonging, and so it's aninteresting, interesting
dichotomy with that.
Tony (32:20):
Yeah, if I could add something to this idea of
fluidity, I think part of thereason that our belonging, part
of the reason that our belongingis a fluid thing, is because,
going back to the word we usedearlier, bias is also a fluid
thing, is very situational,right?
When I lived in New York, Iplayed basketball with this
(32:43):
group of guys four times a week.
Half of them were NYPD, right,and we're to this day.
We have a group chat and it's awild ride on that group chat.
But we are buddies and I knowif I ever need anything every
one of them will have my back.
But I also know from their veryown mouths when they enter into
(33:06):
their beat mode, their cop mode,and they're in certain areas
they are very different peopleBecause there's very different
dangers, very differentexperiences, very different
realities, all of these things.
And I'm not saying it'sjustifiable or good or bad or
whatever, but I'm saying that isthe reality, that this person
can be this way in thisenvironment and step into a
(33:27):
completely different environmentor have a completely different
emotion and have a verydifferent response yes, yes,
context can, yes, yes, contextcan absolutely shift, you know,
heighten our biases, shift ourbiases.
Justin (33:45):
But yeah, the context can really really shift that and
thank you for that, absolutely,tony.
I want to thank you so much forjoining me today.
I've enjoyed our conversationand I have a feeling we could
keep talking forever, and maybewe will, but for this
conversation I want to put a bowon it, but I do want to make
sure that people can find you.
(34:05):
So if people want to reach outto you, tony, what's the best
ways to find you?
Tony (34:11):
The easiest thing.
If you can spell my name, whichis the last thing the C-H-A-T
is in Tom, it may end I'mTonyChapmancom.
So my website's there, links toall of my socials there, emails
, there, social media I'm eitherTony Chapman or on Instagram
and TikTok on Tony ChapmanSpeaks.
(34:31):
This is because Tony Chapmanwas taken, and so you know.
Whichever you know, your flavoris that you like the best.
Find me in that space and I'mthere.
Justin (34:41):
Perfect, and I will make sure to add some links in the
show notes so people can link tothat more easily if they have
access to that.
But again, tony, thank you somuch for joining me today.
Tony (34:54):
I was going to say great conversation and I appreciate
you providing a space to havethe back and forth that we had,
because I'm actually sharingthoughts that I've been thinking
for a while but have nevershared publicly.
So I appreciate that.
Justin (35:09):
I love that, thank you.
I love hearing differentperspectives and I'm not afraid
of seeing where the conversationwill go, so I appreciate you
sharing.
Thank you, tony, and join usagain for another episode of the
Creating Bolling Podcast.
Thanks,
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Creating
Belonging podcast.
Today I have with me TonyChatman.
Tony, thank you for joining meand if you would just take a
moment to introduce yourself,hey, Justin.
Tony (00:22):
So thanks for having me.
I'm a corporate relationshipexpert and really what that
means is, when we look at theworkplace, a lot of people focus
on products and process, but Ifeel like most people don't come
into the workplace prepared forthe people dimension, right.
And so if we learn how toleverage the relationships,
(00:44):
literally the people side of theworkplace, that can either be
our competitive advantage or, ifwe don't, it could be our
Achilles tendon.
And you know a little backstoryfor me.
I got side, but I quicklylearned that I got a lot more
(01:07):
done because of how I treatedpeople than because of what I
knew.
Justin (01:12):
That's an amazing realization and glad that you're
in and doing that work.
As so with typically with myguests, I like to ask them to
disclose any identities thatthey'd like to share, just to
kind of ground us in theconversation and understand
perspectives we might bebringing to the table.
What identities would you mindsharing with our audience?
Tony (01:34):
Black cis heterosexual, us Gen X.
Yeah, I think that's prettygood.
Justin (01:45):
Great, thank you.
Thank you for sharing so kindof before we hit record.
We started talking about kindof belonging and perspectives on
belonging, and so before I gothere, I want to talk a little
bit about the work that you doand kind of how belonging plays
into that.
And so, in particular in yourwork you talk about
(02:07):
relationship-based leadership,and so I'd love to hear how
belonging plays intorelation-based leadership.
Tony (02:16):
Sure.
So, you know, I think we allhave to look at how we're going
to define belonging, right.
I think that that's part of thechallenge, and there are so
many ways.
