<p>Season 3 SHRM's Career Compass podcast opens with a dynamic episode discussing the impact of race in the workplace and how HR leaders can develop inclusive workspaces. Cohosts Dr. Vernon Williams and Kristy Parola are joined by HR Director for the City of Winston-Salem, NC, Dr. Marquis Barnett. During this episode, Dr. Barnett provides personal experiences and tips for successfully navigating difficult conversations about race and much more.<br /><br />Subscribe to All Things Work on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out <a href="https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/Pages/Podcasts.aspx">SHRM.org/podcasts</a> to listen to all of our episodes and also hear more podcasts from SHRM. And, be sure to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice.<br /><br />Keep up with SHRM by visiting the <a href="https://www.shrm.org/">website</a> and follow us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/societyforhumanresourcemanagement">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/shrm/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SHRM">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shrmofficial/?hl=en">Instagram</a>.</p>
Season 3 SHRM's Career Compass podcast opens with a dynamic episode discussing the impact of race in the workplace and how HR leaders can develop inclusive workspaces. Cohosts Dr. Vernon Williams and Kristy Parola are joined by HR Director for the City of Winston-Salem, NC, Dr. Marquis Barnett. During this episode, Dr. Barnett provides personal experiences and tips for successfully navigating difficult conversations about race and much more.
Subscribe to All Things Work on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out SHRM.org/podcasts to listen to all of our episodes and also hear more podcasts from SHRM. And, be sure to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice.
Keep up with SHRM by visiting the website and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Vernon Williams:
Welcome back for season three of Career Compass, a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management and the SHRM Foundation. Career Compass prepares the future leaders today for better workplaces tomorrow.
Kristy Parola:
As the voice of all things work, SHRM supports students and emerging professionals with advice, information, and resources for every step of your career.
Vernon Williams:
Designed for the student or emerging professional Career Compass delivers timely, relevant, and critical conversations about work to help you succeed in your career journey. Thank you for joining us for this episode. My name is Vernon Williams and I will be your co-host.
Kristy Parola:
My name is Kristy Parola, and I will also be your co-host for this episode. During this episode, we will discuss how race impacts employees in the workplace, as well as provide resources and tips for engaging in productive workplace conversations about race. To help tackle this topic, we will be joined by the HR Director for the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Dr. Marquis Barnett.
Vernon Williams:
With that being said, let's get started. First, I'm excited to be back for our third season of Career Compass, and even more thrilled to be kicking off the season with such a relevant topic. And the topic is relevant all year round, but especially during Black History Month. And that is comfortably talking about race in the workplace. Kristy, what went through your mind when you first learned that we were going to be talking about this as our opening episode?
Kristy Parola:
Yeah, Vernon. Well, I guess the first thing I thought about was how applicable this is to me, for viewers who may not know, I definitely do not share the same background and experiences as our guests and even as you, Vernon, so I definitely think I need practice and knowledge. How to have these conversations, what should they really look like, and any other information that I can possibly get, because this is definitely an important topic and something that needs to be just practiced more and done more. I'm really excited to hear the opinions and background of Marquis and yourself and get any feedback that you guys have to offer as well.
Vernon Williams:
You know, it's funny because you're excited and as am I, but I got to tell you, I was a little bit nervous as well. Anytime we do these kind of difficult topics and it's really, really cool that we get to host a podcast where we talk about some sensitive topics, like race in the workplace or less... In season two, we did the one around politics. And so it's really, really cool, but I'm also a little bit nervous. And so that's why I'm really excited to have such a kind of an expert on the podcast with us who can give us tips, because I obviously I've experienced quite a bit as a minority in the workplace, but to have somebody who's kind of a trained professional to really tell us how to have these conversations and in such a creative, and informative, and exciting kind way, that's something I'm looking forward to as well.
Kristy Parola:
Yeah, I can agree with you on that. As much as I am excited, I was also very, not very nervous, a little nervous myself, but I think for the other side of, and I don't want to say the wrong thing, or I don't want to mess up, but that's why we have these very open conversations so we can learn, right?
Vernon Williams:
Exactly. And let's not waste too much time. Let's make sure we give Dr. Barnett his experience and his time on the podcast, so let me introduce Dr. Barnett. Dr. Marquis Barnett is a generalist-trained Senior. Certified human resource Professional with more than 10 years of progressive HR experience in both the public and private sectors. He earned his doctorate of education degree in organizational learning at leadership at Vanderbilt. Dr. Barnett holds a master's of science degree from Villanova University, and a bachelor of science degree from Howard university. Marquis is the vice president of his local SHRM affiliate, the HR Association of Greater High Point. And he chairs the board of directors for the Winston-Salem Urban League.
