The show’s guest in this episode is Robin Rosenberg. She is a psychologist, author, executive coach, speaker and CEO and founder of Live in their world. Her company in part uses virtual reality to address issues of bias and upskill employees. Tune in, and be transformed!

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Addressing Bias and Incivility in the Workplace with Robin Rosenberg

Hello, it’s great to be here live with you, the first week of January. Happy New Year. And I’ve been thinking about my own leadership. And I’m really thinking about, you know, people are talking about New Year’s resolutions. And sometimes I have some of those, they’re almost always the same, like, you know, around health and being healthy and exercise and eating well, and, and, and I love to put some twists on it like, Hey, have you looked back to see like what you thought of what were you proud of? What would you like more of? What it had you knock it out of the park? And where did you like not knock it out of the park? So I think it’s always good to do a little retrospective more than just resolution. But I also am so curious about what you’re dreaming of for 2022? What’s that?  thing that you want more of? And that’s sort of my challenge to you is? What’s the essence of what you want from your year? What’s the essence of what you want from your work? What do you want from your relationships? And then what do you need to do to start making that happen? What’s the first step, and whatever that first step is, I challenge you to make that step in the the week after you hear this podcast, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the year or any time, just start toward the thing that you’re dreaming up in your life. I’m super excited about 2022. And I hope you are too. I know that it will have challenges because it every year does. And I know that it will have joy i i know that when I think back to my year, the things that really stay with me are the laughter of friends, watching my kids succeed. And the care that we show to each other in our family, in our company, in the work that we do together, and I love being a part I feel so privileged to be a part of the journey of my clients so so I really encourage you to do a little retrospective in your life, and then a little dream of what you want more of this year.

I also want to give you a little gift this year. To start the year off, right I want to give you a copy of my digital book, The experimental leader. And you can go to digitalbook.experimentalleader.com and sign up. I don’t do this all the time. So make sure you grab it today. And I hope you will enjoy it.

And I am super excited about our guest today. Today I want to welcome psychologist, author, executive coach, speaker and CEO and founder of Live in their world. Dr. Robin Rosenberg, her company in part uses virtual reality to address issues of bias and upskill employees. I am so excited to get to talk to Robin today.

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Welcome to the show, Robin.

Thanks so much for having me. And Happy New Year. Very excited to be here.

Well, I am just thrilled to talk to you. And we were having a great conversation before we hopped on here. And I am really curious for you to tell us all how you’re experiencing experimenting in your work right now.

Okay, great question. What I’m experimenting with is the progression, if you will, from the great resignation. And today’s stats just came out about November’s quitting rate, which was sort of an all time high, which we knew people are a little bit talking about. So we got the great resignation. And then there’s the great onboarding, because many of the people who have quit, have started a new job if your length LinkedIn feed is like mine, you know, we’re seeing people in new positions. And so those people are getting on boarded. But what people are not really talking about is what I’ve called the Great acculturation and that is what happens after onboarding and how do you both acculturate and have an include new employees, particularly when they’re virtual, with remote and the existing employees know each other, both from in person and from the last year to how do you make it’s really an inclusion question, but it’s it’s really reciprocal, because in organizations where you now have more new people than old, not old, I don’t mean old by age or old in terms of number of years in the organization, the organization will have to change, because you’re out numbered in the team, if you will. So I’m interested in experimenting, if you will, and thinking a lot about acculturation issues.

Well, and it’s interesting in my organization, and relationship systems work that team coaching organization coaching that I do, we sometimes talk about ghosts in the system, when people leave, like there’s this essence of people left behind. And then when we talk about onboarding, you know, I’m really conscious of like that dream that I talked about earlier. Like that dream is really alive for both the employer and the employee, they each have a dream when they decide to come together. And so I think it’s really important to, you know, really try to clarify and solidify those dreams at that stage. And then, in that acculturation piece, I don’t know if I’ve heard that word before, but I love that word, you know, that, that after you’ve on boarded, it’s like, you’re you’re, you’re melding, there’s a merging of every culture changes, when a new person comes, the system changes to incorporate them.

