What to expect?
Transcript
[00:00:02] Ingrid: Identity should not be about who is in the room, but is the room designed to tap into the source of those identities?
[00:00:15] Naomi: Welcome to The Future is Human. I'm Naomi Tricke. And in this podcast, I talk with leaders from tech and hospitality businesses about how both they and their people are navigating the edge between humans and technology in an increasingly automated environment. We break out of the mould of a standard business conversation to hear more informal perspectives and reflections to understand what people are really feeling about the future of work.
[00:00:44] Naomi: Welcome to fairly warm The Future is Human today. We're joined by Ingrid Tappin, who is the founder and CEO of Diverse Leaders in Tech and creator of a framework that we're gonna talk about today, which is identity intelligence. So, Ingrid, just to give you a bit of an introduction, Ingrid works with organisations' leadership platforms and executive teams to help them build more inclusive future-ready leadership cultures, and we'll be explaining a bit more about what that means. And in doing so, she's created a framework called identity intelligence and written a book about it, in fact, which explores the strategic capability shaped by lived experience. And that lived experience piece is really important, I think. And it's about the judgment and range and contextual intelligence that actually, a lot of the traditional assessments, I think, often miss, and AI certainly cannot replicate. So, today, what we're going to do is explore what the future of leadership looks like when identity isn't really treated as a sensitivity that you sort of have to carefully manage, but actually is something real and a real source of insight and strength and actually innovation, I think. So, Ingrid, thank you. We're thrilled to have you on the show.
[00:01:56] Ingrid: Thank you for having me, Naomi. Very happy to be here.
[00:01:59] Naomi: I'm gonna start with a question about your life, really, because I think these things are quite closely related. We don't do work-life separation to quite the same extent anymore. So, if that's okay, I'd love to know a bit about you. You've had quite a life, really. You were born in Barbados, raised in the U.S and the Netherlands, and you've actually built your career across a lot of different cultures. How has that affected you? How has moving through different systems, cultures, and countries shaped how you understand leadership?
[00:02:35] Ingrid: Yes. I think a core question about me and the way that I lead, but also it sits at the core of my work, I think. So, moving through cultures and working across different cultures and subcultures, I think what it taught me early on was that rooms have rules. And it taught me to read those rules very early as a little girl with curly hair and a different skin colour from most of my peers when we moved to the Netherlands. As speaking English, because we just born in Barbados, as you said, lived in Seattle until I was 5, speaking only English and then having to learn a new language when you're 5 years old, having a mom who is from Suriname originally, a father who is from Barbados, studied in the U.S, in Germany, and in the Nordics, spoke Dutch with a German accent. This is all kind of the context that I was growing up in, and I think one of the things I learned early on was, oh, it really matters what language you speak literally, but also, yeah, more symbolically. So, are you able to speak the language that people understand? If people would ask me, where are you from? And in the 1980s, I would say from Barbados. They didn't know where Barbados was, so they couldn't put me in a box. If I were to say, “My mom is from Suriname.” Being a former colony of the Netherlands, they would say, “Oh, I will put you in that box.” If I were to say, we just came from America, they would be like, oh, they put you in a different box. And, really, at 6 years old, I already noticed, okay, there are rules to what gets rewarded, what gets seen as important. We should pay attention to what is seen as less than. And I learned a lot about identity, power, trust, and influence, and context from a very early age because of those different worlds and contexts, and how the rooms that I walked into, be it a classroom, be it at home, visiting friends, or going to a new high school. You get to understand yourself, as I did, that I am a very layered person, but people cannot always understand those layers. And they have the, well, urge to put you somewhere and see one part of you and say, “Okay, now this is who you are.”
[00:05:03] Naomi: Yes. And you've talked about this concept of shrinking. And can you explain the link between the boxes that you're put in, the way in which you're read and perceived, and things like your skin colour are read and perceived? They're kind of signals, aren't they? Or we can take it in as signals. What does that shrinking mean to you, and what does being asked to shrink and maybe shrink to fit into those boxes look like?