In 2020, he was named one of business insiders, top 20 most inspiring HR leaders who are changing how America treats its workers. As a self-proclaimed culture curator and professional disruptor, Marquis hopes to assist the young professionals advisory council in shaping better workplaces. Professionally, he is the HR director for the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina and an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He and his wife, Denise are the proud parents of two children. We are extremely excited about today's conversation. With that Career Compass would like to welcome Dr. Marquis Barnett.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Thank you so much for having me guys.
Vernon Williams:
And thank you for joining us today. I'm going to jump right into things and I got to go back to something we read in your bio, and that is a self-proclaimed culture curator and professional disruptor. Tell us more about that, where that kind of self-proclaimed title comes from and why you feel that way?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Absolutely. My entire career has been about disrupting the status quo, asking difficult questions, and figuring out where are we? How did we get here? Is this where we need to be? And so with regards to being a professional disruptor, that is why I'm here. It's what I was called for. And in terms of being a culture curator, we hear lots about people saying, oh, we need to build a culture. I don't think about culture as something that can be built, because when you think about something that's built, it's very static. Once the building goes up, you can do very little to change it. I think about culture like going to a nice museum, right? You go to that museum, things look great, you leave, you come back six months later, it also looks great, but it looks totally different than the last time that you were there, so we've got to stop thinking about culture as this very static thing that never changes. And then, and only then can we really curate culture as a culmination of the experiences of the people that are involved in the culture.
Vernon Williams:
I absolutely love that response. And I love thinking about culture as something that is not necessarily stagnant and that just like people just like everything that kind of is around us were constantly evolving, so that makes a lot of sense. And I've had the opportunity to work with you on a number of projects already in my short time of being here. And so that's one of the reasons why I was really looking forward to this conversation, as well as a lot that's in your background that I can relate to, so I think this is going to be a fruitful conversation. I'm really looking forward to it. We've talked a little bit about your background. Give us a little bit more and talk to us a little bit about when was the first time you were aware of race? What do you recall about that experience? And what did you take away from it?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
I grew up always aware of my race, always aware of the fact that I was black. Mainly because I was one of few, if any at all black children in the spaces that I was occupying. And you know, my parents told me often when you go in here, there probably won't be anybody that looks like you, that doesn't mean that you don't belong here. There will be people who think you don't belong here because you don't look like them, prove them wrong, earn your spot, this is why you're here. And so for me, it was a very incensing feeling at eight years old, I remember being in the pool. This was the first time I ever felt different because of my race. There was a young man that told me, he called me the N word and told me to get out of the pool.
Vernon Williams:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
And in that moment I stood in everything my parents had ever told me and taught me, I stayed in the pool for the amount of time I wanted to be there, I got out of the pool and I went to talk to Jim, who was the owner in the manager of the pool. And I let him know what had happened, I asked him to call my parents and he did just that. And we were able to kind of have a conversation around it, which ended up with me being able to continue coming to the pool and that other young man not being able to come to the pool. But I learned early on what it means to have effective discourse around race.
Kristy Parola:
That is... Sorry for the silence. I had to sit and kind of like take that in. Because that's a great story, it's just one of those things that kind of makes me think like, wow, we should have come a lot further along in history to not be at that point anymore. But unfortunately we're still kind of in that same place. And so like it just amazes me the experience that I will never be able to relate to that you went through and I'm sure Vernon, I don't know if you've gone through any experiences like that, but just having a background like that is kind of unbelievable to me in a weird, but a way that I don't want to necessarily use the word appreciate, but I value that you've grown from that experience as well.
And so I guess something that makes me think is, in today's society it is very easy to offend someone, even if that was not the intent. According to research conducted by SHRM, 43% of American workers believe discussions about race are inappropriate at work. Should employees engage in conversations surrounding race while in the workplace? And how do you encourage them to do that actively?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Absolutely, so the first thing we've got to do is we have to be intentional about what conversations we're having. We can't just say conversations about race, race and what? At work, when we're talking about conversations about race at work, we need to be having conversations about how race impacts our team dynamics, how race impacts our service delivery, how race impacts our revenue generation, how race impacts all of these things. And so it's easy to want to shy away from it, right? When we just say, oh, we're going to talk about race at work. And then people can easily clam up because they have no clue where that conversation's going to go. As you said earlier, Kristy, we don't all have the same experiences. And because we don't have the same experiences, the moment that you start saying, oh, we're going to have a conversation about race, people they clamp up, right?
