356: How to Build a Gender Fair Workplace with Brad Johnson and David Smith

356: How to Build a Gender Fair Workplace with Brad Johnson and David Smith

I was so thrilled to sit down again with my dear friends and true allies, Dave Smith and Brad Johnson . Every time we connect, it feels like a warm reminder of what sustained, meaningful allyship really looks like—not just showing up when it's trending, but doing the steady, daily work that actually moves the needle. Listening to them walk through their allyship trilogy, from Athena Rising to The Good Guys and now their latest book, Fair Share, brought back so many memories of my own journey navigating corporate America as a new mom. (Trust me, I've shed my fair share of tears over spilled milk in a workplace closet!) What I love most about Brad and Dave is how they balance deep research with practical, real-world solutions that lift everyone up. They remind us that creating gender fairness isn't just about asking individual allies to do more. It's about fixing the broken systems so doing the right thing becomes the default. Key Themes * Caregiving Skills Build Better Workplace Leaders Active caregiving and fatherhood develop crucial human skills like empathy and emotional intelligence, which directly transfer into effective leadership at work. "Dad's brains begin to shift and change, too. We're developing these skills around empathy that translates right back into the workplace when we go back to work." — David Smith * Moving from Individual Allyship to Systemic Change Relying solely on individual (s)heroics isn't enough to achieve true equity. Organizations must embed allyship and gender fairness directly into company policies, metrics, and manager training. "All of these ally efforts are gonna be sort of one by one by one forever. Until the workplace changes, you see all the estimates that we have about a century to go to get to real gender parity." — Brad Johnson * Supporting Paid Leave and Caregiving Transitions Creating a culture that normalizes and actively plans for parental and caregiving leave for both mothers and fathers improves employee retention and strengthens managerial capabilities. "Think about the work that's gotta be done when he or she leaves the workforce for this paid leave period, the transition back into the workforce with a plan. The minute you can do that, you're making better managers." — David Smith * Unlocking Hidden Talent Through Returnships Organizations facing talent shortages can tap into a massive, highly qualified pool of candidates by creating clear pathways for individuals returning to the workforce after extended caregiving breaks. "Organizations aren't looking at those women, and they're forgetting that. Half the people at the top of the curve on IQ, EQ, creativity, they're out there if you would only create a glide path to return to your organization." — Brad Johnson Actionable Takeaway for Listeners Audit and support your managerial capabilities: To move from individual efforts to systemic fairness, organizations must carefully select managers based on competencies and actively train them to execute flexible work policies, support parental leave transitions, and lead inclusively. Follow Brad and Dave's work at https://workplaceallies.com/

355: Moving Male Allyship Forward in the Age of AI and the Manosphere with Robert Baker

If you've ever found yourself scrolling through social media, wondering if we are somehow slipping backward into the dark ages of workplace dynamics, you are definitely not alone. It is easy to look at the massive rise of toxic online ecosystems and feel a bit of existential dread. That is why I talked with Robert Baker, who always grounds me. He has this incredible gift for taking a heavy, whack-a-mole topic and infusing it with actionable clarity. We dive deep into why male allyship isn't about being an individual superhero, how global shifts are impacting our teams, and why—despite the algorithmic headwinds—there is still so much room for hope and real human connection. Key Themes From Our Conversation The Evolution of the Manosphere and Its Workplace Impact: We unpacked the troubling rise of the "manosphere"—an online ecosystem of influencers exploiting young men's loneliness to promote dominance and misogyny. Robert noted how this spills directly into the attitudes of the next generation entering our workforce. "I can't believe that people think these men are heroes, because basically what they're doing is they're exploiting the loneliness, the misery that younger boys and men can have. And these guys have kind of filled the vacuum with this misogyny." — Robert Baker The Power of Community Over Individual Heroism: True allyship isn't about being a lone savior; it's about creating a culture of positive peer pressure and shared community standards where calling out exclusionary behavior doesn't feel like a dangerous, solo mission. "I think creating an environment where you say, look, here are the standards of behavior in our community, and police it in a way. Using those standards to make sure that we all stick to something very positive." — Robert Baker The Business Imperative of DEI in Europe: While the U.S. landscape faces its own unique hurdles, European organizations continue to lean heavily into diversity and inclusion goals. This isn't just about compliance; it's driven by a firm understanding that diverse teams deliver better performance and innovation. "Europe still believes in this. I think many companies in Europe still believe in it, but they believe in it for business reasons, because they believe that they're going to get better team performance, they think diverse teams are better." — Robert Baker Mitigating Algorithmic Bias and Ensuring Equitable AI Access: Artificial intelligence is a major inflection point for gender equity. Leaders must actively step up to manage inherent data biases and ensure that access to exciting tech developments isn't monopolized by the traditional majority. "Certainly I'm seeing an even greater recognition that leaders need to enable equitable access to AI tools, and also make sure that the systems and the processes that are used within the company that uses AI create fair outcomes." — Robert Baker Actionable Takeaway for Listeners Create Positive Peer Pressure: Don't try to be a lone hero. Focus on building a community within your organization that establishes clear, respectful standards of behavior. By normalizing everyday micro-interventions collectively—like speaking up when someone is talked over in a meeting—you make inclusion the default system rather than an individual burden.

