NOEL: Hello, welcome to the Meetings Done Right podcast. This is a podcast about running better meetings in conjunction with the Table XI Inclusion Cards. And today, we are talking not just about a single card but we're talking generically about inclusive culture and meetings. And we have a special guest, Elise Zelechowski. Elise, would you like to introduce yourself? ELISE: Sure. Thanks so much for having me. Elise Zelechowski , I'm the Director of Social Impact for the global software consultancy, ThoughtWorks. ASHLEY: Welcome, Elise. ELISE: Thank you. NOEL: By the time that this podcast comes through on our podcast feed, we'll have a number of episodes talking about specific behaviors that are to be discouraged or promoted in a meeting. But in this episode, what we want to talk a little bit more generally is about inclusivity and having an inclusive culture. First of all, what does that mean to you to have an inclusive culture in your company's discussions? ELISE: For me, having an inclusive culture really means that you’ve built enough trust among members of your team that people feel that they can bring their authentic selves to work and to meetings, and that they feel comfortable and empowered to actively participate in conversations with their colleagues. NOEL: I guess the two part question here is -- two huge parts so that we can take it one at a time. But what are some things you can do to work towards that goal? And then what are some of the benefits that that provides? Let's talk about the benefits first. What should you see if your meeting culture is becoming more inclusive? ELISE: I think you see broader participation. One of the interesting things about ThoughtWorks is that we're a global software consultancy with offices in 42 countries. So, we are operating often on global calls with people who speak different languages or different time zones, obviously sort of different cultural norms and communication and team dynamics. One of the things that we really try to do is make those differences very visible and acknowledge them as we go into conversations or meetings to ensure that we're being very considerate of colleagues, and that they feel like they have the tools that they need to fully participate in those meetings if there's a language barrier, if there's folks who need to be facilitated more actively, those kinds of things. ASHLEY: Elise, what do you do when somebody is new at ThoughtWorks and hasn't been used to participating at such a global scale in the past. What are some of the things that you arm them with to prepare them for that kind of environment? ELISE: Great question. We have instituted a program called the Unconscious Bias Training that we do with all new ThoughtWorkers when they onboard, that really deals with some of the sort of considerations and questions around bias and communication and sort of navigating cultural difference. And we're actually implementing kind of a 2.0 right now for some of our account leadership teams, since increasingly our teams are globally distributed, that is so important to making sure that everyone feels that they are able to collaborate, connect, and achieve what that team is setting out to achieve collectively. ASHLEY: Excellent. I'm interested to know about the history of your position at ThoughtWorks and how an officer of Social Impact came to be. ELISE: ThoughtWorks was founded about 25 years ago. While social justice was always something that was very important to the founder and some of the early employees, it wasn't actually sort of operationalized until about 2010 when we adopted what I'll call the Ben and Jerry's Social Justice Framework which was this idea of the three-legged stool. Ben and Jerry's was committed to running a financially sustainable business. They were committed to making the world's best ice cream, and they were committed to advocating passionately for social and economic justice. Our founder really liked that framework and felt that that would be a great framework with ThoughtWorks to adopt as well. So, we replaced ice cream with technology and really started to embody the sort of complexity of how do we really fight and advocate for social justice while growing and maintaining a sustainable business. So, it's been an interesting journey for us. I mean, there's constantly tensions between the legs of the stool but we think that makes us a better company. We think that that really sort of forces us to have super thoughtful conversations, not only about sort of our culture and values, but also about the kind of tech we're building. It's a lens that we believe makes technologists better technologists sort of question everything, frankly, around the kinds of tech, issues around privacy and security, issues around accessibility, issues around potential bad actors that could use this technology in different ways. So, it's been an important part of who we are. So, my role is really somebody who facilitates these types of conversations globally. I also do this more specifically for the North America region. And I bring a lot of different stakeholders together to navigate these complex questions. So, it's really a facilitation and strategy role. NOEL: What are some of the things that you do in some of these discussions, in some of these meetings to ensure that they run smoothly and that people get heard and that the kinds of issues that you were talking about earlier get surfaced? ELISE: I do facilitate a lot of meetings. I have a lot of global working groups that I support. We're working across many time zones, sometimes as diverse as somebody from San Francisco and Australia in the same call. So, one of the things that I do is I start by validating the agenda at the top of the call and just making sure that