They clamp up because what if I say the wrong thing? What if I do the wrong thing? What if I'm not adding value to the conversation? But when employers, when groups of people, when just regular people decide, you know what, no, it's not let's have a conversation about race in the workplace. It's Hey folks, let's talk about the way that us being a group of cisgendered heterosexual white men, or how us being whatever the makeup of our group is. Let's talk about how this group is going to impact the service that we deliver based on our experiences. Then let's take it a step further. Now let's talk about where are the gaps in the service that we're going to deliver? What don't we know, based on the experiences that we bring to the table? And then what can we do to get those experiences represented?
Vernon Williams:
Yeah. I love what you're talking about there, and particularly around the business case for it, right? Because that takes a lot of the pressure and the anxiety out of the conversation, because we're not necessarily pointing at John, or Sue, or whomever, we're talking about how this makes sense for what we need to accomplish in terms of our business. And that is something that nobody can argue with because that's a concrete sort of fact, right.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Right. And you know, what I say often is people, organizations, teams, they approach it with this lofty goal of, oh, we're going to stamp out racism. And as admirable a goal is that may be, it is probably one of the most unrealistic goals that I've ever heard. And the reason is this, racism is a mindset and there are as many mindsets on this planet as there are people that exist on this planet. And so it is impossible for us to stamp out or to eliminate racism. But here's what we can do, we can eliminate racism in our practices as an organization.
We can say as a person, it does not matter to us what you do outside of this building, so long as you are not hurting or harming anyone, it is not important to us who and how you spend your time outside of work. But when you come here, you have to understand how your experiences shape your viewpoint that you come to do work. And then you have to understand what we require you to do within the context of the organization that you're serving, and the people that you're serving as a member of that organization.
Kristy Parola:
That's really great advice. And I actually would like to ask and take some things a step further. I think, I'm in the same audience group that we're looking to speak to the students and emerging professionals. And so with all that great advice that you've given, if I'm in the shoes of a young people manager, how do I take that information that you just gave and go to my team and implement it? Or what are some tips for somebody who's in a majority group, go to their team of maybe mostly minorities, or mix, or what have you, and be able to start that conversation and do it confidently?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Oh, absolutely. And I think the answer to that starts and ends with recognizing power imbalances. If you are a person that has power in your organization, or if you're a person that holds some sort of authority within that organization, essentially it is incumbent upon you to bring up these conversations and it's not a perfect science. There's not a playbook that anyone can give, but I will say this, as a person who has been black my entire life and will be black the rest of my life. When people who are not black attempt to talk to me about race, it becomes the most frustrating thing in the world that you see people who are very powerful, very dominant personalities, almost become meek and timid. No, no, no, no, no. I need you to give me the same energy when we're talking about race, as you do when we're talking about anything else, you may not be the expert on this topic, but if you're not giving this the energy that it requires, we're never going to get anywhere.
And so that's what we have to do is stop approaching it as this thing that we have to walk on eggshells around. We've got to take the power away from racism, we cannot allow racism to be the elephant in the room, taking up space. No, you cannot be an elephant in the room taking up space because then I can't see anyone else, I can't do anything else, right. Racism is something that's here, we've acknowledged it, we've shoved it off into a corner. We're not ignoring it, we're not saying that it doesn't exist, we're not saying that it's not here. We're just saying that we're not plopping it right in the middle of the room and having to talk around it and look around it.
Vernon Williams:
Yeah. I'm right there with you. And fortunately, I think and particularly in my career and I've been blessed to work in places where I think a degree of cultural sensitivity and training is often if not required then recommended. And so I don't know that I see as much of kind of the overt racism, right? And so my question though is, it's kind of the surface level sorts of things. What I've often heard is something along the lines of, I don't see color or I'm colorblind. Talk to us a little bit about why that language is not as helpful in moving the conversation forward?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
That language as well intending as it is, is more harmful than just about anything else. I say to people all the time, one of the things that I am the most proud of, if you look at my social identity, there are honestly no parts of my social identity that I want to take away. But one of the parts of my social identity I'm most proud of is being black. And for you to say that you don't see culture means that in effect, you do not see a whole part of me. That means that you are asking me to bring parts of myself to our conversation or to our relationship. And no relationship can thrive, whether it's a working relationship, whether it's a personal relationship, and even in the context of an organization, I cannot thrive in this culture.