354: Bringing Psychological Safety to Life for Leaders with Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig

How do we actually live out psychological safety, rather than just talking about it as some grand, academic theory? A couple of years ago, Minette Norman and Karolin Helbig came out with the Psychological Safety Playbook. I've been using her practical phrases in my own training sessions ever since (with full credit, of course!). But as any facilitator, parent, or human being knows, putting this stuff into practice is darn hard. You want to be the supportive expert, but then real-world pressures—like meeting targets, sudden organizational shifts, or just plain old fear of looking foolish—kick in. That's why I sat down with them to talk about their new follow-up book. They wrote it because change-makers kept coming to them on tour, saying, "Okay, we read the basics, but now we're hitting roadblocks. What next?" What I love about their approach is that it's completely "no fluff." They give us real, actionable strategies to bake inclusion right into the DNA of our everyday work life, even when things get a little messy. Key Themes from the Discussion Courage as Vulnerability, Not Heroics. True leadership in a psychologically safe environment isn't about having a flawless track record or acting like a superhero. It requires the humility to acknowledge that you don't have all the answers and to actively invite your team to fill in your blind spots. "It's not about the big heroic acts. It's really about the courage to be vulnerable, for example. Particularly as a leader, that's not easy to do..." — Karolin Helbig The Intentional Practice of Listening. Listening is often treated as an obvious, baseline skill, but true listening requires a conscious commitment to sit with silence and process what is being said, rather than rushing to respond or dominate the room. "It sounds so obvious that we all know how to do it... and it is so darn hard, right? It really is. And we often think we're listening when we're not." — Minette Norman Recognizing Personal Emotional Triggers. Building psychological safety is a slow process that can be shattered instantly by an unmanaged, defensive reaction. Developing self-awareness around your own physical stress signals helps create a vital pause between a trigger and your response. "Psychological safety is really slow to build and quick to break. And if you can avoid these breaks. By becoming more aware of your reactions and handling them more skillfully, then a lot is gained." — Karolin Helbig Shifting the Narrative Around Failure. For teams to innovate, leaders must actively destigmatize mistakes. This means moving away from finger-pointing and instead treating unexpected outcomes as valuable learning experiments, a process that must be modeled from the top down. "If you're trying something new, and certainly if we're trying to innovate, there will be failure along the way. So the question is, how quickly can we learn from them and improve and move forward?" — Minette Norman Designing for Inclusion via Rotating Roles. Inclusion doesn't happen by accident; it has to be deliberately engineered into team dynamics. Using a rotating role like an "Inclusion Booster" ensures that monitoring the health of a meeting becomes a shared team habit rather than solely the leader's responsibility. "Meetings by default are not inclusive. So we need to design them for inclusion. The idea of the inclusion booster is just to have a rotating role of somebody in facilitating the meeting and paying attention that we actually behave in the way we earlier defined." — Karolin Helbig Actionable Takeaway for Listeners To move your team from theory to practice, introduce the "Inclusion Booster" role into your next recurring meeting. Rotate this responsibility among different team members each week, tasking them with observing meeting dynamics, ensuring equal airtime, and calling out interruptions using a lighthearted tool like the "ELMO" (Enough, Let's Move On) principle. Follow Karolin and Minette at https://thepsychologicalsafetyplaybook.com/

353: Behind the Shiny Objects: Real Inclusivity in a Changing World with Katryn Wright