Which people don’t necessarily appreciate that that happens. They may not know.

Their feelings about them, you might have real feelings about that. And I see people drag their heels in hiring because of their fear around that, like, Oh, it’s so good. Now, we’ll let’s just wait, let’s you know, like they are, if they get to a point where they’re satisfied and fulfilled. When someone leaves, it’s often, you know, the easy thing for a leader is to just keep, you know, everybody bucks up and just does a little more work. And it’s sometimes is a an edge people have to go over to bring somebody on because of that acculturation piece.

There are different, there’s, in a way. There are three sides of that piece. One is for the person coming in, right, of how do they feel included? And how do they, you know, being the new kid on the block is always hard. And so how do they break through that, especially with remote work, which I think has made things very challenging socially, if you will have to break in? There’s How do you get acculturated, where any interaction is now quite formal? You know, because it’s, it’s even in a Slack channel. I mean, you’re if you want to ask someone a question, you can’t just tap them on the shoulder to set a time for me, then all you know. So it’s, it really shifts the experience for a newcomer, which we’ve known, you know, since COVID, started. So there’s that perspective, there’s the perspective of the people who’ve been there a while of having someone new in their midst and really having to remember to be inclusive, right, like to be thinking.

I love your sort of body language or LIKE and remember to be inquisitive. Like, I think that’s really what it feels like, like, we want to be inclusive, but it’s another check mark, you know.

Another thing on mental load that is particularly hard virtually remember to do that. So and then there’s the fear, but what does it mean? And then there’s the organizational piece about bringing in someone new and how, you know, how do we create belonging, and inclusiveness and engagement? And also, how are we going to change? And I think a great example is if you think about team meetings, when a new person proposes an idea that either was tried a year or two ago, or five years ago, or 10 years ago. And so then the older people older, meaning again, that a number of years, the company or like they roll their eyes, well, we tried that, right. So it’s sort of a no mindset, if you will. Or come up with reasons why it can’t be done. But you know, you just don’t know enough yet to understand why can’t be done. And sometimes that is true. Right there. They don’t know enough to know why it can’t be done. Or Yes, it was done 10 years ago, but times change people change. You know, the culture changes and the you know, the world changes and So it’s how do you have IT companies and how to teams foster that openness? To be curious to a new perspective, versus roll their eyes and push back and have a no mindset?

Wow, I think all of that is so interesting. And I know I blogged about it in my past, I don’t know where I would even point someone to for it, because it’s a long time ago. But that idea that you always want to ask your newest person to walk around the building and tell you what they see. Or to give that feedback in the company about what do they see? Where are the opportunities, because they have that fresh outside perspective, they’re coming in almost as a new, like how a new client might see you also. It’s such a fresh, fresh perspective, but I think I know that thing where it’s like you say it, and people are like, Yeah, we did that. I was like, well, it didn’t work because it was 10 years ago, and we didn’t do Facebook yet. Like, you know, like, there’s, it’s been what, I think it’s been 14 years since I joined Facebook. So if you did 10 years ago, the environment is so different, you know, because of marketing has changed completely and that 14 years. But I think it’s a really interesting. What do you recommend people do about all of that, like, how do you help people with those? The onboarding the acculturation, what’s your advice?

Well, um, I mean, so living their world has a virtual reality program, which I can talk about separately, but on this issue, we do leadership training, we do individual coaching for people. And it, it hinges, that’s sort of the underpinning, it really is about a focus on inclusion, and an organism an organ, fostering an organizational culture, about openness to new ideas and curiosity. I think fundamentally, if you have that a lot of the other things follow. They’re much easier, right? To have a yes mindset, versus a no mindset, or maybe mindset. But I think it’s much harder in organizations where there’s no mindset. And that’s where I think leadership, training and coaching for, you know, some individuals really come in but but it is being aware of it. I mean, that’s the first piece is just being aware, these are natural ways that people can respond about new people coming in. And here are the things that you can do to mitigate that.

Yeah, I mean, one is just to actually foster curiosity. Right. About the one is just to foster curiosity. And not to start with no, I mean, that’s a great skill to show, not just for onboarding, or not just for, you know, the first meeting, but for everything, consider if the thing that you’ve you’re saying, we tried that? Did you collect data would be my other thing? I would say like when it didn’t work? Did you collect data? It didn’t work? You know, these are all the things that we talked about in you know, with the experimental leader is, are you doing good data collection? Do you bound your experiment? Do you see it as an experiment? And do you change conditions to see if you can improve your data outcomes within your experiment?

And then iterate toward your goals and iterate?

Yeah, we tried it once. Yeah, I can almost guarantee if you try something once, it never will work. You’ll get something wrong the first time.

Right, exactly. And so part, you know, part of it is I mean, if you know if you think of it from an experimental perspective, where the first step is the question, right, and then you develop an hypothesis. So, you know, in this case, it’s how do we make the acculturation process better? And then you have hypotheses for a given organization? And then you figure out, well, how will we test that? Right? And, you know, what’s, what’s our What’s the logic behind what we’re doing and what’s the method and then collect the data, and you do the analysis and you learn from that. And then you iterate for the next experiment.

One thing I’m fascinated by is the fact that people are onboarding so many people actually gives them that iteration. I hadn’t thought about that until we’re just talking. But you get more iteration with onboarding then you usually do. I see it with my clients because I bring on very few one on one clients in a year, maybe one or two. So if we have something broken in our system, we kind of just muscle through, we don’t fix anything. We actually this year really changed our onboarding process for new clients. But it if you don’t bring on employees, very often, you don’t iterate you. It’s a one off every single time. So this, you know, the great resignation and the great onboarding, give you the opportunity to actually ponder your processes and practice your iteration and collect data in a way that we you don’t usually have.

So that’s only if people are open and curious. Yes. And willing to change. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, that’s the you know, is it this is how we do things here. Which, you know, and that’s an okay stance for certain objectives. Right? It depends, again, on what your objectives are. But, you know, if organizations, this is how we do things here, it doesn’t actually, with there is no point in collecting data, because it’s not going to change what we do. Versus can we do this better? And then defining what better means, right? Because that’s the other is what is our goal? What is better? Is it self report? Is it you know, ease problems after onboarding? You know, how do you want to measure that? What is better mean?

Cool, well, I’d love to know more I want to know about live in their world, and virtual reality, and what do you do with that?