If I am being asked to bring a part of myself and leave the other part of myself away from here, so that's why it's not helpful, right? We have to see the entire person. In an organization on a team, we would never ask someone, Hey, please drop off that one part of your identity at the door, it makes us really uncomfortable. No, we've got to embrace everybody for who they are, what they bring, because it's those experiences that lead to a diverse thought set that is going to allow us to best serve our customers and meet ultimately that bottom line.
Kristy Parola:
That's great feedback. I think that is probably one of my favorite things that you've mentioned so far, because I think that's somebody who you know, is a white woman. That's kind of your default in a way that's oh, I don't feel that way, I don't see it, but I definitely am understanding why that is not the way to go.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
It's typically though, because that's what you think you are supposed to say or you think that's what people want to hear, but what I'm going to challenge you and anyone that's listening to do, if you want to be an effective anti-racist, don't say what you think people want to hear say, say what you're feeling in that moment. It might be wrong, it very well may be the wrong thing to say. But the only way you're ever going to learn is from getting it out there and getting feedback and having positive and effective discourse about that thing that you said.
Kristy Parola:
Sure, sure, absolutely. Which kind of then having difficult conversations at work leads me to my next question, which is, can you tell me about a time that you engaged in a difficult conversation about race in the workplace?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Okay, we don't have that much time. No, I'm honestly, trying to extract one is difficult for me just because I have been a part of these conversations, but on top of being a part of these conversations, I've also facilitated these conversations. A big part of my role in human resources is to serve as a mediator and a facilitator when people have hit an impasse and they don't know how to effectively communicate with one another, so one example that I think comes to my mind mostly is, there was an issue once with an employee and another employee and the gentleman, he was a white gentleman. He just kind of off the top of his head. You know, he made the statement that, well, I just don't understand why that offends you people.
Vernon Williams:
Oh.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
And when he said that, of course, it was the end of the world, it was World War III, everything had blown up after that because all of the positive discourse they'd had, had been ended by him saying, I don't understand this one thing about you people. And you know, them kind of lumping that into meaning that he was a bad person. The ultimate reality there that we were able to get to was he got uncomfortable. And when people get uncomfortable, they say things, not things they don't mean, they say things in a way that they probably should not say them. And so what we had to do was to create an environment where everybody could be comfortable. I want you all, the group of African American employees, I want you all to be able to effectively tell him, what did you feel when he said that to you?
Why did that bother you, right? I don't want to hear anything about what your parents have told you. I want to know when those words came out of his mouth, what did you feel about this guy that you work across the hall from every single day? And in that conversation, when he heard what he had done to his working relationships, by using such flippant language, he took responsibility, he apologized, of course he said, that's not what I meant. That I think fell on deaf ears. But what we were able to get to from there was a place where everybody respected and understood that when we have these types of conversations, we've got to be more intentional about the language that we're using because we do have to work together.
Vernon Williams:
Yeah, I completely agree. I too have been involved in a number of those sort of challenging or difficult conversations. I can't say that they all went as well as it sounds like yours did, in the sense that at least there was ownership and recognition of clearly we could have done this better, I could have done this better. In the case of the employee that you're talking about, that they don't always end that way. And one of the things that I am somewhat curious about is that from an HR professional sort of perspective, and I know that SHRM did some DI research earlier in the year that we launched with our Together Forward @Work platform where a lot of HR professionals, I think it was upwards of 60 some odd percent, had acknowledged that there's a lot of room basically for improvement. What is your take on that in terms of where areas can be, or where we can improve? And why is that number so high, particularly amongst folks that I think have the ability to make such a change in the work environment?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
The number is so high and the number should be so high because we will never get it right. Because when we get it right, that means that it's time for us to change it, to continue changing it. There will always be room for improvement. Because as I said earlier, racism is a mindset. There are as many mindsets as there are people on the planet. And so just when we think we've had this thing figured out something else comes up, it becomes even more complex than it was the last time that we dealt with it. And that's the thing like equity is a journey, not a goal, right?
Equity is something that we will continue, we will always be doing it. It's not something that we say, oh, yep, we did equity. Let's check that goal off. Now let's change it. Let's move on to something else. And so that's why I'm very proud of my colleagues for being able to reflect and to say, yes, we have so much more work that we need to be doing. We have to continue to improve our anti-racism efforts. If we ever want to get to a place where everyone can feel comfortable talking about and considering race, and those issues, and how they impact the work that we're doing.
Kristy Parola:
And I'm sure as we all know the events that took place over the summer of 2020 brought the issue of race front and center. Do you feel like the efforts or conversations have decreased? And if so, what can employees or managers do to ensure the progress continues moving forward?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
I'm going to push back ever so slightly because that's what I do, when we say issues of race were found front and center in the summer of 2020, for some of us, issues of race are always front and center.
Kristy Parola:
Sure.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Whether, you know, and the reason I, and I know what your questions alluding to right, is the fact that you couldn't turn on the news without seeing protests following the murders of Brianna Taylor and George Floyd, and too many other people to name on this podcast that we're doing today. You're right, there was a lot of that happening in the media, so I think the conversation may have died on the media because there were so many other things to do because that's how TV and news media works. But I think that ultimately these conversations are continuing to happen in my workplace, in everyone's workplace that I know of, the conversations that we're having, we're seeing some of those small incremental changes that are continuing, even in the wake of some of the media presence dying down. Even small things which some people look at as being performative in nature, like giving Martin Luther King Day off when they previously had not, or companies that are picking up and now offering Juneteenth as a holiday on their company's calendar.
The conversations are continuing to happen. I don't think they've died down, but I cannot ignore the fact that there probably are people who feel like those conversations have died down. And I also can't ignore how afraid people may be to be the person that keeps bringing it up when it seems like everyone else is over having the conversation. But all I can do is to encourage you to keep having the conversations, because it won't be talked about if you are not pushing that envelope, if you are not continuing to ask people to discuss this with you.
Vernon Williams:
Marquis, as we start to kind of wrap this conversation up, I want to ask a question more kind of futuristic. And so what would it look like if we were to at least get close to getting this thing right? What would it look and feel like? What would be some of those traits? What could we see? What could we feel? If we were living in an environment that wasn't racist anymore, where cultures were safe, and things were accessible?
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
I think workplaces would feel like somewhere that you are designed to be. And when people think about work, they think about it as a means to an end, right? It is let me come in here and do this thing so I can get my paycheck and I can go do whatever that other thing is that I want to do. If we lived in a truly just, truly equitable, truly fair society work would be somewhere for everyone that they were designed to be, that they feel like they can see themselves when they walk in the door, everything that they see in their organization, everything that they feel in their organization, it feels like this is something that I can attain. It is something that at some point in my life is going to be meant for me.
The conversation about equity does not begin, nor does it end with race. The conversation about equity touches onto so many things. And when if at all, we were to ever get to a truly equitable society. That is what I'm hoping it would be like, that everyone feels like they are receiving that which they were destined for and that which is feeding them the moment that they walk in the door.
Vernon Williams:
Very well said. And as you kind of alluded to or spoke about earlier, it's a constant process. We're always going to be trying to evolve and get this thing right. And even then we'll probably, as we get closer to hopefully what that glory looks like, we're probably going to reassess and try to keep progressing.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
That's right.
Vernon Williams:
Marquis, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and insights regarding how we can successfully talk about race in the workplace.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
And remember not just race, we're not just talking about race in the workplace. We're talking about the way that race impacts our outputs, our inputs, and everything in between.
Vernon Williams:
Absolutely, thank you for the update and making sure we get it right. Because you're right, it's a much bigger topic than just race. And I think hopefully through listening to this podcast, our listeners will kind of take that into their own spaces, whether it's in the classroom or in the workplace, so they can implement positive change.
Dr. Marquis Barnett:
Thank you for the invitation.
Kristy Parola:
Yeah. Thank you so much, Marquis. And with that, we're going to bring this episode of Career Compass to a close. We'd like to thank SHRM and the SHRM Foundation for providing us with this platform. But more importantly, we'd like to thank you all for joining us and hope you stay with us throughout the season, as we discuss more topics like this episode.
Vernon Williams:
For more exclusive content, resources, and tools to help you succeed in your career consider joining SHRM as a student member, you can visit us at SHRM.org/students to learn more about being a part of a community of over 300,000 HR and business leaders who impact the lives of over 115 million employees worldwide.
Kristy Parola:
If you liked what you heard, we'd love your subscription. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google play, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. And do you have a topic you think we should cover or a guest we should hear from? We'd love to hear it, email us at careercompasspodcast@SHRM.org.
Vernon Williams:
Lastly, are you looking for more work and career related podcasts, check out All Things Work and Honest HR at SHRM.org/podcast. Thank you again for listening and we'll catch you next time, on the next episode of Career Compass.