You might remember Katryn from episode 292, where we dove deep into the behavioral blueprint for inclusion. Well, a lot can happen in a year—or in our current case, since the wild ride of the 2026 election—and the DEI landscape is shifting beneath our feet. I'll admit, when I first started this work ten years ago, I thought we could just shout from the rooftops that inclusion matters and everyone would just magically get it. But as we look at the headlines today, it's clear that "shiny object syndrome" has left us with a lot of noise and not enough real, systemic change. Katryn and I sit down to unpack what global leaders are actually doing right now to push past the performative and get to the heart of what makes workplaces genuinely fair. Key Themes from the Conversation * Moving from Noise to Systemic Change. Organizations frequently focus on highly public, performative declarations of inclusivity rather than restructuring the underlying processes that perpetuate bias. "Organizations were doing a lot of the shiny stuff... doing what we would call noisy things, right? Proclaiming, saying, being public... but obviously that not necessarily translating to real-world change." — Katryn Wright * The Problem with Unconscious Bias Training. Treating broad, one-size-fits-all training modules as a standalone solution is ineffective and can create artificial metrics that trigger cultural backlash. "An awful amount of money was spent on something that the science shows is... ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst." — Katryn Wright * Inclusion as an Aspiration, Not a Default Value. Framing inclusion as a predefined company value mistakenly implies that the work is already complete, whereas framing it as an ongoing aspiration invites employees to actively participate in closing the gap. "When we talk about inclusion as a value, it is not as effective as when we talk about inclusion as an aspirational goal... it suggests that we've been missing a trick to be bringing people on as much as we can." — Katryn Wright * Precision and Data Science in Workplace Fairness. True progress requires identifying the exact inflection points in employee experiences—like hiring, promotion, and retention stages—where disparities emerge, and applying targeted behavioral interventions. "Let's go and be as precise as possible about changing behavior in that exact situation... when we are able to be as precise as possible about which specific behaviors need to change, we can get to those outcomes." — Katryn Wright Actionable Takeaway for Listeners Stop trying to de-bias your entire team all at once with sweeping declarations. Instead, pick one specific process in your daily workflow—whether it's how you audit resumes, run performance reviews, or distribute project assignments—and analyze the data to find where the equity gaps lie. Designing small, targeted interventions at precise moments is how real cultural evolution happens. Follow Katryn at https://www.morethannow.co.uk/

352: Better Leadership Starts with a Better Night of Sleep with Dr. Carlos Nunez

Sad to admit, after 350+ episodes, I have never dedicated a full show to sleep . I'll be the first to admit that I've been doing a ton of deep-diving into sleep lately. Between life changes, career shifts, and navigating perimenopause, my nights haven't exactly been peaceful . In fact, coming off a rough night myself, I'm sitting here with a massive afternoon coffee, fully aware that I reached for a sugary lunch to get through the slump! We've all been trapped in that vicious cycle, right ? But today, we are busting the toxic, old-school corporate narrative that sleeping is lazy or just for babies. To help us break it down, I'm joined by the brilliant Dr. Carlos Nunez, Chief Medical Officer at ResMed . Carlos brings decades of medical expertise—and some truly humbling personal stories—to show us why sleep isn't just a healthy habit. Sleep is the absolute foundation of inclusive, effective leadership and a kinder workplace . Key Themes from the Conversation * The Foundational Pillar of Human Health For decades, society has obsessed over diet and exercise trends, while treating sleep deprivation like a corporate badge of honor . In reality, sleep is the baseline that determines whether those other health goals even happen . "People are starting to realize it's not just one of the three pillars, it's probably the foundation on which the other two pillars sit." — Dr. Carlos Nunez * The Direct Link Between Poor Sleep and Workplace Behavior A severe lack of sleep impairs cognitive function and emotional regulation to a level equivalent to intoxication, which directly drives erratic, negative, or toxic leadership behaviors in the workplace . "I was extremely sleep-deprived, and I remember being in a meeting, and I went off, like, in a way that I've never done before. I probably looked scary to my team because I was so sleep-deprived." — Dr. Carlos Nunez * The Hidden Danger of Digital Engagement While blue light filters are helpful, the real disruptor keeping our minds awake at night is the mental stimulation and chemical rushes from pre-bedtime screen use. "What's worse than the light is the activation of your nervous system. The dopamine hits that you get from doomscrolling TikTok or social media for 30 minutes." — Dr. Carlos Nunez * The Biological Toll of Untreated Sleep Disorders Ignoring long-term sleep issues due to ego or stigma does more than cause daytime fatigue—it starves the body of oxygen and significantly escalates severe cardiovascular and long-term cognitive health risks . "The research shows untreated sleep apnea, within 3 years, you have a 35% chance of dying... Your risk for cardiovascular mortality is 55%." — Dr. Carlos Nunez * The Mind-Quieting Power of Arbitrary Focus When workplace stress and a lack of situational closure spark late-night rumination, shifting the brain toward simple, structured mental exercises can effectively short-circuit intrusive thoughts . "Getting your brain to focus on something that's really not thinking, that's kind of easy to do, all of a sudden, you drift off." — Dr. Carlos Nunez One Actionable Takeaway To protect your health and show up better for your team, establish a strict 30-minute digital wind-down routine before bed. Swap out the late-night doomscrolling or email checking for a period of quiet mindfulness. If your brain starts ruminating on tomorrow's to-do list, physically write down those 3 or 4 lingering tasks on a notepad to trick your mind into a sense of closure, or practice a simple, low-stakes mental word game to help your nervous system gently drift off . Learn more about Carlos' research at https://sleepsurvey.resmed.com/