there's nothing else people want to talk about. Usually, we try to, if we have a working group that's meeting regularly, we try to end the previous call with a pretty good understanding of where we're at in summary and where we're going for the next conversation. I always like to validate that and just say, "This is the agenda that everybody here wants to talk about today. Is there anything missing from this agenda?" Because that will elicit any concerns ideally from people who feel like we're not focused on the right issue and we'll make people feel that they have had more input into the goal of the conversation. So, I think that's a really important one. If we have time, I really do, and usually we do this in the first five minutes as we're waiting for people to join, we normally never start our calls until about five minutes after the call time. I am sure that's pretty universal. But I really like to check in with people personally and ask them how they're doing. Just check in. I think that really makes people feel more connected and builds trust and allows them to just feel more comfortable to fully participate in the conversation to be their authentic selves. And if something is weighing on somebody's mind and they feel comfortable sort of saying, "You know, I'm coming to this call today or this meeting with something of a personal issue, had a rough morning with my kids," or something like that, it sort of allows for a certain amount of grace and understanding how to better navigate the conversation with that person and where they're coming from. So, I think that that's an important piece. ASHLEY: I agree. Actually, I remember the first time -- I used to have this series of morning meetings at 7 a.m. and the company that I worked for would have senior people train the junior people. You do best practices, all of your internal meetings were done at 7:00 a.m., and you really only had, let's say, half an hour or an hour to get everything accomplished. And I had a co-worker who I actually adore, but she always spent so much time, I thought, chit chatting and talking about stuff that was, in my mind, frivolous and I used to get so annoyed. And finally, someone took me aside and said, "You know, you're getting super annoyed but this is an important part of the meeting - building the relationship. And you have to be willing to do that." And it really changed my mindset from 'we're going to come in and we're going to get the job done' to 'we will make some relationship building, a part of what's going on here' and it really made the whole thing much better. [Chuckles] ELISE: Absolutely. That is one of the things in addition to the Unconscious Bias Training that we recommend for new ThoughtWorkers. When we put together onboarding plans, we actually are very explicit that one of your goals for the first three months that you're at ThoughtWorks is to really just build relationships. It's to take time to just get to know your colleagues, attend the talks that we do in the office, sit next to somebody because we believe that that personal connection is just so important to being able to collaborate on different teams. And our teams sort of change based on the account that you're on. And so, you have to really network and get to know folks to build that trust. NOEL: Table XI recommends that you have lunch with as many co-workers as possible in your first month or so. ELISE: Yeah. I think it's very important. ASHLEY: And has the existing co-workers make that part of the plan. NOEL: Elise, it sounds like a lot of the meetings you run are remote and are on calls. What about this trust process is harder because of that and how do you sort of work around that? ELISE: That's a great question. I think that one of the things that we strive to do is really make it clear that we're all operating sort of at the same level in terms of power dynamics. I think sometimes there are ways in which Global North and Global South power dynamics or sort of anticipated power dynamics play out without people even sort of being super aware of those issues. And so, we try to be very clear and really hold ourselves accountable that we're not letting any sort of like dynamics where the US and the UK and Australia, especially because English, sort of dominates the meeting agenda or dominates the conversation. So, we really try to, especially when it comes to leading conversations about certain topics or leading decision making initiatives, we really try to make sure that the groups that are formed to do that work are balanced with representation from different countries. That's an important thing because we are ultimately, we are a company that was founded in the US and a lot of our leadership historically has been US-based. So, we really try to be considerate of that. The other thing is obviously language. And I often get asked to stop for a moment so that someone else on the call can translate or just slow down because I can talk very quickly and I try to be very mindful of that. We also try to figure out where there are situations where even slowing down speech in English is not going to be that helpful to our audience in understanding the communication. And so, we will just replicate the meeting completely in Portuguese, or completely in Chinese, and we'll just step back and let our partners lead. So, those are the two things that really stand out. I think also when you're talking about time zones, someone's always going to be, often it's multiple people, are either on the phone way past their regular bedtime or up way early, then they normally would be. Also, sort of recognizing that people are coming from sort of a place of compromise and really being there in a way that requires them to stretch themselves energetically and really