The guest this time is Madison Butler, Chief Experience Officer at Grav, Founder at Blue Haired Unicorn, an outspoken diversity and inclusion advocate, and a culture queen!
With a background in talent development and attraction paired with a deep knowledge of DEI and culture, Madison's work is focused on creating equitable spaces and creating scalable strategies to achieve psychological safety. She is an outspoken advocate for mental health, removing the stigma around trauma, DEI and the ability to be "human at work". She is passionate about facilitating hard conversations through storytelling, data, and "tough empathy".
Questions for Madison include:
As a prominent advocate for diversity both in life and on social media, why do you believe many companies still face challenges building diverse workforces?
Why don't more leaders embrace the value of a more diverse workforce?
What three key areas should companies prioritize this year to advance diversity and inclusion efforts?
Should 'toxic' but high-performing employees keep their jobs?
You've mentioned that the concept of "culture fit" is misleading—could you elaborate on why you believe this?
AI is being increasingly used in the sourcing and hiring stages of the employee lifecycle. What are the risks to DEI of relying on AI?
We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.
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The guest this time is Madison Butler, Chief Experience Officer at Grav, Founder at Blue Haired Unicorn, an outspoken diversity and inclusion advocate, and a culture queen!
With a background in talent development and attraction paired with a deep knowledge of DEI and culture, Madison's work is focused on creating equitable spaces and creating scalable strategies to achieve psychological safety. She is an outspoken advocate for mental health, removing the stigma around trauma, DEI and the ability to be "human at work". She is passionate about facilitating hard conversations through storytelling, data, and "tough empathy".
Questions for Madison include:
As a prominent advocate for diversity both in life and on social media, why do you believe many companies still face challenges building diverse workforces?
Why don't more leaders embrace the value of a more diverse workforce?
What three key areas should companies prioritize this year to advance diversity and inclusion efforts?
Should 'toxic' but high-performing employees keep their jobs?
You've mentioned that the concept of "culture fit" is misleading—could you elaborate on why you believe this?
AI is being increasingly used in the sourcing and hiring stages of the employee lifecycle. What are the risks to DEI of relying on AI?
We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.
Feature Your Brand on the HRchat Podcast
The HRchat show has had 100,000s of downloads and is frequently listed as one of the most popular global podcasts for HR pros, Talent execs and leaders. It is ranked in the top ten in the world based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness. The podcast is also ranked as the Best Canadian HR Podcast by FeedSpot and one of the top 10% most popular shows by Listen Score.
Want to share the story of how your business is helping to shape the world of work? We offer sponsored episodes, audio adverts, email campaigns, and a host of other options. Check out packages here.
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom. And visit hrgazettecom.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and joining me on the show today is Madison Butler, chief Experience Officer over at Grav, founder at Blue Haired Unicorn, an outspoken diversity and inclusion advocate and a culture queen. Madison is a New Englander at heart, but moved over to Austin in 2017. I was in Austin just a few days ago. Listeners, what an amazing city. Her work is focused around creating equitable spaces and creating scalable strategies to achieve psychological safety. She is an outspoken advocate for mental health psychological safety. She is an outspoken advocate for mental health, removing the stigma around trauma, dei and the ability to be human at work. She's also passionate about facilitating hard conversations through storytelling, data and tough empathy. She has a background in talent development and attraction, paired with a deep knowledge of DEI and culture. Madison, it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show today.
Speaker 3:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to finally be here.
Speaker 2:
So, beyond my reintroduction just now, why don't you take a minute or two, introduce yourself to our listeners? Perhaps there are things that we missed.
Speaker 3:
Well, my name is Madison Butler. You got that part right. Most people call me Maddie. My pronouns are she, her, and you are correct. I spend a great deal of time in my career and my personal life trying to think through how to give people a better experience while being a human. I think being a human is deeply messy and somehow, some way that never gets less messy. I used to be under the impression that as I got older it would get less messy, and somehow it just gets messier. And so for me, when I think about what I want people to experience in the way of work and in the way of existing.
Speaker 3:
It's really that being able to exist out loud, safely, without feeling like there are repercussions for how you exist and exactly who you are. So, at my role in Grav, at my role as a consultant, as a speaker, I spend a lot of time diving into what that actually means and what it means to create scalable strategies around creating safe environments that allow people to thrive as exactly who they are.
Speaker 2:
Thank you very much. So, as a prominent advocate for diversity, both in life and on social media, why do you believe, Madison? Many companies still face challenges in building a diverse workforce still face challenges in building a diverse workforce.
Speaker 3:
So, unfortunately, I am the absolute cynic in this conversation. I think companies face challenges because, quite frankly, I think a lot of companies don't care. You know, I think in 2020, we saw this influx of caring and I'm putting that very much in air quotation marks but it wasn't so much the act of caring as it was the act of publicity. I think a lot of companies felt so much the act of caring as it was the act of publicity. I think a lot of companies felt forced into the corner of caring. They felt like their customer base required them to care. Therefore, they had to.
Speaker 3:
In a world that is centered so heavily on capitalism, unfortunately, money does rule everything around us, and so if money points in the direction of acting like you care, then companies will do that. However, this is not work that you can do simply for the sake of doing it. You have to actually give a heck, you have to give a crap, you have to be willing to invest in it and, unfortunately, companies who are doing it for the smoke and mirrors effect will always face challenges, because that's not the real work. Real work is not saying the right thing, it's not posting another social media post. It's not touting your donation dollars.
Speaker 3:
It is truly doing the hard work and unfortunately or fortunately, this work is hard. It is an investment and it is every person, every day work. There is not a project timeline on creating these spaces. It is something you have to work for in your organization every single day, and as humans, we unfortunately we love a timeline, we love an end date, and when you tell people there is no end date to this, I think it's a little bit befuddling for them. And so I think a lot of companies face challenges because they wanted a quick fix, they wanted a bandaid, they wanted the thing that made them look good, but they didn't want to do good, and so, for me, the reason that companies will continue to face challenges is because companies continue to not actually invest in doing the right work.
Speaker 2:
Why aren't leaders getting it? I mean, we talk about this a lot on this show, madison okay and we talk a lot about the fact that you create a more diverse workforce, you'll have more ideas, you'll have more innovation, you'll make more money, your bottom line will be improved. Why aren't leaders, why aren't they getting it?
Speaker 3:
So, unfortunately, I think there's a world in which there are people who get it and people who don't, and the people who don't it's because they don't want to. There is an imbalance of power in the world as it exists today, and so when you tell people we're supposed to be creating people who are better than us, we're supposed to be creating people who are smarter, more skilled than we are, but that can also be a really scary thing, because it inherently puts your place of power on the line, and so for a lot of leaders, I actually think it is a threat to their ability to be comfortable. It is a threat to their job, at least in their mind, when we create these spaces, and so a lot of people they know the outcomes. However, they're scared of them and so they avoid them, and so I never want to get into the conversation of people don't get it. People get it. However, you can lead a horse to water. You can't make it drink, and so there are people who will actively work against this work because it does not benefit them in the way that they want it to, and so I think for a lot of companies, that's another really hard conversation, because you have to be all rowing in the same direction for this work to work. And so when you have leaders who are adamantly fighting against it, it's going to inhibit your ability to move forward, your ability to progress.
Speaker 3:
And so I recently had a company I guess not recently anymore, it's 2024 now but I had a company who recently said to me when I was consulting with them you know, we, all of our leaders, really care about diversity. However, we have one leader who really, really hates this work. But they're a great leader. And I would argue to say you cannot be a great leader without caring inherently about the people that you need. You can be a great performer, you can create positive outcomes in terms of revenue and business, but you cannot be a good leader if you don't care about the humans who you lead. And so I would actually challenge us to say are those people leaders or are they just managers? You can be a manager and not be a good leader. But the people who don't get it it's not that they don't get it, they just choose to not act on it. We it's not that they don't get it.
Speaker 5:
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Speaker 2:
Okay, well, let's try and um uh direct their focus. Let's try and give them some, some goals, some, uh, some actionable items. We always like to offer actionable items on this show, madison. What, what three key areas should companies prioritize this year, in the next 12 months, because we are halfway through 2024 already?
Speaker 3:
uh, to advance diversity and inclusion efforts which is so wild to really think about. Just side note, the fact that we're in June is blowing my mind. So I think for me, the top three things that I center on as a leader are myself being able to be vulnerable about what I'm experiencing, who I am, what I'm good at, what I'm not, who I am, what I'm good at, what I'm not good at. I think as a leader, it is really easy to lead from a place of trauma rather than from a place of healing, because it feels scary to tell your team that, hey, I'm not having a good day or hey, I don't know how to do this, or I have had hard things happen to me, because it feels like you need to be strong in that position. But being a vulnerable leader has made me a better one. Allowing my team to see the real me and not just like the quote unquote manager version of me I think has allowed my team to be more open with me and in that it allows us to have a relationship where I understand what's going on in their world, which means I ultimately better understand their performance.
Speaker 3:
The other thing that I think is really important is really thinking through the concept of authenticity. I think it has been a really massive buzzword for the last 72 months or so, but I don't think a lot of companies actually have a great understanding of what authenticity means. I think when we think of authenticity, we're always thinking of the warm fuzzies, and this work is not warm or fuzzy. To be quite frank, however, authenticity is not just Pride Month or Black History Month or the warm fuzzy parts of people's identity. Authenticity is all of the hard stuff. It's actually accumulation of how you exist and, as you know, being a human is messy, and so how we exist isn't often warm and fuzzy. And so being able to accept that life happens, and it happens at the macro level, it happens at the micro level. I think COVID is a great example of humanity kind of experienced one major catastrophe altogether at one time, and that inherently changed how we work. It changed how we showed up, it changed how we felt, it changed our mental health. But there are also the micro things that happen at the individual level. People go through divorces, people go through sick parents, sick children, they go through money issues, and all of that impacts how we show up at work as leaders if we are more willing to understand the things going on in our people's lives. The more we understand them, the more they trust us and the better idea we have of how to run our team in a functional way.
Speaker 3:
But that means we have to be willing to have hard, uncomfortable conversations. As a leader, the hardest thing we talk about are feelings. You know, it's not the metrics, it's not the numbers, it is not the day-to-day and the to-dos. It is managing people's emotion and humanity. It's really a hard thing because it can also be draining, it can also be uncomfortable, but I do think the more we focus on true authenticity which again is the hard stuff the better we make our teams.
Speaker 3:
And the last part is really kind of shelving that, which is having hard conversations, being willing to part with people who are not rowing in the same direction. You know, one of the things that I often talk about is not everyone is meant to be at a company forever, and that means when we are focused on DEI, when we're focused on building safe, equitable spaces, it means we have to be willing to say goodbye to the people who work against those things. And oftentimes I get the question, which is okay, well, what if so-and-so is a high performer? Unfortunately, you have to be willing to make those kinds of decisions, to say you care about this work.
Speaker 3:
Someone being a high performer does not negate them being someone who causes harm. It does not negate them being someone who has been abusive to other employees. And that, I think, is really the hard part, because you may have worked with someone for 10 years and you've had a great experience with them. However, they may have tendencies towards other people that are harmful. And now you're asking yourself well, maybe they're just reading too much into it, maybe that's not what they meant. And I think the real question is asking yourself well, why is my experience so different? The more we believe people and their experiences, the more open and honest conversations we can have, not only with ourselves but our teams, and in those conversations, it may mean that we are saying goodbye to people and, unfortunately, when you do this work and you do it correctly, that is just part of the game.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so my job on this show is to be the interview, to play devil's advocate. Okay, so I'm going to do that now. How does one reconcile the fact that a high performer let's use an example a high performer within a sales team okay, because that's a very easy, visible form of adding to the bottom line. How does a leader reconcile the fact that there's someone who can bring in lots of sales but they also perhaps create a toxic work environment? They could be a bit of a bully, but they are growing the business because of what they do Like. Where should the priority lie? Where does the priority lie? Is this a middle ground where the leaders can help these strong personalities, these folks, become better colleagues?
Speaker 3:
So I'm again I'm the cynic in the room Like it is not our job as leaders to make people not bullies. It's not my job to teach you how to be a good human, Like you have had most of your adult life to sort that. That is not my job. My job is to make sure that I'm creating safe spaces for the people on my team, and so what we do when we allow bullies to stay on our teams is we inhibit everyone else's job. We inhibit everyone else's ability to perform. And so is one high revenue earner worth the other 10 on your team who are also earning revenue? Probably not.
Speaker 3:
People are always going to be one of our most expensive cost centers and it behooves us to take care of them. And keeping a bully in the room and asking someone to talk nicely to the person who's caused them harm is never going to reap positive outcomes. You know, I think it is again one of the things that we are convinced that we can teach people to care about this work. We can teach people to want to not be racist or homophobic, but unfortunately, that's just not how it works. There is not enough DEI seminars in the world to make someone care about this who doesn't care about it? This who doesn't care about it? And so it is, in my personal opinion, always the best decision to think about from a place of organizational fairness. Is it fair to keep one high performer when it harms the rest of the team? In almost every scenario, the answer is going to be no. It does not benefit us to keep one person when they harm the other 10 or however many people you have you.
Speaker 2:
You believe that the concept of culture fit can be misleading. Uh, we did a whole bunch of episodes on this concept of culture fit a couple years back, I seem to remember. Could you elaborate on on why you believe that this is the case?
Speaker 3:
oh for sure. So, ironically, culture fit was the first thing I ever got on stage and talked about, and I feel very, very deeply about it. However, I didn't always feel the way I feel about it now. You know, when I first joined the tech world at the beginning of my career, culturefit was something that we used really widely in the talent space and it sounds very warm and fuzzy, it sounds very fraternal, it feels very much like it's centered on camaraderie, and I will remember it forever the day that my brain changed about that.
Speaker 3:
We were interviewing someone for a sales role and she was an older woman, very, very wonderful. Everyone was so excited about her and when it came to her final round, which was with, ultimately, the person who was going to make the decision the VP at the time he came out of the interview and was like a hard no, and I am very nosy and I kept asking why, why, why, why, why. And he kept just saying culture fit. And I kept trying to get him to explain what he actually meant and he eventually got so frustrated with me he was like she's just too old for the team and I remember my brain, kind of like I for the team and I remember my brain, kind of like I had like alarm bells going off, being like, oh my God, that's illegal, that is an illegal thing. And then I really started to think about how often had we said culture fit, when what we really meant was too black, too gay, too fat, too old, too young, too feminine, too whatever, and we were using it as a way to circle or center people out, when what we really wanted people to do was fit in.
Speaker 3:
And you can't say that you're looking to diversify your organization while simultaneously saying you need people to fit in. When you ask people to fit, all you're doing is asking them to fold themselves into this pretzel of someone. They're really not, and I can tell you, as someone who holds a couple of marginalized identities, what we end up asking people to do is code switch, which means we bring them in. They don't actually fit here, but they know that that's a requirement of them, and so they become a different version of themselves for eight hours a day, and that is not cohesive to anyone's mental health. It is exhausting to be two people, and how can you expect someone to be a high performer and so good at their job eight hours a day, when they're also thinking about did I smile hard enough? Did I laugh hard enough? Was I too loud? Was I too quiet? Also, eight hours a day, you cannot do those two things simultaneously and be best at both of them.
Speaker 3:
And so what I really started to think about was how can we make sure that A I get it? We don't want to hire assholes. That's, you know, common sense. However, what we shouldn't be asking for is let's hire the same person, a replica of them, over and over and over, because, again, if I want to hang out with everyone on my team on the weekend, guess what? I've probably hired people who are very similar to me, and that isn't diversity. That isn't what we're looking for. We're not looking for people who all get along.
Speaker 3:
I actually think it is very, very healthy and normal to hire people who you don't want to hang out with on the weekends. That is completely fine and okay. So when we think about how we add to our teams, one of the things I always ask is like, whose voice is not at this table? And the beautiful thing about that is, from the lens of intersectionality, you never get to a place where everyone's voice is represented at your table, there is always someone who is not here, and so, for me, when I think about how I want to structure my teams, that is what I lead with, whose voice is not represented here, because the less blind spots I have on my teams, the better products we can create.
Speaker 4:
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Speaker 2:
Okay, thank you very much. I wonder now if you could maybe share a lesson from your career that has continuously motivated you to persevere. But I'm going to challenge you to do it in 60 seconds or less. Go.
Speaker 3:
So I think for me, I was under the impression that I had to be a certain kind of woman, a certain kind of black person, a certain kind of queer person in order to be successful. I thought that I had to fit into these little boxes that were pre-created for me. I thought that I had to fit into these little boxes that were pre-created for me, and the thing that I have learned is that the longer I try to fit myself into boxes, the less I know myself, and the less I know myself, I'm not as good at my job. The thing that has made me good at what I do is knowing exactly who I am, what I need, and honoring those things about myself In the workplace, in my relationships, in my personal life. Not allowing society dictate how I show up has been, for me, the thing that has been the most motivating and the thing that has really unlocked my career.
Speaker 2:
Love it and you had about 10 seconds to spare. Good work, good work. Next question take a little bit longer, if you want. Ai is being increasingly used in the sourcing and hiring stages of the employee lifecycle. Of course, I chat to HR leaders all the time on this show and elsewhere about. You know how they're implementing AI in their processes and their big reservations still remains around the sourcing and the recruitment stages because they worry about inherent biases. What are the risks to DEI of relying on AI too much?
Speaker 3:
I think it's just that you know, unfortunately, in all of tech, there are humans behind all of this right, and in humans there are biases, and so, inherently, when tech is created by humans, biases are built in. I am openly not an advocate for AI, especially in DEI work, because I believe in centering the human and I don't think that technology can center the human well, and so I think for me that is the biggest risk, and also people thinking that they can learn about people's experiences through AI I think will lead to some really harmful outcomes.
Speaker 2:
Rock and roll. And just finally for today, madison how can folks connect with you and learn more about all the cool things that you get up?
Speaker 3:
to. You can find me on my website, which is bluehairedunicorncom, or you can find me on LinkedIn. Madison Butler, I am the one with the blue hair. I'm pretty easy to spot.
Speaker 2:
Well, that just leaves me to say for today Madison Butler with the blue hair, Thank you very much for being my guest today.
Speaker 3:
Thank you for having me. This was fun. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:
And listeners as always. Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.