[00:05:30] Ingrid: If you look at it in the work context, I think that shrinking is asking or feeling that you need to edit yourself to be accepted and often to make the room that you are in feel comfortable. So, that could be, okay, I'm going to adapt my accent, or I am going to put my hair back so that they don't see this big Afro. It could be not sharing that you are originally from a rural environment when you are working in the context of pedigree degrees kind of people. And it is not something that you always do consciously. It's sometimes also not something that you do because you want to do it. Lots of people call shrinking or code-switching a way of survival. But the cost of shrinking and could be so subtle is that you don't give people and yourself access to your full intelligence.
[00:06:26] Naomi: Got it. And how does that then translate to leadership? If you're a leader and you're being expected to shrink or asked to shrink and not able to provide that full version of yourself, what does that feel like? That must feel immensely frustrating, I imagine.
[00:06:41] Ingrid: I think that in the context of self-leadership, if you are the one operating in a room that was not necessarily designed with your identity in mind, it is very important to understand that you have a choice and that you understand deeply who you are. You also understand deeply how the room or the world reads you. And where it becomes interesting is when you learn to see those tensions between the two, how you see yourself and how the world sees you, develop a certain set of skills, capabilities. And those skills and capabilities are things that you, in your leadership, can apply on purpose. So, if one of my skills, in my case, is that I recognise that I can read a room very fast because of my identity, I can immediately see, okay, who's the boss here? Who has influence? Who's staying quiet? Who's the one that everybody is listening to? Who is scanning the room just like me? So, my social radar is very strong. I could choose to say, “Okay. I'm doing this to feel safe.” Or I can say, “Hey, this is something that I used to like, an instinct that I had to develop to feel safe so that I could decide how people would perceive me. But now I'm going to use it on purpose because I want to influence something, or I want to change something for the better.”
[00:08:06] Naomi: I love that. So, effectively, it becomes a superpower.
[00:08:10] Ingrid: Exactly.
[00:08:11] Naomi: I love when these things, it's a reappropriation, isn't it? Essentially, where you are, you take back the control that someone or a system or a person has taken away or tries to take away from you, and you reclaim that power of that?
[00:08:26] Ingrid: And I think, and I believe that in self-leadership, it's very important to indeed claim that power and create a turn to turn the adaptation into something that you use consciously as a leadership skill. But it also becomes interesting when you, as a leader, start recognising those skill sets in others so that you start valuing more what have your lived experience been? What kind of identity do you have, and how did that relate to the room that you had to develop yourself in? And can I notice from your way of speaking, way of asserting yourself, or maybe way of staying silent? Can I then see suddenly, hey, this might be something that's being misread in this room, but this is a superpower, or we should tap into that? That is also identity intelligence in the context of people working together, not only your own individual self-leadership.
[00:09:23] Naomi: Can you teach people how to do that if they haven't had the same lived experience as you?
[00:09:29] Ingrid: I think so. I believe so. I tried to do so because that's why I developed the framework, because I started to see a pattern in these identities and a pattern in what we call these superpowers. And they were not always necessarily connected to, are you a woman? Are you a person of colour? Do we have this sexual orientation? Or not the individual traits. They were really about, you could boil them down into four types of origin stories that people had, and we could look the same and have totally different origin stories. So, in my case, I have a patchwork identity. That's how I started out, being seen for often only one thing of who I am, fitting into many worlds, but not fully into one, right? I started to see people having an outsider identity, an origin story that started out as they were being excluded for who they were. And the group told them, you are different, and you're not part of the in-group. Or the underdog identity, people being underestimated for maybe their accent, or their degree, or the lack of one or where they grew up. And the unseen identity, the identity that people don't recognise. They cannot box them in, so they leave them alone. And they have to create their own story so that people understand who they actually are. And this pattern helped me to then give language to the leadership capabilities that your learning journey and your professional career, you start to grow them and turn them from instincts more into conscious intelligence that you are applying. And, yeah, it is my, I think, mission, really, to indeed teach people that we can spot this intelligence in ourselves and each other, and that we have an opportunity to grow them and develop range across our identity journeys.