be mindful of that and making space for that and making it easier for them to participate by giving other people the note rotation responsibilities or making sure we handle their agenda items quickly, so that they can sign off and go to bed or get their day started. So, that's a big part of it. But it's not uncommon when we're on these global calls, you hear people's kids in the background, you hear the kitchen pots and pans because people are working remotely and they're working globally. And we have to sort of make space for this new way of working that recognizes that this work enters people's domestic life in a way that it hasn't really in the past. So, how do we be as kind as possible so that people can be present and successfully participate while recognizing that they have these, that they have a domestic life that they need to attend to? NOEL: Elise, one thing that we have been asking everybody is to share either their best meeting story or their worst meeting stories. So, do you have a story to tell us? ELISE: I wouldn’t say it's one story in particular. But I can tell you one of my biggest meeting pet peeves. And I try to be really conscious of this not only for my own behaviors but when I'm facilitating in-person meetings especially is people closing their laptops. I think that having your laptop open when other people are talking and looking at your laptop while other people are talking when you're in the same room together is extremely distracting. And really, I would say, kills the vibe of the meeting. I know we need to take notes and often there's slides for people to look at. So, I do like to, when possible, make sure that if there is a document people need to look at, it's either up on the screen or it's printed. And also encourage people to take notes with pen and paper or sort of be working in groups where they can be scribing on Post-Its instead of needing to sit there and take a lot of notes personally on computers. Obviously, when you're doing a remote call, that's difficult because people are looking into their computer to see each other. So, that's harder to manage and I do think that that's one of the challenges with remote meetings is that people get distracted. There's tons of things open on their screens. They're getting pinged. And so, people are often multitasking. So, I think it's really about if people aren't talking on the call, I try to really intentionally engage them. Just say, "Is there anything you want to add here?" Or, "Do you have specific thoughts about this?" They may say no and they may decide they don't want to participate that way. But I do try to bring people in very intentionally into the conversation because I know, even with our best intentions of not checking e-mail or going on social media, sometimes it's just hard. I think from a good meeting perspective, when you are all comfortable enough where there's a really good sense of humor among the group, that there's levity and an authenticity that you can really feel from everyone. I think another sort of attribute of a good meeting is that people feel safe challenging each other's opinions, so that there's respectful debate and confrontation that's grounded in sort of love and care for one another, but you feel that because there's so much certainty of the sort of trust in the relationship that you can question and say, "What if we thought about this differently?" or, "That doesn't resonate with me. Here's what I think." That takes a lot of work. It's a lot of work but I think it really leads to better outcomes. ASHLEY: Outstanding. NOEL: Great. And aside from the things that we've talked about already, do you have another tip or something that people can do to improve the meetings in their company that they can take advantage of right away? ELISE: I do think a lot of times, we don't do enough note taking and clearly summarizing the outcomes of a meeting and what the next steps are, so that people feel like meetings end up being a waste of time because there's not sort of clear where the group landed and what the action items are. So, I really highly recommend that they take the time to designate a note taker, ask for volunteers to do the note taking. And at the end of the call, to summarize and report out what those action items are and who's responsible for what. I also record every meeting. I ask for permission from everybody on the call. I record it and I make it available for people afterwards who also either missed the meeting, so they feel like they were included. I'm somebody who learns better when I hear versus when I read. So, for me, recorded meetings are much more useful to get context, and I always appreciate having those. So, making it possible for people with different learning styles to get the context and understand and follow along, I think, is also an important thing that people can do. ASHLEY: Excellent. NOEL: Yeah, those are good pieces of advice. Elise, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Meetings Done Right podcast. If you would like to learn more about the Inclusion Meeting Cards, order a set of your own. To find out about other episodes of this podcast, go to MeetingsDoneRight.co. You can also find out more about this podcast by searching for Meetings Done Right wherever you listen to podcasts. Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts will help people find the show. The Inclusion Meeting Cards and the Meetings Done Right podcast are produced by Table XI. Table XI is one of Inc. Magazine's Best Workplaces and a top-rated custom software development company on Clutch.co. Learn more about Table XI at TableXI.com. Meetings Done Right is hosted by Ashley Quinto Powell and Noel Rappin, and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening.