The Right DEI Mindset

Good afternoon, Cadre community, and happy Friday. Doctor E. Here. Hope you are doing well. Hope you've had a wonderful week. I am coming to you from the Twin Cities where it is a little blustery, had a little dust up from snow, but all in all, it's been a fairly fantastic winter and I am, and we are so appreciative. I wanted to talk a little bit today about the Dei mindset and what I think is the most favorable Dei mindset and by my mentality of pushing the needle, moving things forward, stretching yourself, your team, your organization, all of those kinds of things.

Happy Friday to you, lover Sue. I so appreciate you joining me today as I talk about Dei mindset, and as I was saying, by mindset I mean mentality approach. How do you engage? What's the best way to move forward, both as an individual and as an organization? And what's kind of the mantra that you can kind of carry forward with you, something that can guide your efforts, something that can really give you kind of a blueprint to share when you need to stretch yourself, when you need to stretch others.

And the mindset is very simple. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable if you aren't making folks uncomfortable with your dei efforts. If folks aren't feeling stretched, pushed or nudged or needled, if you aren't giving folks reason or pause to think, think about how they talk about things, think about how they view things, think about what might need to happen to make folks grow, then you aren't really doing your dei efforts a good service. So think about that in terms of comfort level. Think about that in terms of how are you stretching, how are you pushing the needle in ways that challenge folks, not necessarily turn people away, but really give folks the opportunity to question, to interrogate, to reflect both internally with self, as well as what you're doing with your team dynamics and your organizations.

It's not supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to be easy. But at the same time, it is an opportunity, an opportunity to think about what's been done, what has efforts really looked like up to this point. And DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. So all of your work around diversity, all of your work around difference and how folks are different, all of your work around equity or how things are working to create some semblance of synergy and balance, in terms of outcomes and results, how are you bringing and practicing inclusion and allowing folks to utilize and share their voice?

What does it mean to have voice at a decision making table and all of those kinds of ways where you're bringing folks into your organization. You're hoping that they utilize their voices to make your organization better, but you also want them to feel valued within your organization. So think about Dei that way. Great question. And so if your DeI efforts aren't pushing the needle, if they aren't making folks a little bit uncomfortable or challenging them to expand their horizons, to broaden their viewpoints, to really reflect on what it is they know, and even I would say, more importantly, what it is and how that they've come to know those things, then I think your Dei efforts can be somewhat improved.

So think about that, getting yourself comfortable with being uncomfortable, and then also think about ways you can enact that. What does it look like to challenge yourself, to push the needle and to push others? So I'm Dr. E. Thanks for joining me today. And that's the Dei mindset. I'll see you next week.