I know you have an incredibleframework for it, which we may
or may not.
Talk a little bit about.
One of the things that I havenoticed, after surveying
thousands of people, when askingthem you know, what do you want
(02:36):
in the workplace, andespecially in the phrase, what
makes you feel included, right?
Although belonging that wordcame up, the trend that we saw
was that there were two wordsthat seem to take, you know,
compose everything, and that wasvalue and respect.
And so, really, from my vantagepoint, what I look at a lot is
(03:03):
how do we ensure that, whenpeople are in the workplace,
that they are valued, valued ashuman beings, valued for what
they bring to the table, andrespected?
And in many ways, although it'shard to get to a lot of the
nuances of what different peoplewill determine as actual
belonging, that seems to cover alot of it in a lot of the
(03:25):
situations, and so that's kindof the starting point and the
reason that I do it is, you know, realistically, when I got into
becoming a professional speaker, I had a lot of things I could
talk about.
Right, I had a strongbackground in leadership.
I had a strong background inchange management, strong
background in communication, butI kept thinking to myself.
(03:47):
Number one most people spend themajority of their waking hours
at work, so in many ways, thatbegins to define their
experience.
Number two most people havenever had multiple great bosses.
You know what I mean, if we'regoing to just be real when you
(04:10):
talk about not decent, not good,but great.
However, you define a greatboss, asking people have you
ever had two great bosses in arow?
They look at you like you knowyou're asking them to find
Bigfoot.
I mean, it's just, it's one ofthose funny things and I thought
(04:32):
this shouldn't be.
And a lot of the issues thatpeople have revolve around their
relationship with their boss,supervisor, manager, whatever
phrase you want to say.
And so those two things reallykind of cemented the direction I
wanted to go and I realizedthat looking at it through that
lens framed how to look at a lotof different things and helping
to more easily define a lot ofthe phrases that we use in
(04:53):
buzzwords in ways that are a lotmore simple.
Justin (04:56):
I want to ref a little bit on the.
So you mentioned value andrespect.
As you know what people want atwork and kind of playing into
that belonging and and I seethose related to so in in the
creating belonging work.
I talk about belonging beingcreated at the intersection of
authenticity and acceptance andI think value and respect sit
(05:17):
really nicely in that acceptancepiece.
And one of the things I wantedto ask you about you talk a bit
about kind of getting peoplepushed out of their comfort zone
and one of the things I wantedto ask you about you talk a bit
about kind of getting peoplepushed out of their comfort zone
and I think that oftentimesaccepting others can push us out
of our comfort zone.
Right, it may require us tochallenge or suspend our own
(05:38):
values, you know, not valuingothers, but I mean, like our own
personal values.
That may, you know, presentsome challenges there.
So I'm curious you know, how doyou work with folks to push
them out of their comfort zone,to create that acceptance or
value or respect of their people, to build those relationships?
Tony (06:01):
Sure, I mean a lot of it really comes down to empathy,
right?
We're all trying to have ahuman experience, whether in
society or in the workplace, andso really, that empathy helping
to see another person's vantagepoint, looking at the world
through their eyes, walking intheir shoes is really a great
starting point.
Now, what I happen to do in alot of my work is I combine that
(06:24):
with really giving people anunderstanding of unconscious
bias, and in a way that I thinkis different than many people
have experienced that phrase.
But understanding biases,although we often think of it in
terms of, you know, prejudiceand discrimination, it's a much
larger umbrella and it really isa focus on how we make
(06:47):
decisions, how we interpret ourrealities, and that a lot of it.
Number one is we're using ourmost ineffective part of our
brain to do it, but the otherpart of it is most of the
narratives, because I like touse the word narrative.
One of my close friends, she'sgot me thinking this way and she
(07:09):
would say well, you did this,and so the story I told myself
was this right, because we'refilling in blanks and to help
people understand a lot of theways that we fill in those
blanks, to tell our story is afunction of our previous
experiences.
(07:29):
It's how we were raised, whoraised us, where we were raised,
our education system, ourreligious experiences, our
personal experiences.
When you start looking at allthese different things, you
realize we have a verysubjective point of view and we
begin to expand that and takeother people's points of view
(07:50):
into consideration.
It allows us to rehumanize them, and so I really feel like it's
a lot of making, it'sremembering that everyone's a
human being and I think weforget that we we look at them
as well.
They think differently, they do, they have very different
values, and so then what we dois we demonize them.
(08:14):
But the way you demonize someoneis you first have to dehumanize
them so that you can demonizethem without having a lot of
cognitive distance right and nota lot of I'm a bad person
because I'm demonizing.
Well, no, they.
No, they deserve it.
Look at who they really are.
And so you start taking thataway and you rehumanize people.
Then it's harder to demonize anddiscriminate against them, and
(08:35):
so I think that is kind of thefoundation that I lay so that we
can start having theseconversations, so that we get to
value, and I really, Iintentionally use the word value
even more than acceptance, andI do it because of conversations
I've had over the last fewyears.
(08:57):
As the world's going throughthis social conversation and I
constantly hear people sayingyou know, we need to be more
tolerant, and I would just askthem so are you tolerating me
right now?
Is that kind of what we'redoing?
Because I need to know if youknow what I mean.
If the best we're going to dois that you tolerate me, that's
(09:19):
not an acceptable level and Iwant to make sure that we can
get beyond that.
I think acceptance is a goodlevel, but I like the idea of
valuing people for all thevarious reasons we can talk
about.
Justin (09:33):
I really like that and, yeah, I think tolerance it's an
interesting word because then ifyou ask someone if you've ever
felt tolerated and then ask them, did that feel good?
They're probably going to sayno, right.
So we definitely need more thantolerance.
And I like this idea of valueand rehumanizing people Because
(09:54):
I definitely I talk about biastoo and from that perspective
that you know you have biasbecause you're human Right, end
of story.
And I think for too long we'vebuilt up bias to be a bad thing,
but it's it's not a bad thing.
It actually keeps us alive,like the structure of our brain
that's doing that thing.
(10:15):
It keeps us alive on a dailybasis.
But it also gets in the way ofmodern decisions and you know
exactly that of like it, ithelps us dehumanize people and
so we have to then work kind ofmore consciously to rehumanize
people.
So I really like the way thatyou've described that and and
(10:36):
your perspective on on how werehumanize people.
Tony (10:41):
Yeah, thank you.
Well, one of the things I'dlike to say about that is people
.
Yeah, thank you.
One of the things I'd like tosay about that is you're
absolutely right.
Bias is a human condition,right?
Although we can reprogram someof our biases, I agree with you.
Bias in and of itself is notbad.
It's the fact that we're notconscious that is making the
decisions right.
(11:02):
Like, quick example, I was inJuneau, alaska, doing some work
in February of 2017, I think itwas and so I wanted to go see
Mendenhall Glacier, right and soso I'm at the glacier, but it's
kind of this weird time.
It's like 40 degrees, so it'sit's not.
Things aren't as frozen as theyshould be, but you know,
there's ice.
(11:22):
It was an ice storm, and Idon't know if you've ever been
to mendenhall glacier, or do youknow?
Alaska um?
but, there's like a frozen lakethat you walk across to get to
the actual glacier so you cansee it from the state park.
But you can walk across thisfrozen lake during the winter
and like get to the glacier andlike walk inside it and so.
But I'm like it's 40 degrees,so I'm kind of walking and I'm
(11:46):
like am I gonna?
You know, I go like 40 yards.
I'm like, you know, I don'tknow if this thing's going to
like crack or whatever.
And then in that moment I turnedto my left and here come three
guys geared up right, they gotthe spike boots and the ski
poles and they do this every dayand they just walk right past
(12:08):
me like it's nothing and they'vesaid nothing to me.
But in that moment my consciousbias was oh, they know what
they're doing, I can follow themright.
That's still a bias, becauseI'm telling myself a story based
on incomplete information, butbecause I was conscious of it.
(12:32):
It's a very different thingthan if I'm unconsciously
treating someone based on anurge or a feeling I'm not even
recognizing.
Justin (12:40):
Yeah, yeah, when I think the trouble, to your point the
trouble is when we feel like ourdecisions are 100% made in our
conscious brain, that we havecontrol over that.
I think that's where we get introuble.
We have to understand that ourbrain is wired to be efficient.
It makes decisions for us on aregular basis, and once we
(13:02):
understand that, we can thenstart to think about okay, how
do I override it when it needsto be overridden?
Tony (13:09):
Yeah, exactly, and to your point.
Functional MRIs show us thatabout 90% of the decisions we
make on a daily basis originateout of our subconscious right,
95% of our buying decisions.
So when you start to understandthat, it makes you really
rethink everything.
Justin (13:25):
Yes, yes.
So when we were talking earlierwe were talking a bit about
kind of belonging and thepositionality of belonging with
the greater deib and or anyother letters we want to throw
into this body of work that thatwe do, and you know the role of
.
I want to, I want to tee up thetopic of the role of belonging
(13:50):
in diversity, equity, inclusion,um, accessibility.
I think I think I've capturedthe most of the the things we're
throwing in diversity, equity,inclusion, accessibility.
Tony (14:00):
I think I've captured the most of the things we're
throwing in Justice sometimes.
Justin (14:02):
Sorry, what was that?
Sometimes people put in justice, oh, yes, justice.
So yeah, I'm curious yourthoughts on the positionality of
belonging in that greater kindof sphere of work.
Tony (14:15):
All righty, here we go.
Here's our phone conversation,Because we did start.
I just kind of shared my bottomline thought with you, but I
think it's a much morecomplicated thought, right?
So I think that belonging is acritical component of culture.
An organization's culture and ifyou want to have a component of
culture, an organization'sculture, and if you want to have
(14:36):
a healthy workplace culture,belonging I mean the studies
show that when people feel likethey belong and they think
they're cared about and they'revalued, right, you start talking
about production increases,innovation increases, resilience
increases, retention increases,right?
The business case is nearlyoverwhelming.
(15:01):
I mean, it's just mind-blowingwhen you really think of all the
things that are there.
That being said, I struggle tohave it in the conversation of
diversity, equity and inclusion,and I do that for a few reasons
.
Now, on the positive side, orif I were going to argue for it,
(15:26):
there are organizations thatcome to the realization that
they need to focus on, you know,dei or whatever, because some
type of climate or culturesurvey has told them that
certain demographics view theorganization differently and
they view that they fit indifferently.
(15:47):
They view that they you knowthat they are valued, that they
belong very differently.
That being said, here's why Istruggle.
If you looked at Maslow'shierarchy of needs, right, and
you can argue whether Maslow'shierarchy of needs is, you know,
the perfect model or not,whatever, but there's this idea
(16:08):
that kind of at the bottom level.
There's these psychologicalneeds, or physiological needs.
I should say that are thingslike, you know, food, water, sex
excretion, breathing.
Right Above that there's safetyand a lot of this is.
Although we often talk a lotabout psychological safety, this
(16:30):
is physical safety, in manyways right, but there's also
economic safety.
You know, the safety ofemployment, the safety of having
resources, the safety of yourfamily.
There's all these things Abovethat, normally on the pyramid is
(16:52):
where way and it's arguable,obviously, is that before you
can focus on this third tier, ifyou don't have two and one done
, if you don't feel safe, if youcan't eat, you're not thinking
about belonging.
So my challenge with puttingbelonging in the DEI space is,
(17:16):
when you look at equity andinclusion, those are hitting the
physiological and the safetyneeds You're talking about.
Can I get a job?
Can I afford to feed my family?
Am I?
I'm coming to work, but youknow, know, I was the second
African-American to evergraduate from my university with
(17:38):
the degree I had.
I know lots of people who werethe first Black person, the
first Chinese person, the firstMexican person I'm being very
specific with these identitiesto ever work in their job and
their lives were threatened.
Their tires were slashed, someof them.
Their houses were vandalized,right?
(18:01):
I mean, you're talking aboutreal safety issues and I think
that people who have yet to getequity and inclusion don't have
the luxury to think aboutbelonging.
Justin (18:16):
Yeah.
Tony (18:17):
So that's my challenge with this conversation about
belonging.
I think it applies to everyoneand I think that in many ways it
can be an indicator of, youknow, strong needs in the
diversity, equity and inclusionspace.
But what I see is I see a focuson belonging at the expense of
(18:42):
equity and inclusion, and Ithink that is going down a very
dangerous road.
Justin (18:46):
Yeah, okay, let's have some fun with this.
One thing I want to share,something that I don't think
I've shared it on the podcast orpublicly and I think it's
interesting to this conversation.
So I wrote my book creatingbelonging over two years ago,
and a year ago was reallygetting settled into my business
(19:08):
and kind of, you know, workingthrough how I'm going to market
all of that, and was workingwith my coach, how I'm going to
market all of that and wasworking with my coach and you
know, working through, likeJustin, you need you need the
one thing like what's your onething that you're really going
to focus in on, and or kind ofthat kind of the marketplace
focus.
And I had three things and Iwas like, well, here, here and
here.
And she's like, no, justin, weneed one.
(19:30):
And she kept pushing me intoDEIB.
She's like you do DEIB work?
And I said no, absolutely not.
That is not where my businesssits, that's not what I do and I
don't want to muddy the watersbecause I think there are people
that do pure DEI workdifferently and better than I do
(19:51):
.
Yes, I wrote a book titledCreating Belonging, but I think
it sits a little bit differentand it can sit in that greater
DEIB space.
But I'm like there's otherpieces to this puzzle that
aren't I'm interested in them,I'm passionate about them, but I
don't think that I'm the one togo fix them necessarily right
(20:12):
as far as where my interest,where my talent lies, and so I
wanted to throw that out thereas an interesting positionality
of you know, I've tussled withthis a bit in my own work of
where does Justin and hisbusiness sit in the world, and
so kind of to that point of youknow, where does it sit?
(20:33):
I kind of.
Here's the way I think about it.
I want to tee this up and I'mcurious your reaction.
I think that inclusion,specifically inclusion, are acts
like we do things that areinclusive of people, right, we
do things to include people.
When we do inclusion through adiversity lens, we're ensuring
(20:54):
that we're creating a, you know,getting a diverse population of
people that are included inthat.
And if we're doing it equitably, we're doing it in a way that
gives people what they need, notjust equal treatment.
When we get all of that stuffright, belonging is the outcome
(21:18):
yes, I could not agree.
Tony (21:20):
Listen, number one.
You and I probably share moresimilarities, as we're having
this conversation, than werealize.
I fought against being in thedei space for the first nine
years of my business, eventhough I was constantly being
asked to and pushed into andwhat we haven't.
So now it's my turn to ask youa question.
(21:41):
So if you wouldn't mind sharingand I think people who listen
to your podcast already knowthis, but we haven't had this
conversation would you besharing some of your identities?
Justin (21:50):
oh yeah, absolutely so.
Um, uh, white cisgender gay man, um, I I something that I talk
about a lot.
I grew up in rural Iowa, somost everyone around me looked
like me, but I now I live inChicago, uh, and you know so
very different space, and Ishare that because it's it very
(22:13):
much influences the lens that Ihave and the blinders that I'm
constantly beating back, and the, the, the program bias that's
inside me that I'm constantlybeating back, and the programmed
bias that's inside me that I'mconstantly trying to fight and
overcome.
So, yeah, that's a bit of mineand yeah, I share that a lot,
but we haven't had thatconversation, so yeah, Number
(22:37):
one.
Tony (22:37):
Thank you for sharing, because, I mean, these
vulnerabilities are not thingsthat are always easy and, in
some cases, aren't alwayswelcome, so I really appreciate
it.
You know.
So, you know, going to thisconversation we're having, there
are probably, at differentstages of your life, various
times that you did not feel likeyou belong, sometimes based on
(22:59):
some of your various identities,right, I mean, you can go
through it and sometimes it'sbased on an identity that people
don't think about, right?
You grew up in Iowa and movedto Chicago.
I grew up in Kalamazoo andmoved to Chicago.
That was a culture shock for meand for everyone else around me
, right.
So, but the thing that you saidis that if we do all of these
(23:23):
things right, belonging becomesthe outcome.
I think you can say that aboutalmost every component of DEI, b
, a, j, whatever letter.
Right, that the goal is not tomanufacture diversity.
(23:45):
The goal is to do things insuch a way that diversity is the
outcome.
The goal is not to manufactureequity or manufacture inclusion.
But if we do things correctly,then equity, inclusion,
diversity, acceptance I mean, Ijust think about this.
(24:12):
We had to say, hey, we need toadd inclusion to diversity,
because somebody was doingdiversity without inclusion,
right, we had to say, hey, weneed to add inclusion to
diversity, because somebody wasdoing diversity without
inclusion.
We had to add equity.
I've said for years really it'sD&I diversity and inclusion
because equity is an aspect ofinclusion.
How can you have equity if youdon't have inclusion?
(24:34):
How can you have accessibility?
If you don't have inclusion,how can you have belonging?
But I understand the need tokeep some ways to keep parsing
us out, but but it seems like wego after the labels instead of
understanding.
And this is where I think,because I say we're similar.
For me, I fought this and Ialways tell people I am not a
(24:57):
dei expert.
I tell, I tell my clients I'mnot a DEI practitioner, I'm not.
I do understand workplaceculture and if we do culture
right, then we deal.
We will get this as an outcome.
And yes, at times we need tofocus on this.
Just as you know, if you werein ICU because you just had a
(25:21):
stroke, there's parts of yourbody you must focus on in that
moment, but that does not meanthat you don't care about the
whole body, and so I thinkthat's kind of how we should be
thinking about this.
Justin (25:32):
Yeah Well, and I like that you focus on it from the
culture perspective, because Ithink any organization that
doesn't look at the big pictureis going to fail at it, whatever
it is that we're defining it as.
So you know organizations thatdon't have their culture right,
the inclusion pieces, but thatyou can go and hire diverse
(25:53):
talent.
You know talented that doesn'tlook like the talent that we
have today, look like the talentthat we have today.
But you now have people that,if we don't have our unconscious
bias under control, we don'tlet right.
Those people are not going tolast very long, and I've I've
been in those organizationswhere the focus is just on the
(26:14):
diversity numbers, but thediversity numbers never stay
where they want them to be,because the higher turnover is
in the marginalized populations,because those people still
don't feel like they, and for meit's it's that they feel like
they don't belong, they don'thave, we don't have, the right
inclusion, and so they're likepeace out, I don't belong here,
I gotta go somewhere else, andso that's where I, I I don't
(26:37):
mind, I don't know, I don't mindlumping it in there, because I
do think it's an importantcomponent, but I also really
respect the identification thatlike there's a lot of moving
pieces here and they all have tobe working right.
Tony (26:50):
Yeah, I appreciate you saying it that way.
You know, I look at the wholething as too often we're trying
to build a pipeline, but if youdon't fix the leak, the
product's never going to get tothe right place, and so it is.
You can't just build thepipeline.
Justin (27:05):
You have to fix the leaks of not belonging, fix the
leaks of not being inclusive,fix the leaks of not being
equitable, and that will solve alot of the problems chatted
through this um, because I thinkit's good to I just I think
it's good to to really digthrough some of the definitions
(27:25):
and how we're viewing things tobe able to move forward
productively.
I would it kind of lasttransition of conversation.
One thing I would love to hearis I always love to hear
people's personal stories ofbelonging or not belonging and
I'd love to hear is I alwayslove to hear people's personal
stories of belonging or notbelonging?
And I'd love to hear from you,kind of in your journey.
You've already mentioned onething coming from Kalamazoo to
(27:48):
Chicago.
You know there's, there's thatI'm just I'm curious if there's
some story that you wouldn'tmind sharing of either finding
belonging or not having itbelonging or not having it?
Tony (28:05):
Sure, and I think it's fascinating, I think they both
can happen at the same time,which sounds like a strange,
almost an oxymoron, but Imentioned earlier.
So I said I was a chemicalengineer, but technically my
degree was in paper science,which is a specialized form of
chemical engineering.
When I graduated from WesternMichigan I was the second
African-American to evergraduate from that university
with my degree.
It's highly specialized, highlyvalued, highly competitive and
(28:30):
we walked out with the highestsalaries as underwriters, right.
But that also meant I walkedinto an industry that's not used
to having meat, and often I wasgoing to paper mills in very
small areas where I maybe thereyou don't think black people,
(28:51):
when you think Moralton,arkansas.
When you think Mattawaska,maine, when you think
international falls, minnesota,right, I mean, there are places
that when I went you had thecombination of just the
unfamiliarity of dealing withsomeone like this, but also the
(29:13):
very conscious biases.
You know me sitting in myboss's office as he's talking to
a client, the client notknowing that he's on
speakerphone and I'm in the room.
And he's saying.
So, yeah, you know that monkeythat you sent up to the mill
last week got lost RightSpeaking of me.
So that was a very real, veryconstant experience for me.
(29:36):
Experience for me.
At the same time, while workingfor that very same organization,
I can think of one particularregional man, I can actually
think of a regional salesmanager, but a district manager
(29:57):
who I won't even mention hisname, I don't even know if he's
still alive, but he, just he sawme and I think that's the word
I would use.
He saw me.
He saw me, he saw myintelligence, he saw my social
skills.
He saw that, even though allthose things I just mentioned
are very real, by the time I wasin a client space for a half
(30:19):
hour, they loved me and he knewit.
And he always said listen, ifyou ever want to come into the
field in my district, I willalways have a spot for you.
And I tell people to this dayI'm a business owner.
I've been a business owner forover 20 years.
(30:40):
I can't imagine being anemployee.
I just you know it's no way.
If I had to, I would considerit for him.
He was that guy because hevalued me and had a vision in me
and so within his sphere I feltlike I belonged, even though in
(31:05):
the greater ecosystem I didn'tThank you for sharing that and I
think there's.
Justin (31:10):
You know, I talk a bit about the fluidity of belonging.
Right, it can go up and downand it depends on who we're with
at the time.
Can go up and down and itdepends on who we're with at the
time.
And you know, belonging, ourstate of belonging, doesn't stay
static with a greaterorganization.
It can vary from team to teamor, in your case, kind of being
(31:31):
client facing.
You know you could go into one,one organization in an area of
the country that is, you know,not as enlightened I don't know,
trying to think of a betterword that works, and then you
know, or go to another clientthat is, you know, very, you
know open, accepting, and andyou know.
(31:54):
So, yeah, I think that it can bevery fluid and it's interesting
in the podcast, theconversations that I'm having,
we talk a lot about thatfluidity and you know, even
being able to parts of ourselves, parts of our identities, being
able to be open and feelingbelonging with them, and some
(32:14):
that maybe we can still kind ofhide away but still feel
belonging, and so it's aninteresting, interesting
dichotomy with that.
Tony (32:20):
Yeah, if I could add something to this idea of
fluidity, I think part of thereason that our belonging, part
of the reason that our belongingis a fluid thing, is because,
going back to the word we usedearlier, bias is also a fluid
thing, is very situational,right?
When I lived in New York, Iplayed basketball with this
(32:43):
group of guys four times a week.
Half of them were NYPD, right,and we're to this day.
We have a group chat and it's awild ride on that group chat.
But we are buddies and I knowif I ever need anything every
one of them will have my back.
But I also know from their veryown mouths when they enter into
(33:06):
their beat mode, their cop mode,and they're in certain areas
they are very different peopleBecause there's very different
dangers, very differentexperiences, very different
realities, all of these things.
And I'm not saying it'sjustifiable or good or bad or
whatever, but I'm saying that isthe reality, that this person
can be this way in thisenvironment and step into a
(33:27):
completely different environmentor have a completely different
emotion and have a verydifferent response yes, yes,
context can, yes, yes, contextcan absolutely shift, you know,
heighten our biases, shift ourbiases.
Justin (33:45):
But yeah, the context can really really shift that and
thank you for that, absolutely,tony.
I want to thank you so much forjoining me today.
I've enjoyed our conversationand I have a feeling we could
keep talking forever, and maybewe will, but for this
conversation I want to put a bowon it, but I do want to make
sure that people can find you.
(34:05):
So if people want to reach outto you, tony, what's the best
ways to find you?
Tony (34:11):
The easiest thing.
If you can spell my name, whichis the last thing the C-H-A-T
is in Tom, it may end I'mTonyChapmancom.
So my website's there, links toall of my socials there, emails
, there, social media I'm eitherTony Chapman or on Instagram
and TikTok on Tony ChapmanSpeaks.
(34:31):
This is because Tony Chapmanwas taken, and so you know.
Whichever you know, your flavoris that you like the best.
Find me in that space and I'mthere.
Justin (34:41):
Perfect, and I will make sure to add some links in the
show notes so people can link tothat more easily if they have
access to that.
But again, tony, thank you somuch for joining me today.
Tony (34:54):
I was going to say great conversation and I appreciate
you providing a space to havethe back and forth that we had,
because I'm actually sharingthoughts that I've been thinking
for a while but have nevershared publicly.
So I appreciate that.
Justin (35:09):
I love that, thank you.
I love hearing differentperspectives and I'm not afraid
of seeing where the conversationwill go, so I appreciate you
sharing.
Thank you, tony, and join usagain for another episode of the
Creating Bolling Podcast.
Thanks,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.