[00:11:31] Naomi: Interesting. And it must be really thrilling, very heartening when you see that light bulb moment. I can imagine that it's wonderful for people to feel recognised and to feel seen, and for their identity intelligence to feel seen. Was there a moment when you realised what you had been asked to minimise, or manage, or shrink to fit was actually a source of intelligence in your life? Do you remember being seen for the first time?
[00:12:01] Ingrid: I think there was not really one insightful moment, and I said, “Oh, now I found it.” It's been recognising my own patterns. And I think there was a point when I decided to join a large corporate. So, I'd always been an entrepreneur. I had my own company. I had a startup, and I was also always very independent and in service of larger organisations. But when my partner and I sold our startup, I said, “Okay. What am I going to do now? I've done a lot of things from strategy all the way to execution, but what's my next growth step?” And I thought to myself, I've never been part of them. I've only serviced them. So, I decided to join. In this case, I was asked to join Accenture, so this really global consulting firm. And it was there that I really learned how important it was that during my career, before that, I was very open about who I am. Some things I cannot really hide. You see me, and you see I'm a woman. You see, I'm a woman of colour, but I wear my hair naturally. When I'm in a meeting, I'm super quick in saying “Hello. My name is Ingrid. I'm married to Sabina. We live with our two daughters in Harlem.” And when I started working in that organisation, people started mentioning to me, wow. The fact that you are being so open about your, quote-unquote, complex identity, that you are not hiding things, that you are not straightening your hair because I never thought, somebody said that to me, I never thought that I could be a senior manager having that position and wear my hair naturally or be openly gay. And I think that experience taught me I should embrace the complexity of my identity because it offers me an opportunity to literally translate between worlds and empower people. And I became more conscious and also felt more empowered to not only translate, but also starting to voice my own authentic opinion even though that opinion might not be something that people would recognize immediately because it's very nuanced. I'm a very nuanced person. Sometimes people say, “Ingrid, you have to make it simple. It has to be a one-liner. You're making it too complex.” And I'm like, “Yeah. That is me. Things are nuanced. They are complex.” And you should not underestimate that there are people in the room who appreciate the complexity because they can relate to it, and they do not feel that they want to be put into something that is so narrow.
[00:14:38] Naomi: I absolutely love that line that you said that we should embrace the complexity of our identities. I just think that's wonderful, that is inclusion to me, that is exactly how inclusion should work, and it gives me goosebumps to think about that. And I completely agree on the nuance piece. And it's the opposite of shrinking, isn't it? It's I'm going to be out there embracing all aspects of how I think and how I work and who I am.
[00:15:06] Ingrid: And what it also does is take away the binary, right?
[00:15:09] Naomi: Right.
[00:15:10] Ingrid: Between us versus them. The framework also offers that everyone has an identity, everyone has a lived experience, and everybody is operating in systems that have been designed for a very narrow group of people/traits. Almost none of us have an identity that is this traditional leader standing on a mountain with their hand up, and that's almost none of us. I think it's like 97% of the people are different from that mould. But for some of us, it's easier to adapt. For some of us, it's more difficult to adapt, and you are forced to either not be part of the system, build your own system, or be very actively redesigning the system. But when we all become aware of our complex identity and that we have, in that sense, more in common, and that it becomes a collective effort and responsibility to create this inclusion. And it's about wanting to create inclusion for all of us and not only for the other, because that gives this power dynamic that often doesn't feel very comfortable when you are always the other.
[00:16:21] Naomi: It cuts both ways, right? So, you're creating an inclusive environment that you feel part of, but you're also creating an environment that welcomes others. One of the things I really love about working at Mews is that I remember talking to Richard a while ago now, and he said that he created the company that he would want to work at. And you feel that when you interact with people who work at Mews, that we belong to something, but it comes from that true meaning of hospitality, really. I'm not trying to sell Mews here. And you're talking about a kind of hospitable sense of leadership, right, where it's about opening it up for, you were sharing something of yourself in order to share it with others.