Sure. So I’m just so what we do is this part of what we do is we have a subscription as a service program that really is about upskilling civility in the workplace civility and respect. And helping people learn how to engage with each other respectfully, when there may be disagreement, conflict, challenging issues. So it plays out in terms of demographic identity issues. So for a while I had this idea I was doing some research in virtual reality. And I’ve been following the literature, the academic literature, since it started 2530 years ago, but when Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, and George Zimmerman was acquitted, and that led to Black Lives Matter. And that led to some white people, you know, saying to journalists, either white lives matter, or all lives matter. And not that I presume to know the experience of living, the lived experience of being black in the US. But from what I knew, I hypothesized that the people who said white lives matter, it was really a profound failure of understanding, right of that lived experience, which makes sense if you don’t, if you don’t, how do we walk in someone else’s shoes, right, we, you know, we can, we can do our best if we’re open and curious, and learn from that. But VR is incredibly powerful, and it gives you the opportunity to walk in other people’s shoes. And then the way we do VR, it actually gives you an opportunity to stand in their feet. So I make this distinction, where virtual reality can put you in someone else’s shoes, but you’re seeing it through your eyes, if that makes sense. And the way, part of what we do is our goal is to actually help you be in the feet of someone and see it through their eyes and sort of how things how they experience it. Right, the meaning that ache, if you will, right? Because we could see the same things happens all the time, we see the same thing. And we take from it, different elements, you know, and then we remember different elements and that’s why we can disagree you know, it’s that’s why witnesses right? They people see different things because they took from it different things. So what we’re trying to do is really help people understand the experience of someone who’s other and then how and when the ways that that translates into disrespect, unintentional, often, right. But, but then none of us is ever going to get it all night. So how do we how do we have conversations about this? We know that incivility in the workplace of any kind, is incredibly costly. For organizations from productivity, financially legal cases, attrition, you know, especially when you have there’s there’s kind of known offenders of people who are jerks. Some are intentionally, like a toxic employee, and some are, you know, it doesn’t appear to be intentional, they’re just unaware. And then some people are trying, but they’re actually trying on way. And so the how do you dress these issues in a way that upskilled? Everybody to say, hey, you know, remember this thing that happened yesterday, I just want to let you know, this is how it landed on me, you know, or even to say, hey, you know that thing yesterday? What were you trying to say? Because I don’t think I heard it the way you meant it. So I just had, you know, this is my psychology background coming in here, that it’s just really helping upskill people to have more civil workplaces, which leads to all kinds of good things. We know civil teams, respectful teams, outperform on all these kinds of dimensions. Other teams? So that’s, that’s our program.

Wow. Well, I wouldn’t interesting, I think that’s just fascinating. And I’m like deeply curious, but I’m not even sure the right questions to ask. But I would love to learn more do we have can we put some information about how people can find you, in our show notes so that people could find out more about short you and the virtual reality and all of the terms.

The best thing is to go to our website liveintheirworld.com, we have a ton of information I’ve written about it, we have little samples. And then I should tell you and your your viewers because of COVID, we had to find ways to give people a VR experience from home. And without an Oculus headset, you know, because that was originally designed for that. So one is what’s called Mobile mobile VR headset, where you just put your phone in. It’s these are upgraded versions of Google Cardboard, really inexpensive. People can just, you know, order these and have it at home, or what’s called immersive video where you actually don’t need any equipment, and you just do it on your computer. It’s like a YouTube 360 video. So VR has really moved beyond an Oculus headset, despite what Mark Zuckerberg would like us to.

What some people want to believe, right? There’s their past. Well, this has just been a joy to talk with you. I really have appreciated getting to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Oh, that’s great. It’s great that you’ve been here. Thank you.

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Wow, it was just fascinating getting to talk with Dr. Robin Rosenberg. And I loved all of the talk about onboarding and how you think about the way that you approach conversations from a leadership perspective. And also how you lead conversations for the people on teams who are welcoming new team members? How you invite them to be curious? How you invite them, to have today be a new day, to think about the feedback loops that they’re setting up with people? And there’s a whole chapter in my book about feedback loops, you might really enjoy that. So I really encourage you if you’re bringing new people onto your team, think about what your dream is for them. Think about how you best foster that dream and how you create a new day for them and for you as you welcome new team, new team members in this great onboarding that’s happening in North America right now. And I wish you all the best. And I hope you’ll download a copy of my book digitalbook.experimentalleader.com and go experiment!

Important Links: 

• Robin Rosenberg – LinkedIn
• Live in Their World – LinkedIn
• Live in Their World – Website

Robin Rosenberg

Robin Rosenberg, Ph.D., is CEO and Founder of Live in Their World, a company that uses, in part, virtual reality to address issues of bias and incivility in the workplace and upskill employees, especially leaders, for respectful engagement.

She is a clinical psychologist, and prior to starting her company, she had both psychotherapy and executive coaching practices, wrote college textbooks, and taught psychology classes at Harvard University and Lesley University.

She’s combined her interest in immersive technologies with her coaching and clinical experiences to foster in employees a deeper understanding of how and why other people may feel slighted or marginalized, and how to approach such interactions differently.

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