[00:17:04] Ingrid: And sometimes that foundational feeling of I want to create a place where people can belong because I want to feel that I belong as well. I have that very much ingrained in myself. But there are also leaders who start out with, I want to create a place where people feel safe. That's the drive behind it because they have experienced what it is like to feel unsafe, and they have this superpower of creating inclusion. And some leaders you see immediately, okay, these are great leaders, they have been underestimated, and they are able to see value in unexpected places because nobody's looking there. They love to create value. So, they are leaders that create places where there is room for creativity, and possibility, and learning. And every identity has this certain drive to add these values to what they are trying to create as a company or as a team or even as a service or a product, I believe.
[00:18:08] Naomi: Yes. I agree. Let's talk about the book. So, Exceptionals came out earlier this year. And just before we started recording, you were talking about how writing forces you to think in a different way, and it also forces you, I think, to sort of crystallise things. It’s how I write to think myself. And the book, I think, has probably helped you crystallise things you've been building in practice for quite a long time. What surprised you when you tried to put identity intelligence on the page? Is there something that you know you understand now differently or more clearly?
[00:18:43] Ingrid: I like to write. I like to draw frameworks and connect things and see how they work together. And while I was literally sketching this framework, this quadrant that I used to plot the different origin stories and the four intelligences and the drives, this whole system, and researching the examples of the leaders of the companies, etc, and plotting them, I realised that it is not a box. Identity is not a box or a label. Identity intelligence is also not about trying to give people, you are this, and you are that. But it started to become clear to me that's a map, that we have a starting point, but that's not our ceiling. And then, in our journey, we move across this map. And depending on if we are first an individual contributor and then we start leading teams, the more our identity differs from the system, the more we are forced to tap into these skill sets that our identity develops in us and that you sometimes walk into a wall and say, “Okay, I've always been the outsider, and I'm great at being this outspoken challenger trying to change the system and showing people, hey, this is unfair.” But at a certain point, you also have to get people along, right? You have to make connections. And I saw, okay, I can literally see these people that I was using as examples. At a certain point, they moved towards this, tapping into their inclusion intelligence. And when they had to challenge themselves, how do I make this practical? I have a team now rallied around this, and I got people along that we should change something and then make it more unjust. But now I have to tap into my possibility intelligence and see how can this be a value to more people and translate it. So, that was a very interesting journey for me to see that you are not one thing. You are continuously growing, and you can step into these archetypes of leadership and use them as a kind of mode. And you can also empower other people to say, “Hey, I think it's now time for you to step into this mode because you have that in you, and start daring yourself or practising these skill sets because it is already there, but maybe just untapped.”
[00:20:59] Naomi: I love that. And I think it, yeah, that your point really is about a kind of mental agility, isn't it? A sort of flexibility. And I think one of the things that, certainly, we need to cultivate in ourselves, in others that we work with, in our children, and so on, is that ability to adapt because this world is changing so quickly. Given that a lot of organisations, actually, still build around very traditional parameters of confidence and communication style and very familiar patterns, executive presence, what do they miss when they do that, and who ultimately pays the price?
[00:21:38] Ingrid: I think that a lot of organisations, and not always so deliberately, because, yeah, it's what we're used to doing in the workplace, they are missing that lived experience is a source of leadership. And as long as we treat difference or identity as something that is sensitive and a liability, and we try to manage it a little bit away, we miss that intelligence. So, we don't get people into a position that they can really thrive and come up with unexpected ways that they can contribute. So, the company misses out. The talent misses out. And, eventually, if you are servicing a community, your clients, or whatever it is that your strategy has set out to achieve in the real world, those people are also missing out on the source of intelligence that lived experience has because they also have identities and drives and belongings that they want to connect to. And the challenges for organisations are to redesign the rooms in such a way that they can read what the value is of somebody's lived experience, and not only ask, “Have you done this before, this task? Have you built this kind of team before? Have you implemented this strategy before? Have you achieved these results before?” It is such a way of wanting to be predictable and create predictable success, right? Especially when companies start to scale and grow, they can process, etc, and this predictability, and especially now with AI, is amplified. I want somebody who did the same thing as the guy before you did. And we have to think about, okay, but what is it that makes us uniquely human? And that's how we, of course, have lived. How can we apply that experience in the workplace? Make sense?
[00:23:32] Naomi: Yes. Yes, it does. And do people find it difficult to make that translation to the workplace?
[00:23:38] Ingrid: When I am giving workshops, and I flip it, and I say, let's not make this about the other, but let's make this about you, especially when there are white straight men who think this is not about me. This is about other people. And I ask them, “Do you ever adapt? Do you ever have to shrink yourself because you feel that you are not living up to expectations?” They always say, “Yes. Of course.” They leave things behind about their background, about their education, about their fears, or the things that they overcome, very personal things. And then, I tell them, “What if you could be free enough to utilise this in your team? What would happen?” And then they start thinking, “Oh, I would create a lot more trust amongst my team members, or I would be opening up more creativity, or I would be able to get more viewpoints because I never share this point of view because I'm afraid that people might have an opinion about it, and that it's not what the status quo expects from me.” So, flipping it and making it about everyone is how you redesign the way the room sees what I then call intelligence.
[00:24:54] Naomi: So, I think there is something in what you're saying about vulnerability. To what extent does, how important is vulnerability, as part of your model, how important is it for people to feel comfortable with that degree of vulnerability?
[00:25:10] Ingrid: I think it's very important because I think that as a team, when you come together and you are able to use a tool, and let's say it's my tool, to explain crystal clear what your origin story is, what your identity advantage is, then you're sharing a piece of your background that's vulnerable, but it's also something that is empowering. Because it's personal, but you're not tapping into the wounds. You're tapping into the source of power. And you have to be vulnerable to want to do that. But you also have to have a playing field where there is not a difference in the consequences of sharing that part of yourself. I look at Matt, your CEO. I know Matt well, and I really praise him for his vulnerability, and openness and transparency, especially on LinkedIn, where he shares about his burnout and how he handles that kind of stuff. And I think it's inspiring for a lot of people. But there are not a lot of consequences for him, the level of leadership or position that he has, if he shares that he has to take time off because he is exhausted or that he's overworked or that he has challenges. And for somebody just coming into the organisation, recovering from a burnout, having to start working with a new team, it's not the first thing you're going to tell everybody, right? Because you don't know if it's safe enough. You don't know if there are going to be consequences, if people will take you seriously or if you will be able to get extra work, all that kind of thing. So, it is important that the system and the people who know that they have more power, more influence, create this safety and make it literally safe to share and be vulnerable.
[00:26:51] Naomi: And I think you're making a really important point that the luxury of vulnerability isn't really afforded to everyone equally, right? So, that's not only because of one component of your personality or how you present to the world, but it can be about intersectionality and things that are seen and unseen. And you're talking about that's when lived experience becomes much more powerful, right, because that is something that you can actually share. As you say, Matt shares his personal experience. When do you think vulnerability is unfairly demanded? What can people do about that? How can they challenge that?
[00:27:30] Ingrid: I think it's unfair when it is demanded. Yes. I mean, if you are consciously, deliberately, with your own change agency, sharing something about yourself, your lived experience, sharing something vulnerable, and vulnerable in this sense means somebody is getting to see a piece of you or hear something about you that they have to treat with care. That's what you are offering somebody. I'm giving you something, but I'm giving you something that you need to treat with care because it's sensitive. And you cannot, and when you demand that from people, then it becomes unfair. I think that if you are in a position where you feel that you are forced to share something that does not and to share something with people or in a context that you are not sure if they are going to treat it with care, then you should protest. And also be in my case, I flip the script often.
[00:28:24] Naomi: Say more about that. What does that mean?
[00:28:25] Ingrid: I like to ask people questions too. If you are asking me this question, then how do you feel about me asking you a similar question? And are you going to be open and also share that with me? Are you going to make a connection with me as a human being or as a boss, a colleague, a manager? And are you going to offer me something that I need to take care of and be sensitive with? And you have that power.
[00:28:53] Naomi: Yes. Absolutely. So, would you say that's one of the ways in which a leader could make people feel safe enough, is that they open themselves to those sorts of questions? Are there any other ways that someone can do it?
[00:29:05] Ingrid: You mean that if you are in a leadership position and you want to make people feel, I think it's also about being very clear on what will or will not happen when these things are shared. And be open about that you are conscious that they might think X, Y, Z if they do this. In my case, if you are in an organisation where they say, “Yes, you can be super open about your sexual orientation, we're open here, it is LGBTQ-plus friendly, etc.” Are you sure that when you share what you did at the weekend or when you decide that pride is not only about a party, but that you're going to go and protest on the square? Or when you say, I want to say something about what somebody said to me, which makes me very uncomfortable. Am I going to be heard? Are people going to look at me differently because these are the things that I do at the weekend? I mean, it's easy to say, just do it. But as a leader, you should also be very clear about what that means and name the vulnerabilities. In this case, I would literally say you do not have to be afraid that if you do this, you will not be up for promotion. You do not have to be afraid that if I say something that is out of context, you cannot come up to me and ask me to listen to you. So, you have to create the context around it.
[00:30:30] Naomi: Yeah. I love that. And I think it's about extending grace to another human being, isn't it, to really be themselves and actually be vulnerable? Not just talk about vulnerability, be vulnerable.
[00:30:44] Ingrid: Exactly. It's like when your teenager goes out, and you tell them, be safe, and if something happens, just call me, right? You could say that very easily. The thing you really have to say is, if you drink too much or if you take drugs or something happens that you know that I don't want to happen, you can call me. I will come and pick you up, and I will not ask any questions. Then they know for sure, okay. She's not just saying that because the scary thing is the thing that you're not saying.
[00:31:15] Naomi: Yes. Absolutely. What I say to my teenager is, “Respect yourself.” And because I think if you have that sense of your own self-worth, it makes it easier to go out into the world and expect other people to treat you with respect. My teenager's a girl, and I don't like to tell girls or women to take care. I think the burden of responsibility is on everybody to make sure that people aren't vulnerable. So, it's quite an interesting one. Okay. And let's sort of pivot slightly. I think we haven't had a single episode of this podcast where it hasn't come up, but it's like, we have to have it as a component, really. And I think AI is changing so much of how we work. What do you think, but what we're interested in here is about this sort of navigating what it means to be human in an increasingly automated world. So, what do you think leaders need to become more serious about in terms of developing humans and leading in this increasingly automated world?
[00:32:17] Ingrid: I think leaders need to become more serious about understanding better and more precisely what it means to be human. Because there are aspects of being human that cannot be automated, and we are only now learning about them. We are suddenly discovering I've been doing things that a machine can do. I've been spending time studying, educating myself, building this skill, and suddenly, an AI or an agent or an LLM or whatever it is that can be built can take that same thing that I have been doing and do it better, faster, more predictable. What does that say about me? That's a part of something that used to be part of my identity because I was super good at it. And this means that I have to understand, as a leader, first of all, how do people form their identity? Because this means they are losing things, they're losing a part of themselves, and that does something not only to a person, but it does something to an entire organisation. And we have to be aware of that whilst we are changing. And secondly, it means that, of course, the positive side is that we can do things and spend more time on developing skills, capabilities, capacities that a robot, an AI, cannot automate. So, what is that exactly? And how do we make sure, as leaders, that we are conscious of what that is and that we are developing it in them? And it has to do with the feeling of being human, the connections that we can make with other humans, the translations that we can make within a complex context, the creativity of bringing different things together because we have a lived experience, something that a piece of code cannot experience live in the real world, right? And I think it's our responsibility as leaders to cultivate that humanness in ourselves, and I'm saying it again, be more precise and understand more about what it means to be human.
[00:34:23] Naomi: And, really, what you're talking about in the same way you were saying with teenagers, the fear of the unspoken is really, the fear is what it's about. You're talking about making explicit something that is implicit, right? So, you're talking about surfacing it and giving it a language, I think. That's what I'm hearing.
[00:34:42] Ingrid: Yes. Giving it a language because that makes, if we have language, and that's also been my goal with this book, if we have language for things that we know already intuitively, it becomes easier to develop it in yourself and see it in others and make it a collective responsibility to create environments where we can let it flourish and go, but also create environments where it's okay to say, I'm tapping into my sensitivity at this moment. I'm feeling that there is a tension in this room, and it's making me want to cry. That's a signal. And being sensitive and expressing your sensitivity and maybe crying and giving language to what is happening and why you are doing that, and not seeing that as, oh my God. This is a professional place. We cannot cry here. I think we have to stand still and say, “No, maybe we have to make place for tears here because it's a signal. That's human.”
[00:35:39] Naomi: Yes. I think, given the nature of my work, I've seen a lot of people cry, and I've cried. And I think it's just giving people room to express themselves in whatever way. It's just as a leader, I think it's a responsibility, right, to just breathe and just be present for people experiencing those emotions. I think it's very important.
[00:35:59] Ingrid: I agree. And it is not easy because we have transformed the way we look at what is work and how are we supposed to behave. How have we behaved all this time? And how are we going to change that and turn that into something?
[00:36:11] Naomi: Yes. It's interesting, isn't it? Because we're so solution-oriented, I think, at work, that actually, just stepping back. Okay. Rapid-fire questions. I've got three for you. If you could redesign one workplace norm from scratch, what would it be?
[00:36:28] Ingrid: I would redesign the norm of professionalism. I think professionalism is designing for sameness disguised as something that is neutral, which it is not. And being professional, or say this is a place of professionalism, is exactly doing the opposite of bringing identity intelligence into the workplace.
[00:36:54] Naomi: Brilliant. Very quotable. What's one belief about identity and leadership that you hope disappears in the next decade?
[00:37:04] Ingrid: First of all, I have, of course, already said, I really think people should stop seeing identity as a liability and see it as a source of how someone leads. And I also think that identity should not be about who is in the room, but is the room designed to tap into the source of those identities?
[00:37:25] Naomi: Yes. It's about changing the system, not the individuals in it.
[00:37:29] Ingrid: Yes. And not about focusing on identity traits, but focusing on the experience, the lived experience, the lessons, the skills, the capabilities that people have developed are much more important than the way you look, or what we label your brain wiring.
[00:37:48] Naomi: One word to describe the future of leadership.
[00:37:52] Ingrid: One word. It's too easy to say human, so I'm going to say identity-driven.
[00:37:57] Naomi: And I ask this question of everybody. What's the one human thing you would never automate in the workplace, and why?
[00:38:04] Ingrid: I would say, and I would also not know how you can automate it, but you never know, sensation. So, feeling. The human experience of feeling what it is to be human.
[00:38:16] Naomi: Yes. Irreplaceable.
[00:38:18] Ingrid: That is the gift that we have gotten, to be able to feel and sense and experience what it is to be who we are.
[00:38:28] Naomi: Yes. It's such a rich source of information, isn't it, feeling? Yes. I would agree. Thank you so much. I have one final question for you, and it's a message, really, that you would give to leaders who are building the future of work right now. If there was one true thing you could say to those leaders, I know you run workshops, give talks, and you appear on podcasts, and have written a book. Like, you're used to giving these messages in beautiful long form, but what's the one true thing that you would say to those leaders for people listening? They're building the future of work. What do they need to know?
[00:39:05] Ingrid: You were never the problem in the room. You were the intelligence the room was never designed to see.
[00:39:12] Naomi: Love that. Incredibly empowering. Ingrid, thank you so much for your time today. I really do appreciate it.
[00:39:18] Ingrid: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to bring my words from page to this podcast. Thank you so much.
[00:39:25] Naomi: You're most welcome.
[00:39:29] Naomi: The Future is Human is brought to you by Mews, the cloud-based hospitality platform. If you want to learn more about what we do, visit mews.com. And if you'd like to listen to more conversations like this one, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Thanks for listening.
